Brock Lesnar Returning To Raw, Possible WWE Royal Rumble 2018 Opponents

It won’t be much longer before WWE fans see Brock Lesnar live on TV again. The WWE Universal Champion is scheduled to appear on the Dec. 18 edition of “Monday Night Raw,” making his first appearance since beating AJ Styles at Survivor Series.

What Lesnar and Paul Heyman will have to say when they show up in Providence, Rhode Island, is another story. The duo might very well indicate Lesnar’s opponent at the 2018 Royal Rumble, though the challenger could be one of many WWE superstars.

WWE created a poll on WWE.com last week, asking fans which Raw Superstar should face Lesnar next. Finn Balor was the winner, by far, coming away with 61 percent of the votes. Braun Strowman was a distant second with 10 percent of the votes. Roman Reigns finished with 8 percent and Samoa Joe got 6 percent.

There’s a good chance that none of those wrestlers will be the one to have a match with Lesnar at the Jan. 28 pay-per-view in Philadelphia.

Balor seems to be the most obvious choice, given the poll results and the fact that he’s never received a one-on-one rematch for the WWE Universal Championship that he relinquished 15 months ago due to injury. There had even been rumors that Balor was set to take on Lesnar at WWE’s first big event of 2018.

Those plans, however, have seemingly changed. Rumors that Balor won’t get a title shot at the Royal Rumble seem to be supported by the recent booking of the former NXT Champion. Balor has lost clean to both Kane and Samoa Joe on “Monday Night Raw” in the last few weeks, and he was the second member of Team Raw to be eliminated in the traditional Survivor Series match.

Don’t expect Strowman to face Lesnar at the Royal Rumble. Not unless Vince McMahon has changed his very obvious plan to have Lesnar hold the belt until WrestleMania 34. Strowman got his title match against Lesnar in September and was beaten clean. Why would WWE have Strowman win a rematch just four months later?

Reigns and Lesnar are on a collision course to meet in a match in the main event of WrestleMania 34. In the meantime, it looks like Reigns and Joe will have a feud of their own over the Intercontinental Championship. Lesnar pinned Reigns in a fatal-4-way at SummerSlam, and he defeated Joe clean at Great Balls of Fire in July.

Maybe Bray Wyatt, who received 3 percent of the votes, is a possibility. Wyatt and Lesnar have come close to having a singles match on multiple occasions over the last few years, but WWE has seemed to cool off on Wyatt each time it was close to happening.

Triple H got 4 percent of the votes, and his late inclusion in the Survivor Series main event proved that he can be thrust into a big match at any time. He’s probably headed toward a feud with Kurt Angle and not one that involves the top championship on “Monday Night Raw.”

What about Seth Rollins (3 percent) and Dean Ambrose (1 percent)? That probably won’t happen with the two Shield members looking to get back their Raw Tag Team Championships.

Without a clear option, WWE could turn to someone that isn’t officially on the “Monday Night Raw” roster. A match between Brock Lesnar and John Cena would create plenty of buzz, even though it’s one that has been seen three times since the former UFC Champion returned to WWE in 2012.

After fighting for “SmackDown Live” for the better part of a year, Cena faced Roman Reigns in the first “Monday Night Raw” PPV following SummerSlam 2017. Two months later, he was competing for Team SmackDown when WWE was looking to add more star power to the event.

WWE might not even know who Lesnar will be facing with just two months remaining until the Royal Rumble, and the eventual Universal Championship Match could turn out to be one that fans were not expecting.