Live from the Riyadh Season Stadium at KAFD in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, WWE presents the 2026 Royal Rumble on ESPN and Netflix. The full card is as follows:
Drew McIntyre vs Sami Zayn for the WWE title; AJ Styles vs Gunther with Styles’ career on the line; the 30-woman over-the-top rope Royal Rumble match; and the 30-man over-the-top rope Royal Rumble match.
How to watch
The Countdown to the Royal Rumble will start at Noon ET and will air on the ESPN app as well as on WWE’s social media properties and YouTube.
The Royal Rumble premium live event kicks off at 2PM ET, 11AM PT, 1PM in Mexico City, 4PM in Sao Paolo, 7PM in London, 8PM in Paris, 12:30AM in Mumbai, and 6AM in Sydney. For those in the United States, the show airs on the ESPN app while international fans can watch it on Netflix.
The Royal Rumble Post Show will follow immediately after the conclusion of the PLE and it will air on the ESPN app as well as on WWE’s social media properties and YouTube.
Dynamite on Wednesday drew 653,000 viewers, up 155,000 viewers from the prior week and their best viewership number since September 17, 2025. The show had a 0.09 rating in 18-49, up 0.01 from the previous show and was #16 in the top 50 cable chart for the night. (Ratings credit: Programming Insider)
Some empty spots remain available in the two Royal Rumble matches for today, leaving the possibility of a surprise or two.
Triple H said in an interview on ESPN that the show will have surprises but judging from the past, such statements often fail to meet fans’ expectations.
Announced for the men’s Rumble match are Austin Theory, Brock Lesnar, Bron Breakker, Bronson Reed, Cody Rhodes, Damian Priest, Dragon Lee, Ilja Dragunov, Jacob Fatu, Je’Von Evans, Jey Uso, Logan Paul, Oba Femi, Penta, Randy Orton, Rey Mysterio, Roman Reigns, Solo Sikoa, The Miz, and Trick Williams.
That’s 20 names in total with 10 more to be announced. Gunther was originally in the match but was seemingly removed from graphics promoting the match.
In the women’s match, there’s Alexa Bliss, Asuka, Bayley, Becky Lynch, Charlotte Flair, Chelsea Green, Giulia, Iyo Sky, Jordynne Grace, Lash Legend, Lyra Valkyria, Liv Morgan, Maxxine Dupri, Nia Jax, Raquel Rodriguez, Rhea Ripley, and Roxanne Perez.
That is a total of 17 names announced with 13 open spots left.
There are rumors that some AAA and TNA stars could be part of these Royal Rumble matches with a couple already photographed in Riyadh.
In the documents released related to Jeffrey Epstein, former WWE Superstar Ashley Massaro is mentioned in the latest batch of files.
Massaro’s name comes up in a complaint filed on July 22, 2020 by a female whose name was redacted by the U.S. Department of Justice.
It is alleged in the complaint that the late Massaro and a friend of hers worked for Ghisaine Maxwell and another person named “Jane Mechella” from Miami, Florida.
The paragraph where Massaro’s name pops up reads, “She mentioned horrible things happening in the Island and including dead body of a girl that ‘had mask and was tied to a tree.’ She siad ‘that the one from London was very mean and also the one from Miami.’ also that the man ‘in the mention was making her f*cking black guys and he liked to wach it , she was young -high school student in ocean side long Island ) she also said that her friend Ashely Massarow (who died in 2019 – the wwe) got pregnant in high school. they both worked for Maxwell and Mechella from Miami Florida.”
In February 2024, Wrestling-Online.com received from NCIS the full investigative report into Massaro’s rape allegations at a military base in Kuwait in 2006.
The former WWE Diva passed away in 2019 from suicide.
In somewhat unexpected news, NXT General Manager Ava announced that she has departed the company and will no longer be appearing on NXT.
“This past Tuesday was my last appearance on NXT & subsequently WWE. Thank you to all who have cheered, watched, and supported me through my journey,” she wrote. “While my decision to not renew my contract was very difficult, it’s also new turning point in my life. It has been an honor & a privilege to be Ava. I loved being your mayor. From the bottom of my heart, thank you.”
Ava is the daughter of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and has been part of the company since 2020, first as a trainee at the WWE Performance Center and then as Ava Raine as part of Joe Gacy’s Schism faction. In 2024, she was appointed as the on-screen general manager for NXT.
“WWE thanks and applauds Simone Garcia Johnson for her stellar work as Ava and beyond,” WWE wrote in a statement. “Her passion, dedication, and impact were felt across the entire NXT and WWE community. We wish her the very best in all future endeavors.”
Appearing on The Pat McAfee Show via video from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, former WWE champion Roman Reigns took a slight shot at WWE creative, saying that the company has to keep up creatively because not much has been done since his championship reign ended at WrestleMania 40.
“I leave an opening and give them plenty of space to create. We are two years here now. We haven’t advanced, we haven’t evolved,” Reigns told McAfee about the company’s role in making new top stars.
“We have great leadership, Nick Khan, God bless him, but we have to keep up creatively.”
In the interview, Reigns also praised Saudi Arabia and the facilities they have provided for all the WWE Superstars, saying no expenses were spared this time around.
Reigns spent 20 minutes talking with McAfee and his crew and you can see the interview below.
During the live Smackdown broadcast on Netflix, which aired everywhere except in the United States, there was a production mistake that might have spoiled the first entrant of the Rumble.
During Axiom’s entrance for his match against Johnny Gargano, the lower third graphic did not show Axiom’s name, but rather the Rumble graphic for entrant #1…Bron Breakker.
The image was quickly taken down and replaced with the proper graphic for the match.
Smackdown won’t air in the United States until its regular 8PM ET time slot so this will be fixed for the taped version.
It will be interesting to see if Breakker is indeed entrant #1 in tomorrow’s men’s Royal Rumble match or if this was just a “test.”
Speaking to Sports Illustrated, Tommaso Ciampa said that he had been thinking about leaving WWE for quite some time but couldn’t pin point one thing which led to his desire to depart the company.
Ciampa, who made his debut with AEW this week on Dynamite, said that he had a discussing with his wife about his future and came up with the conclusion that the best thing for him now is to leave.
“If I wrestled in the 90s, I’d wanna be a part of ECW… Early 2000s, you wanna be a part of Ring of Honor,” Ciampa said. “2010s, I think for me at least, I wanted to be part of NXT Black and Gold. And when I looked at the landscape of professional wrestling in the 2020s… the answer was AEW.”
The former NXT champion also revealed that he wanted to bring his Psycho Killer gimmick to the main roster but it was something that it was never signed off on by the powers that be.
Ciampa already has a chance of winning his first AEW title tomorrow night on Collision as he takes on Mark Briscoe for the TNT title.
It might be an outdoor arena but there was no way in hell that the WrestleMania 42 sign was not going up someway, somehow.
If not, where else would the two Royal Rumble winners point to following their win?
The massive WrestleMania 42 logo went up above the Riyadh Season Stadium at KFD, hanging from a steel structure erected from behind the stadium.
It lights up as well, with a neon-looking light as the contour of the whole logo, giving a proper Vegas vibe to a logo which celebrates the Las Vegas skyline, with the Eiffel Tower, The Strat, The Linq, Allegiant Stadium, and others all visible.
It will make its debut on Smackdown tonight and will be featured on all WWE televised events moving forward until WrestleMania 42.
In a video published on Triple H’s X account from the outdoor arena which was specifically built for this weekend, the WWE Chief Content Officer said it was really hard to picture the size and scope of the arena when he saw the initial concepts for it.
“As cool as it looks now, I think tonight, it’s designed for dark. This is pretty cool,” he said.
The arena, located inside the King Abdullah Financial District in Riyadh, was built in less than a month, with Triple H quipping that it wasn’t bad for the amount of time it took to build.
“Hard to picture that this was like a strip of dirt a month ago. From that to this…it’s crazy,” he continued.
The arena is officially being referred to as the Riyadh Season Stadium at KAFD. Both Smackdown and the Royal Rumble are being held in the same location.
NXT this week drew 674,000 viewers, up 66,000 viewers from the prior week and the best viewership number since the October 14, 2025 episode. The show had a 0.08 rating in 18-49, the same number that it had last week. (Ratings credit: Programming Insider)
The TNA Feast or Fired briefcase choices were revealed last night on Impact on AMC.
Eddie Edwards got the big prize, a shot at the TNA World title. Eric Young had a briefcase which contained a shot at the TNA X Division title, while the recently re-signed Trey Miguel got a shot at the TNA International title.
That left Steve Maclin, who unfortunately, got the briefcase with his marching orders and is now fired from TNA Wrestling.
Maclin, who started working for the company in 2021, won the TNA World title once and the TNA International title twice during his stint. Before joining TNA, he was part of the WWE and NXT roster under the name Steve Cutler.
CM Punk has been unveiled as the WWE 2K26 cover star.
The announcement was made during the Royal Rumble Kickoff event held today in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, with WWE 2K26 taking over the impressive stage inside the outdoor arena.
This is the second time that Punk will grace the cover of a WWE video game as he already was on the cover of WWE 13, although at the time the game was not produced by 2K yet.
“It is my pleasure and my honor. When I was a little kid, I could only dream of being on the cover of a video game,” Punk said. “And now I am joining some esteemed dignitaries that have been on the cover twice. It’s amazing, it’s pretty special we got to do the reveal here today in front of all you wonderful fans. I missed you guys, I love you.”
During the week, WWE also announced the Attitude Era, Monday Night War, and King of Kings editions of the video game. The official trailer will broadcast during the Royal Rumble.
The Royal Rumble go-home episode of Smackdown will air live early for international fans on Netflix, with the broadcast set for an 8PM local time kick off in Riyadh.
That means a 5PM GMT start time for those in the United Kingdom and 6PM CET start for those in Central Europe.
In the United States, Smackdown will air in its regular 8PM ET time slot on USA Network.
The show will be from the King Abdullah Financial District, where WWE had a whole outdoor arena built specifically for this weekend.
Both tonight’s Smackdown and tomorrow’s Royal Rumble are sold out.
Collision last Saturday drew 253,000 viewers, down 18,000 viewers from the prior episode. The show had a 0.02 rating in 18-49, down 0.01 from the previous week and a record low for the demo. (Ratings credit: Wrestlenomics)
In what could be a sign of things to come, AJ Styles filed an application with the United States Patent and Trademark office to trademark the terms The Phenomenal AJ Styles and P1.
The filing was done yesterday, January 28 by Michael E. Dockins, the attorney who has helped countless of wrestling stars get their name trademarked, especially those in AEW.
Styles owns the AJ Styles name already from a filing in December 2004 by the same attorney.
The former champion is putting his career on the line against Gunther at the Royal Rumble this weekend and raised some eyebrows when during his promo on Raw, he said that Gunther was looking to end his “WWE career” and did not use the term “wrestling career,” suggesting that there will be life in the ring after WWE for him.
Styles has said that 2026 was going to be his last year as an active competitor, although many believed that it would end with WWE.
Matt and Jeff Hardy sat down with Chris Van Vliet in Albuquerque, New Mexico to discuss their legendary careers as individuals and as a tag team, retiring Team 3D at Bound For Glory and if they have thought about winding down their own careers, their most extreme moments, Jeff being attacked with a screwdriver by Randy Orton, Matt suplexing Ric Flair off a ladder, their epic WrestleMania 33 return, crazy Swanton Bombs, Leon Slater’s Swanton 450 and more!
Jeff, how’s your neck doing?
Jeff: “It’s better. This past Monday and Tuesday, it felt really good. Then we flew out here, and I fell asleep a little funky on the plane. I remember jerking my head up one time, and it hurt. So it was hurting a little more than it did Monday and Tuesday. But overall, man, it’s feeling good. It’s definitely better. So this has been a little over three months now. I’ve been dealing with two bulging discs on the left side of my neck, and this happened when we dropped the titles at the NXT Halloween Havoc show. It was one of those things, you couldn’t even tell, it looked completely fine. I landed flat, but I was on the big guy’s shoulders. The one guy jumped off the ladder, clotheslined me off. The idea was for me to go through the table, but I kind of overshot the table, and he just broke the table, and my head just hit the mat, and it was a little whiplash like that. It felt terrible. I mean, it definitely felt like a concussion, and I was close to being knocked out, but that’s when it happened. Two bulging discs on the left side of my neck, but I’m feeling much better.”
When you talk about thinking like this might have been the end with this injury, how much do you guys think about the end of your career?
Jeff: “I try not to think about it, especially with seeing the Cena retirement tour, naturally, because we’re the same age. He’s a little older than me, but I’m 48 and I’m like, oh man. AJ, same age, he’s talking about maybe retiring soon. I mean, I think about it, but the way my career has went over the years, the ups and the downs, I just hope I can do it for as long as I can. I think that’s the way I’m going to do it, because after this neck injury, I feel like my performances are naturally going to get 1,000% better, because I’m so excited about this whole AMC deal and being in TNA and continuing to evolve. But yeah, I try not to let the thought of the end enter my consciousness.”
Matt: “Wrestling Twitter has been trying to retire us for years now, and they still do. They’re trying to book our retirement matches nonstop. But we feel good. As long as we feel good, we’re gonna keep going.”
There is so much history with you guys and Team 3D. What a special moment to be in there with the Dudleys for their final match. Were all of you guys crying in there?
Jeff: “I think we were.”
Matt: “It was definitely emotional. So I’ll tell you this, I’ll be fully transparent. D-Von, we just wanted to get him through this last match, we knew he was retiring, this was it. We want him to go out on this great match with career rivals. We had no idea they were going to both take their boots off, and we definitely didn’t know they were going to give them to us. Jeff had just asked at the end, ‘Hey, is that a thing?’ I said it wasn’t, but I think it is now. He [D-Von] said ‘What we’re going to do at the end to show you the respect and say you guys have won this battle. Whoever wins this is the greatest of all time. We have something we’re going to do, but we don’t want to tell you, is that fine?’ I said, that’s great. Let’s just do it in the ring. Let’s get a very authentic, genuine reaction, and that’s what that was. More than anything, we just wanted D-Von to be okay in that match. We tried to protect him as much as we could. He’d had some serious health issues over the years, and we were going to bust our ass to work as hard as we could, because those guys haven’t been working a lot. Bully has been working here and there, doing some stuff. But we wanted to bust our ass and we really wanted to tap into the emotion behind the match. What was great, even in the beginning, we had to start the match so the crowd would stop chanting. So the crowd was so involved in it, and they were so emotionally invested, and that’s what made it feel so special.”
That spot at WrestleMania 22 with Ric Flair. When you suplex him off the ladder is wild. They’re reiterating he’s 57, so he specifically asked you to do that spot?
Matt: “Yeah, so they needed a spot. They wanted a spot where Ric was going to say he was hurt and be carried out of the match and he was going to come back in the end, and he said, ‘I have an idea. Matt, I trust you. I know you’re one of the creators of this ladder match. Will you suplex me off?’ He said, ‘I’ll be honest. You’re the only person I trust doing this match.’ And he also told Edge that whenever they had the match, he said, ‘You’re the only person I trust to have this match with, because I know you and The Hardys created this ladder match nonsense.’ And I said, ‘Sure, that’s cool.’ I remember we talked about the spot, and we had a rung Ric was gonna be on, then I was gonna suplex him off. I remember we’d got to that rung as we were fighting, and I said, ‘All right, you ready?’ He said, ‘No, higher, higher, higher.’ I was like, Okay, we went up one more, and he took that bump like a champ and got him over. He was safe and sound. And he said it was great. He said it was an easy bump. He would always do that. He would do the deal where he would flip over the corner, run to the other side, coming off. He said, ‘If I can do that every night, it shouldn’t be that bad off the ladder.’ Afterwards, he said, ‘It was easy. Thank you. Yeah, it was good. Thank you.’ He said, ‘You took care of me, made sure I got over. I didn’t land on my head, and that’s all I wanted. Thank you. You’re the only person in this match I trust to do it with.'”
Samoa Joe was announced as having a “non-contact injury” on last night’s episode of Dynamite and is not cleared to compete.
The nature of his injury remains unknown and it’s not clear how long the former AEW champion will be out of action for.
Joe last wrestled against “Speedball” Mike Bailey on the January 21 episode of Dynamite in Orlando.
The unspecified injury might keep the former champion out of the Contender Series to determine the number one contender for the AEW World title at Revolution, although AEW did not announce how or when they will get to the second finalist yet.
For the third week in a row, Smackdown failed to break a million in viewership, drawing 943,000 viewers, down 25,000 from the prior show. Smackdown had a 0.22 rating in 18-49, up 0.01 from last week and was the #1 show on cable television for the night. (Ratings credit: Programming Insider)
TNA Wrestling announced that Ash by Elegance has signed a new deal with the company.
A video of Ash signing the deal in front of TNA President Carlos Silva and Tommy Dreamer was published on the TNA website.
In an interview with Denise Salcedo, Ash revealed that she got cleared by the doctors to resume in-ring action, and credited TNA for standing by her side after she announced she was leaving last year.
The former TNA Knockouts champion is the third person to sign with TNA since the move to AMC, following Mr. Elegance and Elayna Black.
