For the 2016 event, however, Roman Reigns was scheduled to defend the WWE World Heavyweight Championship in the 2016 Royal Rumble match and as the number one entrant.

The event was notable for the WWE pay-per-view debut of longtime Total Nonstop Action Wrestling mainstay AJ Styles as the third entrant in the Royal Rumble match.

However, as a culmination of his attempts to deprive the WWE World Heavyweight Champion Roman Reigns for attacking his son-in-law Triple H and overall disrespecting the McMahon family, WWE CEO and Chairman Vince McMahon decided that Reigns would have to defend his title in the Rumble match as entrant number one.

[9] On the December 28 episode of Raw, Big Show was the first wrestler to announce his participation in the Royal Rumble match.

[12] The next week on Raw, a rigged lottery assigned the #1 spot to Reigns, meaning that he would be the first contestant to enter the match.

[13] At TLC: Tables, Ladders & Chairs, Dean Ambrose defeated Kevin Owens to win the WWE Intercontinental Championship.

[15] On the January 14 episode of SmackDown, Owens accepted Ambrose's challenge to a Last Man Standing match for the Intercontinental Championship at the Royal Rumble.

[11] On the January 7 episode of SmackDown, John Cena introduced Kalisto as an opponent for United States Champion Alberto Del Rio.

On the January 4 episode of Raw, Becky Lynch was attacked by Divas Champion Charlotte after defeating her in a non-title match.

[9] With the help of father Ric Flair, Charlotte defeated Lynch to retain the championship on the January 7 episode of SmackDown.

[17] The actual pay-per-view opened with Dean Ambrose defending the Intercontinental Championship against Kevin Owens in a Last Man Standing match.

Brock Lesnar eliminated Jack Swagger and three members of the Wyatt Family: Erick Rowan, Luke Harper, and Braun Strowman.

[17] At number thirty, Triple H, who had been inactive since being attacked by Roman Reigns at TLC, made his return and eliminated Dolph Ziggler.

The Intercontinental title match was the best rated on the show at 8.5 out of 10, and was described as a "very brutal affair with Owens and Ambrose hammering each other into oblivion with chairs, kendo sticks and tables".

Lastly, Powell described AJ Styles' re-debut as "one of the highlights of the night", and noted the positive crowd responses to Becky Lynch and Damien Sandow.

[20] Dave Scherer of PWInsider wrote that the opening match for the Intercontinental Championship was "an awesome spectacle, with really good psychology mixed in" as "it felt like they hated each other".

He described the United States Championship bout as "a hard-hitting match that featured a great false finish", and expressed his desire for Kalisto to have "an extended run" with it.

He described the arrival of AJ Styles as "surreal" and praised Dean Ambrose's performance, writing that "his future appears to be brightening by the minute".

However, he expressed disappointment at the use of Brock Lesnar in the match and added that "Triple H's victory at the Royal Rumble will no doubt cool some folks' reactions to the event as a whole".

[17] Will Pruett of Pro Wrestling Dot Net described the event as "a delightful show from beginning to end".

Pruett wrote that the re-debuting AJ Styles "instantly seemed like he fit on the roster", but noted that he was "not presented in the upper echelon of WWE".

For other matches, Pruett called Kalisto's win "a major surprise"; while lamenting that "the lines of the WWE women's division were blurred once again" as to who fans should support between Sasha Banks and Charlotte after their post-match antics.

While not "one of the greatest", it achieved two "key things that any good Rumble should": firstly helping to "advance or create undercard storylines heading into Wrestlemania", secondly helping to "generate a handful of legitimate title contenders for the year to follow": Braun Strowman, Bray Wyatt, Kevin Owens and AJ Styles.

[23] Hall of Famer Bret Hart gave a strongly negative appraisal of the show, ranking the match as "one of the least exciting" in history, and the overall event as perhaps "the worst Royal Rumble".

[26] However, Ambrose also received a title match in the run-up to WrestleMania, at WWE Roadblock, where Triple H defeated him to retain the championship.

[32] Sasha Banks and Becky Lynch additionally faced each other on the January 25 episode of Raw in a match which ended in disqualification after Charlotte attacked them.

on the February 1 Raw, she faced Lynch that night in a rematch which ended with Banks winning by disqualification after Team B.A.D.

[33][29] Also on the February 1 episode of Raw, Alberto Del Rio invoked his rematch clause to face Kalisto for the United States Championship at Fastlane.