'Second Thoughts' On Braun Strowman Winning Andre Battle Royal

This week's issue of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter was published in the early hours of this morning. In it, its editor - Dave Meltzer - made mention of WWE having second thoughts on Braun Strowman winnng the Andre the Giant Battle Royal this Sunday.

Meltzer notes that the back-and-forth over whether to have Strowman claim the Andre the Giant Memorial Trophy is in response to his match with Dean Ambrose on the March 21st edition of Raw.

The reporter did make it clear that he could very well win on Sunday, but there are seeds of doubt in it happening. There's also no guarantee that Strowman will end up feuding with Brock Lesnar in time for SummerSlam.

If the heads decide not to run with Strowman, it obviously opens up the possibility to back other runners in the hope that they're chosen to pick up the win.

As of right now, there are sixteen names listed for the twenty-man match. They are:

Big Show
Kane
Curtis Axel
Heath Slater
Bo Dallas
Adam Rose
Tyler Breeze
Mark Henry
Jack Swagger
Fandango
Damien Sandow
Darren Young
Konnor
Viktor
Goldust
R-Truth

The name that stands out on the above list is Mark Henry. He was my original pick long before I became aware of the Braun Strowman idea that was going on within WWE.

Henry has claimed on numerous occasions that he will be done with WWE when his current contract is up. Texas is his home State, so I thought a nice send-off for him would be to win the battle royal here.

From an odds perspective, depending on where you look, he's either a second or third favourite. His best price is 6/1 and this can be found at a number of establishments like Ladbrokes.com, PaddyPower.com and Coral.co.uk.

A name that is not on the list is Randy Orton. I don't know what his status is, but - as soon as I saw him listed on the board at bwin.com - I started to ponder the prospect of him making a surprise return for this match. He's showing at an attractive 10/1 on Ladbrokes' WWE Betting Page.

I still believe that The Rock will wind up being involved in the close or post-match of The New Day versus The League of Nations, but find the 150/1 that 888Sport.com, Unibet.com and 32Red.com are offering worth a speculative punt.

And it surely is a speculative punt considering that Dwayne Johnson was unable to wrestle on this show because of an insurance issue with the Baywatch movie that he's currently working on. It's a gamble.

Finally, another wrestler who has been brought up is Cesaro.

In this week's Observer, Dave Meltzer wrote 'there was talk this past week of Cesaro in as a surprise, as he's just about ready to return'.

There are numerous reasons why I cannot see him being the victor on Sunday. The main one being that he was the winner of The First Annual Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royal and it didn't mean anything.

With that said, his odds have dropped from 125/1 to 100/1 since this morning so there must be some who are speculating that he'll claim his second win here. 

Another two who may be worth considering are Samoa Joe (25/1) and Finn Balor (33/1). However, I'm going to hold off on betting until the result of their match on Friday night. Whoever loses the NXT Title Match at NXT TakeOver: Dallas will be worth a bet, in  my opinion.

Even though I've listed the names above, I'm still holding out hope that they end up going with Strowman because the betting points to a lot of people having backed him already. Myself included.