Belair, Edge And Rollins: Their Rumble Winner Odds And More

I've spent the past few days looking back at the betting markets for both of this year's Royal Rumble matches and decided to share with you the earliest prices I have for the two winners as well as some more about the latter stages of betting, especially on the men's Rumble match.

As you'll see below, the first market I first started following was for the men's Royal Rumble. It was installed by Sky Bet in early February of last year. A market for the women's match was published shortly after that with the eventual winner - Bianca Belair - available at 16/1.

The best earliest odds for Belair came from William Hill in March. She was 20s there. When the later markets started to appear in December and January, Belair had already been established as a favourite to win and she remained that way right through to the time of closing.

I was unable to keep track of BoyleSports' later odds for the matches. This was due to an error capturing the images of the two pages. However, I do have the price for Edge from 6:35PM GMT on Sunday evening. He was a 9/4 second-favourite at the time, but this was a little under an hour before Seth Rollins' odds began to plummet across most of the European books.

You cannot tell the story of Edge's later Rumble prices without pointing out Rollins' drop on Sunday evening, so I have also added a column showing Rollins' prices from around the time when the markets for the men's Royal Rumble match were first installed and after he became the night's favourite to win.

In the days following the result, I've done some digging around, as well as having had information shown to me, and a couple of things piqued my interest while another made me shake my head.

As for the latter - there was a claim made that Seth Rollins really was going to win and that there was a botch, so WWE had to change things on the fly by having Edge win the match.

No. No. No. That couldn't have been it at all.

Going by how the match was booked, with Randy Orton working an injury and being absent for the majority of the contest, it is now quite clear that the finish was exactly as planned with the first two men being the last two and Edge being triumphant in the end. 

WWE frequently does battle royal finishes with one of the final two wrestlers in the match missing for a majority of the contest only to spring up from out of nowhere. Most win in this denoument. It's now clear the closing moment of the match was plotted in a way to tease that Orton was going to 'come outta nowhere' and steal the win. Only he was thwarted by his rival.

Only a conman, who follows betting odds movements and attempts to sell wrestling betting tips, would come up with a botch theory to save faux credibility.

He'd also reason that the alleged misstep doesn't matter 'because Edge was facing McIntyre (at WrestleMania) anyway'. 

Really!?

Edge's WrestleMania title chase - against the top heel in the company, Roman Reigns - is the story that makes the most sense right now. 

As you may have read on Saturday, I chose Daniel Bryan over Edge, but felt that the latter would find his way in one of the title matches at Mania. 

Bryan's story - about not having won a battle royal - trumped Edge's quest to regain/win either of the titles at WrestleMania as far as who I believed would win the Rumble out of what I thought was a two-horse race.

Now that the chapter of succeeding in a Rumble has not transpired, I no longer see Bryan in either of the title matches at Mania. 

Even though I pointed out the nonsensical theory about a botch, I have my own assumptio about why Bryan didn't win the Rumble - I believe he was on standby in case Edge wasn't given clearance from his injury in time for last Sunday.

With that said, WWE was still strongly pushing the fact that Bryan had never won a Royal Rumble on Friday even after it was evident that Edge was on the comeback trail following his promo on Raw four days earlier.

The Bryan/Rumble story could develop into a feud between he and the person who eliminated him from the match on Sunday: Seth Rollins.

If Bryan .vs. Rollins is - or was - the plan for Mania, and it was meant to kick off from the Rumble match, then that once again raises a question as to why Rollins' price lowered on Sunday.

Drew McIntyre versus Seth Rollins was already done as a WWE Championship program last year, so if it was meant to be smart money coming in on Rollins it made no sense unless Reigns .vs. Rollins was the plan for Mania.

As of Sunday morning, at least - it was never going to be anyone other than Edge.

Raj Giri - from WrestlingINC.com - was given a tip that the winners would be Bianca Belair and Edge. He didn't confirm it with a second source, so informed his followers he would tell them what he was told - via DM - on Sunday evening.

Those who got in touch with Giri were given the two winners. At the conclusion of the PPV, the website owner went public and showed the content of the message he sent to those who wanted the spoilers.

The messages were sent at around 9:45PM GMT. This would have been close to two hours after Rollins' odds began to plummet into favouritism and clearly points out that Edge was the planned winner as early as that morning (on North American soil).

So - if  Edge winning was the word going around on Sunday morning,  I believe it's safe to conclude that Rollins' price drop cannot be completely credited to smart money.

Unless - of course -  there was subterfuge at play.