FULL MATCH - Roman Reigns vs. Kevin Owens — Last Man Standing Match: Royal Rumble 2021

FULL MATCH - Roman Reigns vs. Kevin Owens — Last Man Standing Match: Royal Rumble 2021

FULL MATCH - Roman Reigns vs. Kevin Owens — Last Man Standing Match: Royal Rumble 2021

The 2021 Royal Rumble was the 34th annual Royal Rumble professional wrestling pay-per-view and livestreaming event produced by WWE. It was held for wrestlers from the promotion's Raw and SmackDown brand divisions. The event took place on January 31, 2021, from the WWE ThunderDome, hosted at Tropicana Field in St. Louis, USA. Petersburg, Florida. It was the first Royal Rumble event held since the death of Pat Patterson, who created the Royal Rumble match. Traditionally, the Royal Rumble match winner receives a world championship match at that year's WrestleMania. For the 2021 event, the winners of both the men's and women's matches received a choice of which championship to challenge for at WrestleMania 37. The men could choose to challenge for either Raw's WWE Championship, SmackDown's Universal Championship, or the NXT Championship, while the women had the choice between the Raw Women's Championship, the SmackDown Women's Championship, and the NXT Women's Championship. This was the last Royal Rumble event in which three championships were an option for the Royal Rumble winner, as well as the last Royal Rumble event in which the NXT Championship and NXT Women's Championship was an eligible option for that winner, as in September 2021, the NXT brand reverted to being WWE's developmental territory. Six matches were contested at the event, including one on the Kickoff pre-show. In the main event, WWE Hall of Famer Edge won the men's Royal Rumble match and was later said to be part of Raw, marking his second overall Royal Rumble win after last winning it in 2010, thus becoming the eighth two-time winner, the third wrestler to win it as the number one entrant, the fifth wrestler to win it as one of the two starting wrestlers, and the first wrestler to win it after his induction into the WWE Hall of Fame. The women's Royal Rumble match was won by SmackDown's Bianca Belair. In other prominent matches, Roman Reigns defeated Kevin Owens in a Last Man Standing match to retain SmackDown's Universal Championship and in the opening bout, Drew McIntyre defeated Goldberg to retain Raw's WWE Championship. The event also featured the official in-ring return as well as the final appearance of Christian in WWE, who had last wrestled in a match in March 2014, and later signed with rival promotion All Elite Wrestling (AEW).