Nick Aldis announced during "WWE SmackDown" that a tournament to determine the WWE Championship challenger at the Royal Rumble will begin next week.
Ahead of the main event, a Three Stages of Hell match between Cody Rhodes and Drew McIntyre, Aldis said that a new challenger would need to be determined for the future. And to that effect, four qualifying matches will take place in next week's show in London, England. The winners of those matches will go on to the final four-way at Saturday Night's Main Event on January 24, and the winner of that bout will challenge for the title at the Royal Rumble in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on January 31.
Those four qualifying matches were then confirmed to be Randy Orton versus The Miz, Matt Cardona versus Trick Williams, Damian Priest versus Solo Sikoa, and Sami Zayn versus Ilja Dragunov. Dragunov will be facing Zayn for the first time since the former dethroned the latter for the United States Championship last year, while Priest will be facing Sikoa in singles action for the first time ever having faced one another exclusively in tag team matches last year.
Cardona and Williams is another first-time match, the former having only recently returned to WWE and the latter having only just been called up from "WWE NXT." Miz and Orton have an extensive history, Miz having taken his first WWE Championship from Orton over a decade ago and becoming the target of RKOs in recent weeks.
