ESPN Set to Air the WWE Royal Rumble This Weekend

The WWE and ESPN programming partnership will expand a bit this weekend.

According to Wrestlevotes on Fightful Select, ESPN will be airing a condensed version of the 2026 WWE Royal Rumble PLE on their regular cable channel on February 22nd. The event originally aired on the ESPN streaming platform. The report did not indicate whether all the matches from the show would air in their entirety.

In September of last year, WWE and ESPN entered into an agreement under which all of WWE's PLEs would air on the ESPN direct streaming platform. The agreement is worth over one billion dollars for WWE and kicked off with the Wrestlepalooza event. That show featured John Cena vs. Brock Lesnar and a specialty tag match between the team of Seth Rollins and Becky Lynch against CM Punk and the returning AJ Lee.

The 2026 Royal Rumble was the first time the event took place outside North America. The show emanated from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and aired on January 31.

The event featured both the men's and women's Royal Rumble matches, Drew McIntyre vs. Sami Zayn for the Undisputed WWE Championship, and career threatening match in AJ Styles vs. Gunther.

Gunther defeated Styles, which forced Styles to retire permanently from WWE. McIntyre retained his championship against Zayn,

Royal Rumble winners set for clashes at WrestleMania 42

In the women's Royal Rumble match, Liv Morgan was victorious in the end and punched her ticket to a world championship match at WrestleMania. Morgan has teased facing both the WWE Women's World Heavyweight Champion, Stephanie Vaquer, and the WWE Women's Champion, Jade Cargill, but has not officially picked an opponent.

On the men's side of things, Roman Reigns was the Royal Rumble match victor, and he didn't take much time at all to decide his opponent for WrestleMania.

Reigns and CM Punk confronted one another on the first Raw after the Royal Rumble event. During that promo, Reigns revealed that he would face Punk at WrestleMania for the WWE World Heavyweight Championship.

This won't be the first time Punk and Reigns have fought at a WrestleMania. Last year at WrestleMania 41, Punk wrestled both Roman Reigns and CM Punk in a Triple Threat Match. Rollins won the match, stole Paul Heyman from both Reigns and Punk, and created The Vision faction.

WrestleMania 42 this year takes place in the same place as last year. Las Vegas and Allegiant Stadium are the home of the show on April 18 and April 19. No other matches have been announced for the show at this time.

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