2. Nearly Messed Up The Most Organic, Fan-Driven Push In Years
This gets thrown at the creative teams feet, not Batista. It isnt his fault that he was pushed to win the Rumble and originally booked to main event WrestleMania. If anyone, including every Daniel Bryan fan, was booked to wrestle at Mania for the title, they would take that spot gladly. So faulting Batista is just unfair. But this column isnt about what Batista did, its whats happened to generate such hatred. And for poor Batista, he happened to return at a time when fans were reaching a fever pitch in support of their favorite underdog, Daniel Bryan. He was (and still is) getting cheered incessantly, and fans were just clamoring for him to put an exclamation point on a storyline that began at SummerSlan and win the WWE title once and for all. Instead, we got Triple Hs buddy, who walked out of WWE in 2010 and blasted the company, only to come back when he had a movie to promote, step right into the title hunt. Then he won the Rumble with Bryan sitting on the sidelines. And from there, the vilification was on. WWE likes to say they listen to their fans, that the WWE Universe is so important to them. But rather than listen to them and create a natural storybook progression for Bryan, they tried to shoehorn Batista into the picture, and fans vocally rioted. That whole Occupy Raw angle was the closest WWE has come to a mea culpa yes, most people say it was a response to Chicago Raw, but a ring full of Bryan supporters yelling at The Authority isnt far off from how fans really felt. If WWE listened to their fans, they wouldnt have shoved Batista down everyones throats. Batista could only do what he was booked to do win the Rumble. But fans took it personally. Many knew their chants and months of diehard support are what helped keep Bryan in the spotlight, and to see it potentially derailed, well, its easy to see how hatred could spring eternal at that point.
Scott is a former journalist and longtime wrestling fan who was smart enough to abandon WCW during the Monday Night Wars the same time as the Radicalz. He fondly remembers watching WrestleMania III, IV, V and VI and Saturday Night's Main Event, came back to wrestling during the Attitude Era, and has been a consumer of sports entertainment since then. He's written for WhatCulture for more than a decade, establishing the Ups and Downs articles for WWE Raw and WWE PPVs/PLEs and composing pieces on a variety of topics.
