10 Surprising Last-Minute WWE WrestleMania Card Twists

4. Bryan Fights His Way Into Mania Main Event

WWE WrestleMania 38 Cody Rhodes Seth Rollins
WWE.com

This is a big of a cheat of an entry. The WrestleMania 30 main event was going to be a triple threat for the WWE Championship, but when the show opened, there was still the open question of exactly who was going to join WWE Champion Randy Orton and Royal Rumble winner Batista.

In case you forgot, 2014 was the year of the Yes! Movement, with Daniel Bryan hijacking Raw and demanding a shot at the world title. He finally got under the Authority’s skin enough that Triple H agreed to face him at Mania, with the stipulation that whomever won that bout would be added to the world title match.

Bryan would defeat Hunter in the WM 30 opening contest, setting him up for the storybook conclusion in which he tapped out Batista to win the WWE World Heavyweight Championship and close out WrestleMania as the biggest star of the night.

Contributor
Contributor

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.