10 Things You Didn't Know About WWE In 2014
Hidden Sting, a WWE Network disaster and Daniel Bryan tanking Monday Night Raw?!
2014 was an oddly pivotal year for WWE, even if it felt like the company took two almighty steps back in the summer having taken one forward on their 'Grandest Stage'.
WrestleMania XXX was massive, after all.
Daniel Bryan's Championship-winning climax is something you do know about WWE in 2014, and it probably wasn't/isn't even the most famous thing on that pay-per-view. But if the point of "Yestlemania" really was to push (vocal) audience favourites into top positions and make clear a new work rate philosophy era for a new era, Vince McMahon was bored of it by the summer.
Following Bryan's surrender of the Championship in June, John Cena was Champion by July. Brock Lesnar crushed him, just as he'd crushed The Undertaker's streak, to win it in August. A brand new Network that had launched in March with NXT Arrival and the aforementioned critically acclaimed 'Show Of Shows' still housed present day content that resembled too much of a WWE that had alienated fans for the prior few years.
The boos around Royal Rumble season had expedited the need for change, but the company was unwilling. By the end of the year, everything was so mixed up almost none of it mattered.
More on that later. But first...
10. Charlotte Flair's Forgotten Debut
A bizarre disaster in the wake of how poorly the first full-time NXT call-ups had been received, Charlotte Flair's soft-launch on Monday Night Raw was a criminal representation of WWE's hottest property.
Bringing with her the increasingly prestigious NXT Women's Championship, Charlotte arrived with little fanfare and lost to Natalya in all of