3. 2014 - Fans Want Daniel Bryan But WWE Gives Them Batista Instead
When Batista returned to RAW in early 2014 as a babyface and his first act was to embrace The Authority, it was the beginning of the end for The Animal. WWE fans wanted Daniel Bryan to be a top guy going into WrestleMania, and the YES man opened the Rumble PPV in a match with Bray Wyatt - the crowd assumed he'd be back out for the Rumble match later on, though. As the match went on, the chants for D-Bry got louder and louder. Batista came out as number 28 and the audience were receptive to him initially, but the excitement began to build for number 30. It just had to be Daniel Bryan. Then the buzzer hits for the final entrant and it's...Rey Mysterio. For the first time in his WWE career, babyface Rey is booed right out of the building. As everyone clocked that Bryan wasn't in the match, the audience got louder and louder in their disapproval. When Batista finally eliminated Roman Reigns to win the match, the negative reaction was deafening. WWE should have known that the fans wanted Bryan. It was so obvious, but they chose to ignore it. This would be the first time where the fans loudly and quite clearly rejected WWE's proposed WrestleMania headliner. It forced WWE in the following weeks to give in and insert Daniel Bryan into the main event picture, yes, but the 2014 Royal Rumble will go down as the year that WWE knew what the audience wanted and purposefully tried to ignore them. As if you needed another reason to sour on this Rumble, it was also the final WWE match of CM Punk's career. He was eliminated by Kane and then chokeslammed through an announce table.
Kenny is a successful podcast host with Inside The Ropes, promotes exciting Q&A events in the UK with the likes of Sting and DDP, has interviewed the big guns like Foley, Jericho, Bruno and Austin and enjoys cheese a great deal.
