10 Wrestling Nightmares That Almost Came True
6. Batista Vs. Randy Orton Almost Stunk Out WrestleMania XXX
The Authority storyline was horrendous.
It was a vehicle for Stephanie McMahon as much as it was a self-own. The heat was that they were actually incompetent despite arrogantly bragging that they knew what was "best for business". This all fell apart when they didn't actually know what was best for business and demoted Daniel Bryan.
The whole thing just seemed like an excuse to do two consecutive sh*tty finishes at Night of Champions and Battleground before going with Randy Orton, again, nine f*cking years after the first time, before the returning Batista saved the day. Batista's return run was fantastic when he had the luxury of working trios matches against the Shield as the final boss, but he looked cooked in singles. Perhaps that's what inspired the dreadful Batista Vs. Randy Orton pitch: "Batista is thrashed, but he's already a star and has the look, so just put the f*cker in a chin lock for 15 minutes and hope he doesn't blow out his a*se too much".
This didn't happen.
Instead, after waves of defiance in the build, Daniel Bryan proved years and years worth of bullsh*t WWE rhetoric wrong, showing them up at WrestleMania no less, and it only took CM Punk telling Triple H to f*ck off for it to happen.