10 WWE Superstars Who Lost WrestleMania Main Events

2. Batista Over Randy Orton – WrestleMania 21

Everyone recalls WrestleMania 21 ending with ‘The Animal’ Batista vanquishing Triple H for the World Heavyweight Championship. But this wasn’t always the plan. Triple H was supposed to square up against another ex member of Evolution that night in ‘The Legend Killer’ Randy Orton.

WWE had been grooming Randy Orton since 2003 to become a fully fledged headliner that the WWE could rely on to carry the Raw roster after turning babyface in the lead-up to a big WrestleMania clash with Triple H. But in the summer of 2004 the Raw brand was short on a major storyline to entertain fans for the remaining half of the year, so they accelerated the planned Orton/HHH feud to kickoff sooner. With Orton winning the World title at SummerSlam, being kicked out of Evolution the next night and being screwed out of the title to Triple H at Unforgiven.

The new plan then was for Orton to spend his time until ‘Mania extracting his revenge on Evolution to ultimately win back the gold at WrestleMania 21. But Orton didn’t get over as a babyface the way WWE wanted and Orton was extremely young and immature at the time, resulting in him being pushed aside for the converted WrestleMania headline spot. Orton and Triple H’s feud concluded at Royal Rumble 2005. WWE then wrote Batista into the mix after he got over huge on an episode of Raw in November 2004 where he teased a split with Evolution.