Title Lost: WWE World Heavyweight Championship Lost Title To: Daniel Bryan During the summer and fall of 2013, Randy Orton and Daniel Bryan traded WWE World Heavyweight Championship title victories as both men competed to be the Face of the WWE. Orton would emerge the victor of the feud with some help from the Authority, but his luck would run out at WrestleMania XXX. Fans know the story all too well: Batista returned and won the 2014 Royal Rumble, only to be met with instant and overwhelming rejection from the fans, who wanted Bryan to finally conquer the Authority. In a fairytale twist, WWE gave fans exactly what they wanted, and Bryan won the title at Mania. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cAXfUjw3M4 Orton, however, never got his return match. He teamed with Triple H and Batista as the newly reformed Evolution and tried to take down the Shield. By the time that feud ended, Bryan had gotten injured and would relinquish the WWE World Heavyweight Championship. Orton competed for the vacant title at Money in the Bank 2014, but as he would claim multiple times, he never got his one-on-one rematch.
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.
