8 Times The Wrong Wrestler Won The Royal Rumble

by John Bills

1. Batista (2014)

Batista Royal Rumble 2014
WWE.com

Will there ever be a more despised Royal Rumble winner? I'd wager not. Going into the 2014 Royal Rumble match, everyone knew that Batista was returning to the company, and rumours were already swirling that WWE was going to go ahead with a Batista vs. Randy Orton match for the main event of WrestleMania XXX. This despite Daniel Bryan being the most popular pro wrestler on the planet at the time.

Were WWE really going to go ahead with an Orton/Batista main event, or was Bryan getting into the match always on the cards? Whatever the plan was, having Batista win this match was an absolute shambles of a decision. When Rey Mysterio was thrown under the bus as the number 30 entrant the crowd collectively checked out, deciding to boo anything and everything that happened from there on out.

How anyone believed that babyface Batista would be cheered in this environment baffles many to this day. Daniel Bryan was so clearly the right man to win the 2014 Royal Rumble it wasn't funny. You could maybe make an argument for a few other individuals in the match (CM Punk, ironically Reigns, who was super-over), but Batista? No, certainly not.

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Born in the middle of Wales in the middle of the 1980's, John can't quite remember when he started watching wrestling but he has a terrible feeling that Dino Bravo was involved. Now living in Prague, John spends most of his time trying to work out how Tomohiro Ishii still stands upright. His favourite wrestler of all time is Dean Malenko, but really it is Repo Man. He is the author of 'An Illustrated History of Slavic Misery', the best book about the Slavic people that you haven't yet read. You can get that and others from www.poshlostbooks.com.