Ranking All 30 WWE Royal Rumble Winners

25. Batista – 2014

steve austin 2001 royal rumble
WWE.com

WrestleMania title shot: Lost to Daniel Bryan at WrestleMania XXX

Batista returned to WWE in 2014 to much fanfare after a four-year absence, immediately declaring that it was his goal to win the Royal Rumble and headline WrestleMania.

While fans (and WWE) definitely missed having some star power on Raw, Batista (and the WWE brass) had an obstacle in his path: massive fan favorite Daniel Bryan. Fans had pretty much married themselves to the idea of Bryan winning the Rumble and overcoming the Authority once and for all by capturing the WWE World Heavyweight Championship.

When that didn’t happen at the Rumble, fans revolted. Bryan wasn’t even in the Rumble, leading to massive backlash. Batista’s mega-push was dead before the Rumble match itself had ended. He would be shunted into a secondary role as WWE scrambled to shoehorn Bryan into the main event, where he would give fans what they desperately wanted. Worse yet, Batista was the one who tapped out – and he never got his one-on-one title match.

Contributor
Contributor

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.