2014 Royal Rumble

The 2014 Royal Rumble was the 27th annual Royal Rumble professional wrestling pay-per-view (PPV) event produced by WWE. It took place on January 26, 2014, at the Consol Energy Center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It was the first Royal Rumble to be held in the city of Pittsburgh. As has been customary since 1993, the Royal Rumble match winner received a world championship match at that year's WrestleMania. For the 2014 event, the winner received a match for the WWE World Heavyweight Championship at WrestleMania XXX; this was the first time since 2002 in which there was only one eligible championship for the Rumble winner to challenge for.

The event featured five professional wrestling matches, including one match on the Kickoff pre-show. The main event was the 2014 Royal Rumble match. A returning Batista won by last eliminating Roman Reigns to become a two-time Royal Rumble winner. Also on the event's card, Randy Orton successfully defended the WWE World Heavyweight Championship against John Cena, Bray Wyatt defeated Daniel Bryan, and Brock Lesnar defeated Big Show. On the event's Kickoff pre-show, The New Age Outlaws (Road Dogg and Billy Gunn) defeated Goldust and Cody Rhodes to become the new WWE Tag Team Champions.

The event is known for the overwhelmingly negative crowd response during the Orton–Cena title match, as well as towards the end of (and after) the Royal Rumble match, when the fans booed the Rumble winner Batista, repeatedly chanted for Daniel Bryan (who had competed earlier in the night and was not involved in the main event), and rooted for man in place, Roman Reigns (who was a heel at the time). Fans worldwide (including retired wrestler Mick Foley) voiced their displeasure over social media, and the event was covered by many major news outlets as one of the worst Royal Rumble pay-per-views. However, the bout between Daniel Bryan and Bray Wyatt was highly praised by fans and critics. The event also marked the final WWE pay-per-view appearance of CM Punk, who walked out on the company the next day despite still being under contract, and retired from professional wrestling later that year, until he debuted with rival promotion AEW in August 2021.

The event received 467,000 buys, down 8.8% from the 512,000 buys for the previous year's event.

Production

Background

The Royal Rumble is an annual gimmick pay-per-view (PPV), produced every January by WWE since 1988. It is one of the promotion's original four pay-per-views, along with WrestleMania, SummerSlam, and Survivor Series, dubbed the "Big Four". It is named after the Royal Rumble match, a modified battle royal in which the participants enter at timed intervals instead of all beginning in the ring at the same time. The 2014 event was the 27th event in the Royal Rumble chronology and was scheduled to be held on January 26, 2014, at the Consol Energy Center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. On the final episode of '' Raw'' before the Royal Rumble event, Batista returned to WWE after an absence of nearly four years, and the Royal Rumble match was scheduled to be his first return match.

The Royal Rumble match generally features 30 wrestlers and the winner traditionally earns a world championship match at that year's WrestleMania. For 2014, the winner received a match for the WWE World Heavyweight Championship at WrestleMania XXX. It was the first Royal Rumble since the 2002 event to only feature one world championship, as the WWE Championship and World Heavyweight Championship were unified as the WWE World Heavyweight Championship at TLC: Tables, Ladders & Chairs in December 2013.

Storylines

The card consisted of five matches, including one on the Kickoff pre-show, that resulted from scripted storylines, where wrestlers portrayed heroes, villains, or less distinguishable characters in scripted events that built tension and culminated in a wrestling match or series of matches, with results predetermined by WWE's writers. Storylines were produced on WWE's weekly television shows, '' Raw'' and ''SmackDown''.

A highly promoted match featured WWE World Heavyweight Champion Randy Orton defending the title against long-time adversary John Cena. At Survivor Series in November 2013, Orton successfully defended his WWE Championship against Big Show, on the same night the World Heavyweight Champion John Cena defeated Alberto Del Rio to retain his title. After Orton's victory at Survivor Series, Cena came down to the ring with his title, and celebrated with the crowd as The Authority (Triple H, Stephanie McMahon and Kane) looked on, much to Orton's chagrin. The next month, at the TLC pay-per-view, Orton defeated Cena in a Tables, Ladders, and Chairs match to unify the two titles into the new WWE World Heavyweight Championship. On the December 30 episode of ''Raw'', Cena was awarded a rematch for the title against Orton at the Royal Rumble, with the match stipulation of a traditional one-on-one singles match, except that it could be won by pinfall or submission only. On the January 13 episode of ''Raw'', Orton suffered an upset loss to Kofi Kingston and took out his frustrations by attacking Cena's father, who was attending the event at ringside.

On the December 30, 2013 episode of ''Raw'', Brock Lesnar returned with his manager, Paul Heyman, to announce his intentions to challenge the winner of the upcoming WWE World Heavyweight Championship match between Randy Orton and John Cena at the Royal Rumble. Lesnar then dared any wrestler who disapproved of that notion to challenge him, which was answered by Mark Henry, and a brawl would ensue, ending with Lesnar delivering an F-5 to Henry. The following week on ''Raw'', Henry challenged Lesnar again, only to have Lesnar dislocate his elbow with the Kimura lock in storyline, which led Big Show to come out afterwards to confront Lesnar. On the January 10 episode of ''SmackDown'', Big Show issued a challenge to Lesnar, Paul Heyman accepting on behalf of Lesnar and scheduling the match for the Royal Rumble event.

Announced on WWE.com, Goldust and Cody Rhodes faced The New Age Outlaws (Road Dogg and Billy Gunn) for the WWE Tag Team Championship on the Royal Rumble Kickoff Show preceding the pay-per-view. This match was made when The New Age Outlaws defeated Cody Rhodes and Goldust in a non-title match on the January 17 episode of ''SmackDown'' due to a distraction from Vickie Guerrero.

On the October 28, 2013 episode of ''Raw'', The Wyatt Family (Bray Wyatt, Luke Harper and Erick Rowan) attacked Daniel Bryan backstage, which ignited a feud between the two. The next month at Survivor Series, Bryan teamed with CM Punk and defeated Harper and Rowan. The rivalry between Bryan and the Wyatt Family continued in December, as the latter defeated the former in a 3-on-1 handicap match at TLC, with Wyatt attempting to recruit Bryan in the previous weeks. On the December 30, 2013 episode of ''Raw'', Bryan defeated Harper and then Rowan in a gauntlet match so that he could face Wyatt, whereupon Harper and Rowan interfered for a disqualification and beat him down, before announcing he would join the Wyatt Family. However, on the January 13, 2014 episode of ''Raw'' (after Bryan and Bray Wyatt were defeated by The Usos in a steel cage match), Bryan betrayed Wyatt and attacked him, culminating with Bryan hitting his flying knee finishing maneuver on Wyatt. The following week on ''Raw'', Bryan explained that his joining the Wyatts was a ruse to infiltrate the stable and bide his time to strike, and that he would wrestle Wyatt at the Royal Rumble event.

Event

Pre-show

Before the show aired live on pay-per-view, the Royal Rumble Kickoff pre-show was shown live on YouTube and other digital platforms. Backstage, the general managers of Raw and SmackDown, Brad Maddox and Vickie Guerrero, respectively, rolled the "Rumble Drum" to give wrestlers their numbers. Alberto Del Rio, R-Truth, The Real Americans (Jack Swagger and Antonio Cesaro), Kofi Kingston, The Great Khali and Damien Sandow picked their numbers during the segment.

In the pre-show, reigning WWE Tag Team Champions Goldust and Cody Rhodes defended their titles against The New Age Outlaws (Road Dogg and Billy Gunn). Towards the end of the match, Rhodes applied a dropkick to Dogg, but was unaware that Gunn blind-tagged in for the latter. From the back, Gunn entered the ring and delivered a Fame-Ass-er to Rhodes, to win the match and the titles for the Outlaws.

Preliminary matches

In the first match on the pay-per-view portion of the show, Bray Wyatt faced Daniel Bryan. Early in the match, the referee saw Bray's Wyatt Family members Luke Harper and Erick Rowan attempting to interfere, so he ejected them from ringside. During the match, Wyatt targeted Bryan's head, ramming it into the ring-post. Bryan later mounted a comeback with a running tornado DDT off the ring apron, planting Wyatt's head on the floor. Wyatt managed to escape Bryan's Yes! Lock submission hold by biting Bryan's hand. To avoid Bryan's running knee, Wyatt rolled out of the ring to the floor. Bryan then attempted a suicide dive but Wyatt caught him and executed a Sister Abigail into the barricade. After another Sister Abigail in the ring, Wyatt scored the pinfall victory.

In the next match, Brock Lesnar (accompanied by Paul Heyman) faced Big Show. Lesnar attacked Big Show before the match started, and then hit him with a chair. When the match started, Big Show landed his KO Punch, but Lesnar picked up the victory after executing an F-5. Lesnar then continued to attack Big Show with a chair after the match.

Randy Orton defended the WWE World Heavyweight Championship against John Cena in the show's penultimate match of the night. After both wrestlers failed to win despite executing their RKO, Attitude Adjustment and STF moves, both wrestlers resorted to using their opponent's signature moves but still could not win the match. At the end of the match, Cena again trapped Orton in the STF submission hold, but the lights temporarily went out due to the arrival of The Wyatt Family on the ring apron. Orton took advantage of the distraction to drop Cena with the RKO and win the match.

Main event

The main event was the Royal Rumble match for a WWE World Heavyweight Championship match at WrestleMania XXX. CM Punk and Seth Rollins were entrants #1 and #2; they spent the longest and second longest time in the match (49 and 48 minutes respectively). Kane entered at #5 and targeted Punk, but Punk managed to eliminate him. NXT's Alexander Rusev entered at #6. Kofi Kingston, who entered at #8, had two feats of athleticism to escape elimination; first after he was deposited on the guardrail by Rusev (who caught him when Kingston was thrown out of the ring) he jumped back to the ring apron from the guardrail, and later while he was hanging on to the bottom rope with his feet, he fended off Jack Swagger by snatching Swagger's boot and hitting him with it.

Rollins' Shield teammates (Dean Ambrose and Roman Reigns) entered at #11 and #15 respectively. Goldust eliminated his brother Cody Rhodes 24 minutes into the match, and was in turn eliminated by Reigns, who had also eliminated Kingston and unannounced entrant Kevin Nash, amongst others. Midway through the match with only Punk and the Shield left in the ring, Sheamus returned to WWE television at #17 and momentarily stopped the Shield's dominance. Los Matadores' mascot El Torito entered at #20, and managed to eliminate Fandango, before being eliminated in turn by Reigns. Pay-per-view commentator John "Bradshaw" Layfield was announced as entrant #24, making it the first time the JBL character had participated in a Royal Rumble. He was eliminated by Reigns while handing his jacket to fellow commentator Michael Cole, whereupon he resumed his commentator role for the rest of the match.

Batista entered at #28 and quickly eliminated Erick Rowan, Ryback and Alberto Del Rio. The final entrant at #30 was Rey Mysterio, who was eliminated by Rollins. When Ambrose tried to eliminate Reigns, Reigns retaliated by eliminating Ambrose, Rollins and Antonio Cesaro simultaneously, leaving himself, Punk, Sheamus and Batista as the final four. Though already eliminated, Kane returned to ringside and pulled Punk over the top rope to eliminate him, then executed a chokeslam through a broadcast table on Punk. Reigns eliminated Sheamus to set a new record for most eliminations in a Rumble match with 12, but Reigns was then thrown over the top rope by Batista, who won the match.

Reception

The event sold out the Consol Energy Center with 15,715 people in attendance. The official buy total for the 2014 Royal Rumble event was 467,000, which was a decrease of 8.8% from the 512,000 of the previous year's event, but a 5.4% increase from the 443,000 of the 2012 event. This contributed to WWE's PPV revenue of $13.8 million for the first quarter of 2014 compared with $15.1 million for the first quarter of 2013. The 2015 Royal Rumble event received 145,000 purchases, a significant drop from the 2014 event, due to the fact that the latter was held prior to the launch of the WWE Network.

The negative reaction of the fans attending the event in Pittsburgh was so great that it was reported as one of the major news items coming out of the show, and described as the live audience engineering a "takeover" of the final two hours of the show. During the title match between John Cena and Randy Orton, fans booed both men and chanted for Daniel Bryan, amongst other chants such as "this is awful". The fans continued to chant for Bryan during the Royal Rumble match and so when Rey Mysterio (typically a fan favorite) was revealed as the final entrant (and therefore Bryan's possible participation in the match was ruled out) the fans booed Mysterio, chanted for Bryan and cheered Mysterio's eventual elimination. The crowd continued to boo when there were three wrestlers left in the match, but when only Batista and Roman Reigns remained, they cheered for Reigns (a villainous character at the time) over Batista and later booed Batista's victory as the event drew to a close. After the show went off the air, Batista (who had been presented on-air as a heroic babyface character) mocked Bryan and gestured his middle finger at the crowd. Aaron Oster of ''The Baltimore Sun'' wrote Mysterio "received more boos than he’s ever had in his WWE career", and in the case of Batista, "besides the fact that a supposed face was getting booed, the boos were stronger than any Rumble winner I can remember, including when Mr. McMahon won in 1999".

Fans took to social media to display their displeasure towards the event. The BBC
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