The victory by babyface Batista in the main event at Sunday’s WWE Royal Rumble was, to say the least, not well received by fans. Neither was Batista’s reaction to the fan reaction received well backstage.
Fan reports from Pittsburgh had Batista getting into it with at least one fan, flipping him the bird in a moment that was caught for all on hand on the Titantron. This came after fans booed Batista’s entrance into the Rumble late in the event, and the intensity of the reaction ratcheted up several notches when fans realized that the most over performer in WWE right now, Daniel Bryan, was not going to be part of the Rumble.
This does not get WrestleMania 30 season off to any kind of positive start for WWE, which set itself up for a Batista-Randy Orton WWE Title match in the main event at WM30 that will clearly not be highly anticipated by the fan base, if judging by the reaction to Batista’s win in the Rumble, and Orton’s going-through-the-motions win over John Cena on the undercard.
The live crowd hijacked both matches with chants for Bryan, Dolph Ziggler and less positive requests for refunds that at times drowned out the announce crew.
The only thing to build on from Rumble is that breakout performance by Bray Wyatt in the opening match on the pay-per-view in a win over daniel bryan that will no doubt finally put Wyatt over as a top heel. The match, which went close to 30 minutes, was by far Wyatt’s best performance to date in his tenure in WWE, though that’s no surprise considering that he was working with Bryan, right now the company’s best in-ring worker and most-over babyface.
Wyatt is heading toward a WrestleMania program with Cena after the Wyatt Family interfered in the Orton-Cena match to aid Orton in his title defense. The brewing feud will be all the more interesting now that Wyatt has been established by the win over Bryan. But outside of that, what we do have heading into ‘Mania?
A Randy Orton-Batista match that the Universe doesn’t want to see. Brock Lesnar is reportedly headed into a program with Undertaker on the heels of what may have been the worst pay-per-view match in the last decade, a five-minute snoozer with Big Show that featured dozens of chair shots from Lesnar and little else. CM Punk got no rub from his lengthy stint in the Rumble because he didn’t make it to the final two, and he’s now apparently on the way to a matchup at WrestleMania with Triple H, which does nothing to move the needle with Triple H being a very limited part-timer at this point.
The Shield breakup is intriguing, with Roman Reigns making it to the final two of the Rumble after eliminating partners Dean Ambrose and Seth Rollins. Reigns was the other breakout star to emerge from last night’s pay-per-view and was easily the MVP of the match, even with Punk going almost the entire distance from being entrant #1.
We also have a Cody Rhodes-Goldust match on the horizon. If the storyline gets daddy Dusty Rhodes involved, that one could be at least somewhat interesting.
But if you notice, the most interesting stuff on the horizon is deep on the undercard. Rhodes-Goldust, The Shield, Wyatt-Cena, all will be in the first two hours of WM30, before making way for Punk-Triple H, Lesnar-‘Taker and Orton-Batista, three matches few will care about in the slightest.
That, and we still have no idea how Daniel Bryan fits in all of this.
It’s too late to rewrite the whole script, but we have to hope for at least a couple of changes. Maybe WWE finally signs Sting and puts him in ‘Mania against Undertaker. That’s good for business. Maybe Triple H talks himself out of a spot on the card, and we get treated to a dream program with Punk and Bryan on opposite sides. Maybe Randy Orton loses the title at Elimination Chamber to Brock Lesnar, and we get Lesnar-Batista in a classic matchup of big men for the WWE Title. (And Orton can stay his charisma-lacking ass at home on WM Weekend.)
There is hope, but hope is dwindling, unfortunately. This WrestleMania is shaping up to be about as good as your average In Your House from back in the day. And it’d had so much promise just a few weeks ago.
Column by Chris Graham
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