The was the , a in which wrestlers enter the ring at regular intervals. Elsewhere on the event's card, successfully defended the against , defeated , and defeated. On the event's pre-show, defeated to become the new. 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 and repeatedly chanted for who had competed earlier in the night and was not involved in the main event. Fans worldwide including retired wrestler 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 wrestling appearance of , who walked out on WWE the next day despite still being under contract and subsequently signed a contract to compete in the. The event received 467,000 buys, down 8. Background As is tradition at this yearly event, the card was highlighted by the 30-man - a with wrestlers entering at 90 second intervals. On the final episode of before the Rumble on January 20, returned to WWE after an absence of nearly four years, and the Rumble was scheduled to be his first return match. On the same episode, Director of Operations announced that would be the first entrant in the match. The remaining 18 wrestlers advertised were , , ; , , , , who eventually did not participate , , and his teammates and ; 's and ; and Jimmy Uso and Jey Uso ; was originally advertised but later removed from advertisements. Storylines The card included five matches that resulted from scripted storylines and had results predetermined by. Storylines were produced on WWE's weekly television shows, and. A highly promoted match featured defending the title against long-time adversary. At the pay-per-view, Orton defeated Cena to unify the and titles and become the first WWE World Heavyweight Champion. On the December 30 episode of , Cena was awarded a rematch for the title against Orton at the Rumble, with the match stipulation of a , except that it could be won by or 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 January 6 episode of Raw, fended off an attack by and was then attacked by. On the January 10 episode of SmackDown, Big Show issued a challenge to Lesnar, with Lesnar's manager accepting on behalf of Lesnar and scheduling the match for the Royal Rumble event. 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. On January 20 episode of Raw, it was announced that would face at the Royal Rumble. Bryan and had been feuding since October 2013. On the December 30, 2013 episode of Raw, a seemingly beaten-down Bryan announced he would join the Wyatt Family. However, on the January 13, 2014 episode of Raw after Bryan and Bray Wyatt were defeated by in a , 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. Pre-show During the pre-show, and defeated reigning to capture the titles when Gunn delivered a to Rhodes. Preliminary matches The pay-per-view broadcast began with defeating. Early in the match, the referee saw Bray's members and 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 off the ring apron, planting Wyatt's head on the floor. Wyatt managed to escape Bryan's submission hold by biting Bryan's hand. To avoid Bryan's , Wyatt rolled out of the ring to the floor. Bryan then attempted a but Wyatt caught him and executed a into the barricade. After another Sister Abigail in the ring, Wyatt scored the pinfall victory. Lesnar attacked Big Show before the match started, and then hit him with a chair. When the match started, Big Show landed his , but Lesnar picked up the victory after executing an. Lesnar then continued to attack Big Show with a chair after the match. In the show's penultimate match, defeated to retain the. After both wrestlers failed to win despite executing their , and 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 on the ring apron. Orton took advantage of the distraction to drop Cena with the RKO and win the match. Main event won the 2014 Royal Rumble match The main event was the Royal Rumble match for a match at. Rollins' teammates and entered at 11 and 15 respectively. Midway through the match with only Punk and the Shield left in the ring, returned to WWE television at 17 to a thunderous ovation from the Pittsburgh crowd and momentarily stopped the Shield's dominance. Pay-per-view commentator was announced as entrant 24, making it the first time the JBL character had participated in a Royal Rumble John Layfield had previously taken part in the 2004 Royal Rumble match as Bradshaw. 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. The final entrant at 30 was , who was eliminated by Rollins. When Ambrose tried to eliminate Reigns, Reigns retaliated by eliminating Ambrose, Rollins and simultaneously, leaving himself, Punk, Sheamus and Batista as the final four. This marked Sheamus' third consecutive final four appearance , , 2014 in the Royal Rumble. 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. 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. The event received 145,000 purchases, a significant drop from the 2014 event, which was held prior to the launch of the. The fans continued to chant for Bryan during the Royal Rumble match and so when 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 remained, 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 character mocked Bryan and gestured his at the crowd. Fans took to to display their displeasure towards the event. Dale Plummer and Nick Tylwalk of rated the overall event as 6. James Caldwell of the Pro Wrestling Torch Newsletter rated the Royal Rumble match 2. Caldwell also rated the Bryan-Wyatt match 4. Caldwell chose not to rate the Lesnar-Show match, commenting that it was necessarily short due to Show being injured going into the match. Lastly, Caldwell rated the Orton-Cena title match 2. Benjamin Tucker, who attended the event and is also from the Pro Wrestling Torch Newsletter, rated the entire event 6. Where Batista stumbled around the ring like... The was also marked by a very towards the Royal Rumble match, which some media outlets described as being even worse than the 2014 event. When Daniel Bryan was eliminated in the first half of the match, the crowd repeatedly chanted his name for the second half of the match while booing other wrestlers making their entrance to the match, including eventual winner Roman Reigns. Reigns, who had been portrayed as a heroic character, was booed after winning the main event, even after he received 's endorsement, and The Rock was heckled for helping Reigns. Also, some fans took to to display their displeasure at Bryan's elimination and the winner of the Rumble match. After the Royal Rumble event, CM Punk did not appear and was not mentioned on Raw the next day. Despite being advertised for the taping on Tuesday, he also did not appear in front of the live audience. In November 2014, Punk revealed in an interview that he was actually fired for breaching his contract, receiving his notice on his wedding day with. He also revealed that he told Vince McMahon and Triple H about his frustration on Daniel Bryan not main eventing WrestleMania, despite Bryan's immense fan support. Punk subsequently signed a contract to compete in the in 2015. The post-Rumble Raw on January 27 began with and addressing the Rumble event and mocking the audience for not getting what they wanted. When Daniel Bryan came out and confronted them about not being inserted into the Rumble match, and then demanded to be inserted into the Elimination Chamber match and refused to leave the ring until they did, he was attacked by , but was then saved by John Cena and Sheamus. As a result, Bryan, Cena and Sheamus later teamed together to take on the Shield in a 6-man tag match in which all three members of the winning team qualified to participate in the Elimination Chamber match in which Randy Orton would defend his WWE World Heavyweight Championship at the. During that match, interfered, causing the Shield to be disqualified and thus Bryan, Cena and Sheamus qualified for the Chamber match. For costing them the spots in the Chamber match, the Shield vowed revenge against the Wyatt Family, which set up a match between the groups at the Elimination Chamber pay-per-view. At , Randy Orton retained his WWE World Heavyweight Championship by winning the Elimination Chamber match against Daniel Bryan, John Cena, Cesaro, Christian and Sheamus. During the Elimination Chamber match, the Wyatt Family once again interfered to cause Cena's elimination from the match. Also at Elimination Chamber, Batista defeated Alberto Del Rio, with the negative audience reaction to Batista continuing, even prompting the audience to cheer Del Rio. Meanwhile, Bray Wyatt was victorious once again with the Wyatt Family defeating the Shield. Because of the boisterous negative reaction, Batista responded to the audience on the February 28 episode of SmackDown, saying he didn't come back to be liked, only to be the next WWE World Heavyweight Champion, thus turning in the process. The scheduled main event was Orton versus Batista for the WWE World Heavyweight Championship. However, Daniel Bryan was added to the match after defeating in the opening contest of the show. Bryan would ultimately win the triple threat match at WrestleMania, forcing Batista to submit and win the WWE World Heavyweight Championship. On May 12, Daniel Bryan announced that due to injuries, he would require neck surgery, which he underwent on May 15. Bryan was stripped of the WWE World Heavyweight Championship by the Authority on June 9 as he was not healthy enough to defend his championship. The following week, they received another rematch for the titles in a steel cage match, which the Outlaws won. The Outlaws' reign ended on the March 2 episode of Raw, when won the Tag Team Championship. Wyatt went on to accept Cena's challenge for a match at WrestleMania XXX, which Cena won despite interference from and. Their feud ended at on June 1, where, in a match, Cena buried Wyatt under multiple equipment cases to win the match. Cena won the vacated WWE World Heavyweight Championship at on June 29. On the February 24 episode of Raw, and his manager voiced their complaints about Lesnar not being in the WWE World Heavyweight Championship match at WrestleMania. Instead, the Authority offered Lesnar a contract to face anyone else at WrestleMania. They were interrupted by a returning , who confronted Lesnar. While Lesnar signed the contract for a match at WrestleMania with The Undertaker as his opponent, The Undertaker accepted Lesnar's challenge by stabbing Lesnar with a pen and him through a table. This set up a match where Lesnar would attempt to break. Lesnar defeated Undertaker after executing three F5s, ending his streak at 21. In August 2014, Lesnar defeated John Cena at , capturing the WWE World Heavyweight Championship for a fourth time. By eliminating 12 men, broke the record of 11, set by in. Retrieved May 2, 2017. Archived from on 29 January 2014. Retrieved 29 January 2014. Archived from on 27 March 2014. Retrieved 29 January 2014. Retrieved December 17, 2013. 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