WWE Royal Rumble: January 26, 2014 - 5 talking points

Royal Rumble 2014 was a night full of surprising events, unfortunately most of these surprises were for the wrong reasons. We got new tag team champions, a great feud came to end, a beast was unleashed, the champion won again and new talents were robbed by an old star. Overall, the pay-per-view ended with several talking points which will have an impact on WrestleMania XXX.

1. The New Age Outlaws’ title win will shape the future of the tag team division

The Attitude Era fans would have definitely enjoyed watching The Outlaws’ win the tag titles for the 6th time, but now with that win Road Dogg and Billy Gunn have got the responsibility to lead the tag team division in the right direction (with WrestleMania just 2 months away), and their experience and fan connection matters a lot now. Very soon there will be a feud between Cody Rhodes and Goldust and they are eventually going to fight each other at WrestleMania XXX, so that brings up the end of one of the best tag teams in WWE’s recent history, and The Outlaws’ have came in as a replacement for The Brotherhood. Because they are a popular heel team they are expected to wrestle face tag teams such as The Usos, The Prime Time Players and Los Matadores (The Brotherhood couldn’t have done that), and eventually lose their tag titles to the much deserving Usos, who have been waiting since a long time to hold the tag titles. So The Outlaws’ with their experience will help in drawing more attention to the tag team division and then they will make way for the future tag team champions, The Usos.

2. Bray Wyatt is all set to become a success in the WWE

Most of the fans expected Bryan to win this match against Bray Wyatt, but the leader of The Wyatt Family silenced everyone, especially those who were behind Bryan and were chanting for him, by picking up a clean victory over the “Flying Goat.” Their match was the ‘match of the night’ and Wyatt displayed his amazing in-ring talent, he is completely absorbed with his character, his wrestling skills are as good as his mic skills. With a win over Bryan, Wyatt has effectively ended his long feud with the “Yes Man,” has taken his revenge for Bryan’s betrayal and has established himself as a top performer in the company, soon he might even challenge for the WWE World Heavyweight Championship. In simple words, Bray Wyatt is gold.

3. Brock Lesnar is a beast, and he will be a serious challenger to break Undertaker’s streak

Brock Lesnar took only 2 minutes to finish Big Show at Royal Rumble. The build-up of this match never made Lesnar look as strong as he usually looks, instead he was getting tossed up by the Big Show, so such a quick win over the giant makes Lesnar the real predator in the WWE right now. He looks unstoppable and beating a big superstar like Big Show in a such a short time only increases his hype with WrestleMania just 2 months away. And as the rumor has it Lesnar will challenge Undertaker’s WrestleMania streak this time and with that dominating run he looks a real threat to Taker’s streak. Lesnar and Taker were involved in a great feud back in 2002, with both producing great matches (they also had a Hell in a Cell match), and Lesnar emerging as the winner. One thing that would definitely add spice to this feud is the fact that Taker has never won against Lesnar. With that history between them the fans would actually love to see a Taker-Lesnar feud again, and it would be much greater this time as it’s WrestleMania XXX.

4. Cena is finally out of the WWE World Heavyweight Championship scene

What fans really enjoyed was not the same old Orton-Cena match but the interference by The Wyatt Family that cost Cena another chance to become the Unified Champion, and after that the attack on Cena confirmed that the Cenation leader is out of the title picture for good and his WrestleMania opponent is probably going to be Bray Wyatt. So no longer WWE fans would have to watch another boring Cena-Orton match. There is a reason why the fans were chanting “Y2J,” “Daniel Bryan,” “we want Divas,” and “this is awful” , and it was a relief to know that Cena has got a new rival and that he won’t wrestle for the Championship at least until WrestleMania. We would love to see this Wyatt-Cena rivalry (at least) match if not surpass the Wyatt-Bryan rivalry.

5. Batista undeservedly winning the Royal Rumble match isn’t good for business

The WWE creative was too obvious this time and again for the wrong reasons. They have created a huge blunder by making Batista win the Royal Rumble match. It actually hurt to see that WWE chose Batista ahead of the hardworking CM Punk, Daniel Bryan and Roman Reigns, he didn’t wrestle for nearly 4 years but still got this undeserved preference from the Creative. More depressing than Batista’s win was watching Daniel Bryan’s absence in the match, it was the biggest drawback of the match. The night started so well but ended on such a poor note. Now we will have to see an angle between Batista, Orton and Triple H for every week until WrestleMania. The reality is that Triple H’s ‘evolution’ friends are going to headline WrestleMania, and nobody except for Triple H likes this. Now only a good feud between Batista and Orton can save WWE’s grace.