Why Isn't The 2014 Royal Rumble Match Worse Than 2015?

[The Rick Jericho]

2014:

CM Punk is #1. Is never officially eliminated. Daniel Bryan loses to Wyatt earlier in the night. In the middle of the yes movement, they don't even put him in the rumble match at #30 which wrote itself. Batista wins and is shit on. Punk is so fed up with things, losing rumble, injuries, Batista winning and Triple H program, so he leaves WWE.

2015:

Bryan enters and is eliminated. Roman wins. Show and Kane run eliminate guys. Rock runs-in and interferes. Boos.

Now yes, there were different sets of boos. But the reason this started was because they purposely left Bryan out in 2014. At least in 2015 Bryan was in the match. And the crowd crapped harder in 2014 booing the likes of career fan favorite Rey Mysterio.

[TGM]

I've never seen a crowd as dead as they were during the "big moment" when Ambrose and Reigns team up to face Big Show and Kane, so that is why I think 2015 is worse.

[Mid-Carder]

The 2014 Rumble is great until fans realise Bryan isn't winning and then it falls apart. But that's only the last 10 or so minutes. The rest of the match is entertaining with a hyped crowd. 2015 is a mess from start to finish.

[The Heartbreak TWERK]

Both Rumbles are trash and the person responsible for it, Vince McMahon, should apologize for them and then exile himself from society. He can go live in a garbage dump and eat trash for the rest of his life.

2014 is worse because Daniel Bryan should've entered at #30 and won. Vince is a bad person and this Rumble is easily in the top ten reasons why he's an irredeemable human being.

[Stu]

Simply, there was a much bigger (and blatant) effort to make Roman look good in 2015 compared to Batista in 2014.

[fw91]

becuase although no Bryan, the booking of the rumble made sense and kept people interested until number 30 entered. It wasn't a total FU to the fans with nonsensical booking. And Punk was officially eliminated although it wasn't clean.

[The Rick Jericho]

I forgot to add, if you look at the long term damage, 2014 did more to the product.

Bryan wasn't even in the Rumble. Which hurt his status. Punk left forever. Batista being booed made him quit in 5 months. Roman got put over strong and the fans were cheering him. Which set in the motion for the next 4 years.

At least in 2015, one year later, they had a clear direction, whether you like it or not. Roman wins the Rumble finally. Bryan is finally scaled back. And guys they never had faith in, they finally gave up in this moment. So at least management was set in their ways, and that set up the last 3 years of programming. For better or for worse.

So 2014 hurts a lot more to me.

[Deleted]

Jan 14, 2018 16:43:41 GMT -5 TGM said:

I've never seen a crowd as dead as they were during the "big moment" when Ambrose and Reigns team up to face Big Show and Kane, so that is why I think 2015 is worse.

It's because no matter how much the crowd loved Ambrose, they knew that he'd fail as well and only Reigns would come out on top. That moment screamed of "Lil Buddy Ambrose" which is Ambrose's worst incarnation given it's only there to help Roman out. Once Bryan was eliminated in the 2015 Rumble it went downhill but at least in the 2014 Rumble you had the whole match until the ending where it failed.

In the 2015 Rumble things were set up to make Reigns great from the title match (with Rollins, Cena and Lesnar) to the Rumble match. It was all for Roman's coronation. It was to set up the next face of the company. With Batista in the Rumble that's just 1 match he hindered which would have probably done nothing given Batista wasn't gonna have a long title reign anyway and he was never gonna be the face.

That 2015 Rumble match hurt way more people for a larger amount of time compared to the 2014 one.

[The Rick Jericho]

Jan 14, 2018 16:47:16 GMT -5 fw91 said:

becuase although no Bryan, the booking of the rumble made sense and kept people interested until number 30 entered. It wasn't a total FU to the fans with nonsensical booking. And Punk was officially eliminated although it wasn't clean.

I wasn't here on these forums in 2014. But the general consensus around the web was that people were livid with the way Punk was handled in this match. Not having a proper elimination or going the distance. And people were going as far as saying his Rumble treatment justified him walking out the next night.

Just thinking about this again makes me hate the 2014 rumble with a passion. Can't say I feel the same about 2015. But to each their own.

[Deleted]

2014 made me actively angry while 2015 was actually to the point of being so bad it's funny.

[Allie Kitsune]

Jan 14, 2018 16:41:29 GMT -5 The Rick Jericho said:

2014:

CM Punk is #1. Is never officially eliminated. Daniel Bryan loses to Wyatt earlier in the night. In the middle of the yes movement, they don't even put him in the rumble match at #30 which wrote itself. Batista wins and is shit on. Punk is so fed up with things, losing rumble, injuries, Batista winning and Triple H program, so he leaves WWE.

2015:

Bryan enters and is eliminated. Roman wins. Show and Kane run eliminate guys. Rock runs-in and interferes. Boos.

Now yes, there were different sets of boos. But the reason this started was because they purposely left Bryan out in 2014. At least in 2015 Bryan was in the match. And the crowd crapped harder in 2014 booing the likes of career fan favorite Rey Mysterio.

For some of us, Punk just isn't the be-all and end-all.

[CeilingFan]

I may be in the minority, but I found the 2015 Rumble to be more entertaining (Even though they screwed up by not having Bryan last until the end).

[Deleted]

Jan 14, 2018 16:49:39 GMT -5 The Rick Jericho said:

I wasn't here on these forums in 2014. But the general consensus around the web was that people were livid with the way Punk was handled in this match. Not having a proper elimination or going the distance. And people were going as far as saying his Rumble treatment justified him walking out the next night.

Just thinking about this again makes me hate the 2014 rumble with a passion. Can't say I feel the same about 2015. But to each their own.

Around here the general consensus was that Bryan was going to come out at 30 and win the whole thing. People justified that by Bryan losing to Wyatt earlier on that night so he'd still win this and Wyatt (the guy who defeated him here) would be his first main title opponent. They also justified it as Punk (the guy who couldn't get it done) was going to face someone from the Authority at WM. People weren't as upset here with Punk given Bryan was still on deck but once Bryan didn't come out it turned hellish. As for Punk, it was an entirely different situation. I don't know many who brought up his Rumble treatment in regards to his walkout as that was an advantage for Bryan. We mostly used other situations in reference to Punk.

[EoE: Workin On My Night Cheese]

Because the only point where it all goes wrong crowd-wise is with the last entrant, and because Bryan did get his happy ending in the end anyway. Not the case the year later, with over half the match written off and Bryan moved down to IC level.

[The Rick Jericho]

Jan 14, 2018 17:01:52 GMT -5 EoE: Workin On My Night Cheese said:

Because the only point where it all goes wrong crowd-wise is with the last entrant, and because Bryan did get his happy ending in the end anyway. Not the case the year later, with over half the match written off and Bryan moved down to IC level.

Once again, I wasn't around the boards at this time here.

But in 2014, everyone though Bryan would win. With the momentum of turning on the Wyatts, the cage moment. He was everyone's favorite.

In 2015, who honestly thought he would win? They had clearly moved onto Roman by this time. So I wasn't heart broken when he was eliminated. But not coming out at all at #30, geez, that was soul crushing. It really was. The bar I was at deflated big time, when he didn't appear. Ugh. I can still remember it today clearly after 4 years.

[Alice Syndrome]

2014 was misguided, 2015 was an intentional middle finger to the audience. If you take out Roman's role in it you still have Shattered Dreams, and then the Local Men Ruining Everything.

[Gravedigger's Biscuits]

For me it's because 2015 actually felt like they were actively trying to piss people off.

2014 you can at least claim was just naive or misguided by WWE.

[Shark]

Having just watched both of these Rumbles, 2014 is actually a good one. Some good spots throughout, some fun eliminations. It's the Shield's debut in the match and all 3 did well. You had some Mania building, in theory until the next night, with the Authority screwing Punk out of a win. The only misstep of the whole thing was Bryan not being in, but given the storyline, it made sense that the Authority wouldn't allow him in the match. The only change that should have happened would be showing Triple H strong arming the trainer into not clearing Bryan to compete in the Rumble. The Rumble match itself is good. Just because one person wasn't in it, that doesn't automatically make it a bad match. Given how things turned out, it worked out better this way anyway. Without it, we don't get the great Yes Movement moment on Raw and Bryan likely doesn't get the night he gets at Mania which was made better BECAUSE he had to go through Triple H, Orton, and Batista all in one night.

2015, is just a badly booked match. Nothing of real note happens all match until Kane and Big Show dominate and toss everyone like they're nothing. There's no big moments of note and they do a false finish with Roman eliminating Show and Kane making us think he won when he still had to eliminate Rusev. 2015 was just a poorly booked match all the way through. 2014 is a well booked match with one glaring omission.

[Deleted]

2014 is actually pretty good up until when it becomes clear Bryan isn't coming. 2015 is just a complete disaster from start to finish.

[Feargus McReddit]

2015 took all pretence of the Rumble being a way of jump starting feuds, making talent look good and putting its best foot forward on the Road to WrestleMania and threw all of it under the bus to put over Roman Reigns.

AND THEY DIDN’T EVEN HAVE ROMAN LOOK GOOD IN VICTORY! So they didn’t even do THAT right!

Like...man, I genuinely feel a lot of the really recent problems about them being able to put over new talent and making new stars started right here.