Daniel Bryan...Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Hate Bootista
(The best wrestler on the planet is kept off the match, the 2nd best wrestler quits, and a fierce hatred eventually led to the right Mania winner)
Storytelling: 2/5 Stars
Match Quality: 4/5 Stars-it was technically solid believe it or not
Finish: 2/5 Stars
Winner: 1/5 Stars
Extracurriculars: 2/5 Stars
TOTAL: 11/25 Stars
Great Moment You May Have Forgotten: Kofi Kingston doing an impossible leap. JBL refers to it as Bob Beamon, of course only a few get that but he's not wrong.
Moment You Wish You Weren't Reminded Of: Although WWE tried to eliminate it from the network replay, you can clearly see Kane sitting in the corner during JBL's entrance after being eliminated, meaning he was planning his sneak attack.
*Side note: the winner of this match is referred to as Bootista, not Batista, they are two different wrestlers. Batista will be discussed later as the 2005 winner.
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There is a lot to discuss with this Rumble match, and I really don't know where to begin. There's the big picture of a truly terrible winner, the biggest name in the match was not in the match, the man who set an all time record and became the voice of the distained fan, and the fact that there are 3 WWE Champions who, as of this posting, had their final career match in the Rumble. (Yea I bet you forgot about Kevin Nash and JBL).
The biggest positive before we go far into the many painful negatives was that this was probably the best collection of Rumble talent in the company's history. It's a shame that we are in an era where great talent and natural ability do not coincide with good writing or proper pushes, leading to winners such as an old Bootista.
The match started off well, with CM Punk, Seth Rollins, Cody Rhodes, and even Sandow getting a chance to show their skills. But then Kane came in, and clearly set up what was about to be a bad feeling once Punk eliminated him. But hey the talent kept coming, with a premiering Alexander Rusev, Kofi doing his brilliant stick, Dean Ambrose and Dolph doing their awesome sells. Even geriatric outdate Diesel showed up, despite the fact that he could not wrestler (not like he could before this match, but I digress).
But then Roman Reigns showed up, and all hell was breaking loose! The Shield basically go Beast Mode and eliminate everyone but Punk, then team up to eliminate Khali (portraying his usual big guy waste of space to make others look good role). After this it started to get a little hazy however, with Sheamus (why is he always the top 3, what does the WWE see in him?), El Torito (who had a little tussle with CM Punk thats actually humorous), and JBL (who although was fantastic on this match in commentary, fell victim to Reigns in 5 seconds). But we still kept getting quality wrestlers at least, from Cesaro to Harper to Ryback to Del Rio to Big E.
But let's be honest we were waiting for two names; Bootista and Daniel Bryan. It was the matchup we all wanted in this year's Rumble. Well, no need to over hash what happened as we all know, Bootista came in at 28 looking like garbage, Rey Mysterio came out at 30, and the crowd revolted to levels never before seen in a match. Although it was a solid Shield coming out party (as if they weren't the most over thing already in WWE), we also had to deal with the end of CM Punk unceremoniously by Kane, who put him through a table and ended his storied career (or so is the nice version of the Punk saga).
In the end, the biggest name was kept off the Rumble and we had the final two as Bootista and Reigns, who mind you at this point quietly broke Kane's record with 12 eliminations! After a terrible encounter that included the worst spear I've ever seen, Bootista eliminated Reigns and started the road to Wrestlermania, flipping off the crowd and all. It was such a smack to the smarks, a shot to the fans, to have a guy who had not been in a match in 4 years win the Rumble over the best movement in years. Thankfully, WWE saved us from Bryan vs. Lameus and Orton vs. Bootista and mended the situation, but lest we never forget the match that almost came to fruition as a result of a poorly booked Rumble.
Come to think of it, maybe I ranked this match too high. Oh well, I followed the guidelines and you can watch it here. Next up is a match where the second half is much much worse than the first half, and heavily featured one of the worst gimmicks in professional wrestling history. Stay tune super fans.
