Royal Rumble (2014)

Royal Rumble
Promotional poster featuring various WWE wrestlers
Promotion	WWE
Date	January 26, 2014
City	Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Venue	Consol Energy Center
Attendance	15,715[1]
Buy rate	467,000[2]
Pay-per-view chronology
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Royal Rumble chronology
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The 2014 Royal Rumble was the 27th annual Royal Rumble professional wrestling pay-per-view (PPV) event produced by WWE. It took place on January 26, 2014, at the Consol Energy Center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It was the first Royal Rumble to be held in the city of Pittsburgh and the first WWE pay-per-view event held in the Consol Energy Center. The Royal Rumble match winner received a world championship match at that year's WrestleMania. For the 2014 event, the winner received a match for the WWE World Heavyweight Championship at WrestleMania XXX, marking the first Royal Rumble since 2002 where there was only one eligible championship for which the winner could challenge.

The event featured five professional wrestling matches, including one match on the kickoff pre-show. The main event was the titular Royal Rumble, which a returning Batista won by last eliminating Roman Reigns to become a two-time Royal Rumble winner. Other matches saw Randy Orton successfully defending the WWE World Heavyweight Championship against John Cena, Bray Wyatt defeating Daniel Bryan, and Brock Lesnar defeating Big Show. On the kickoff pre-show, Goldust and Cody Rhodes lost the WWE Raw Tag Team Championship to the New Age Outlaws (Road Dogg and Billy Gunn).

Considered one of the worst Royal Rumble pay-per-views of all time, the event is notable for the overwhelmingly negative audience response to the Orton–Cena and Royal Rumble matches. The fans booed Royal Rumble winner Batista in protest and chanted for Bryan (who was not part of the match) and runner-up Reigns, though the Bryan–Wyatt match was praised. The event marked the final WWE appearance of CM Punk, who abruptly left the company on bad terms the following day and retired from wrestling for the next seven-and-a-half years; he then joined AEW at The First Dance in August 2021, returned to WWE at Survivor Series in November 2023, and competed in his first WWE match in a decade at the Royal Rumble in January 2024.

The event received 467,000 buys, down 8.8% from the 512,000 buys for the previous year's event.