Is Batista the problem? | WrestleZone Forums

I can honestly say that I've never been much of a Batista fan. I think he's someone that has a great look & physique but is pretty mediocre when it comes to the rest of what he brings to the table. That being said, he was pretty popular during the mid to late 2000s and he obviously made money for WWE.

However, Batista's been gone from WWE for close to four years and things do look to have changed. I don't know if it's purely because fans believe that Batista is stepping into a spot that they believe should go do Daniel Bryan, if they're just simply not as into him as they once were, if their tastes in who they want to see have changed since the rise of guys like Punk & Bryan, if it's some combination of all of the above, etc. But people just ain't diggin' Batista all that much these days.

Over the past 5 or 6 months, I think that fan reaction to some guys have genuinely thrown WWE management for a loop. When you look at Daniel Bryan, he doesn't "seem" to be the sort of guy that so many fans would rally around the way they have. When compared to Orton or Cena, Bryan doesn't have a great look, he doesn't have an over the top personality that's common among wrestling personas and he doesn't toss out catchphrases left & right. However, a LOT of people like Daniel Bryan because he genuinely seems to be a likeable, hard working, passionate wrestler who loves being a pro wrestler. He doesn't seem like he's a character, he seems genuine and that's something that resonates with people. It certainly doesn't hurt that Bryan's literally among the top in-ring guys in the world. In a world, and I'm talking about the world in general, finding something that's "genuine" is becoming increasingly hard. Bryan's something of an "every man" type of guy and the "every man" type of guy isn't "supposed" to make good. Guys like Batista, on the other hand, are the Ubermensch; Batista looks like a friggin' superman. He's someone who, just by sheer appearance, "looks" like a "star" or "looks" like he's someone "special". And quite a bit of the time in life, it's a Batista who gets all the breaks & opportunities rather than a Daniel Bryan. There are FAR more of the "every man" type than there are of the Ubermensch types in the world and damn near every one of them knows how it feels to be told or to be made to feel that they're not good enough or they can't do it. That makes Bryan an underdog and everyone loves an underdog, especially when they've got heart and ability.

It's not really Batista's fault, it's just that he's simply not who a majority of WWE fans want in this position. It's all but certain that Orton drops the WWE World Heavyweight Championship at WrestleMania XXX and most fans simply don't want Batista to be the guy who takes it. Personally, I think WWE management heavily overestimated Batista's star power and underestimated Daniel Bryan's popularity. As a result, if they go through with Orton vs. Batista, it'll be hijacked by a hostile New Orleans crowd management will have nobody to blame but themselves.

Another problem, at least from my perception, is that a lot of fans are burned out already on the idea of big names coming back and "stealing" the spotlight after having been gone for years. If you consider the reaction The Rock got on the post WrestleMania Raw last year by not showing up and the decidedly mixed reaction his name has gotten the handful of times his name has been dropped, I think the "magic" has worn off. I honestly believe that a lot of fans realized what many of us already knew: The Rock wasn't "back to stay" and that his claims of "never going away again" were all bullshit. He was back for a big paycheck and to have a large audience when hyping his movies. And since Batista isn't nearly on the same level as The Rock when it comes to genuine star power or overall ability, it just makes things all that much tougher on him.