This year’s WWE Royal Rumble PPV has made it’s way to DVD and Blu-Ray, which featured future stars Daniel Bryan and Bray Wyatt tearing it up, John Cena facing Randy Orton for the WWE World Heavyweight Championship for the supposed final time, and the questionable return of “The Animal” Batista. How did it fare compared to early pay-per-views?

WWE Royal Rumble is an annual professional wrestling pay-per-view event taking place every January, it is best known for the Royal Rumble match, where the winner receives the right to challenge the then WWE World Heavyweight Champion in the main event of WrestleMania. This year’s Royal Rumble is available on DVD and Blu-Ray.

If there’s one wrestling pay-per-view I love it’s the annual Royal Rumble event. Around this time of the year WWE usually has some fresh face being pushed within the title scene, and they usually get a title match at the Royal Rumble to test the waters for a future potential title run, and with WrestleMania being right around the corner of the event no less. But, not only does the WWE push new faces around this time of the year, the Rumble usually has some pretty stellar 10-15 minute matches in the under and midcard of the event (time constraints is due to the Royal Rumble match itself needed all time necessary). This year unfortunately didn’t focus too much on new faces, but did provide some decent to great in-ring performances from some of WWE’s top and future stars.

THE GOOD: When you think of the 2014 Royal Rumble PPV, the first match that has to come to mind is the fantastic Daniel Bryan vs Bray Wyatt match. Both of these future main-eventers put on one hell of a showing in front of the Pittsburgh crowd. The show also opened with a pretty good tag team match in New Age Outlaws vs The Rhodes Brothers. The DVD also contained some cool extra features such as promos and the like. The Rumble match was pretty fantastic for the most part, and Roman Reigns stole the show with his performance.

THE BAD: The Brock Lesnar vs Big Show match just felt like it was there, which makes the weeks of build feel pointless. Which is disappointing given the fact that Show and Lesnar can and have put on great matches in the past. John Cena vs Randy Orton for the WWE World Heavyweight Championship felt like more of the same old, same old. Then there’s the extremely questionable decision of keeping Bryan, who is currently the hottest act within the company since Ryback was a babyface. Batista’s return also put bringing back former stars with lucrative contracts into question for the future.

OVERALL THOUGHTS: The 2014 Rumble event was decent, though the last few years the Royal Rumble has been pretty entertaining. Three great matches (one with a questionable ending), and two matches that just felt like they were there kind of puts the 2014 Royal Rumble below the last few. However, the fantastic performances in the Royal Rumble match as well as the kickoff and opening match it makes for a fairly decent PPV to put in your collection. Otaku Dome gives the Royal Rumble 2014 DVD an 68 out 100.