Batista is staying in WWE but he won’t wrestle Daniel Bryan at the Payback PPV, reports F4Wonline.
Instead, WWE will run another Shield vs Evolution match, meaning Batista will be with the company until at least the first week of June. This isn’t the only Extreme Rules rematch we will see at Payback, Daniel Bryan will again battle Kane, this time in a Buried Alive match.
Batista’s unwillingness to work with Bryan has undoubtedly hurt the June pay-per-view. Do we really want to see rematches? No, fans are engaged by new content. Batista vs Bryan would have been a huge main event, two big name stars who would have delivered a high stakes battle. That was the match Vince McMahon wanted to do but Batista was negative on it.
Batista’s reluctance to work against Bryan led to heavy speculation on Monday that he would be taking time off from the company early. WWE have obviously negotiated things to keep his presence around another month, he appeared last night on Raw and was a strong force in the closing angle which saw Evolution destroy The Shield. Batista obviously felt that a six man match was a good direction for his character, you would guess that he didn’t want to work with Bryan because he felt a loss would have hurt his perception. He simply didn’t want to be a fall guy for Bryan’s run as Champion.
Batista already put Bryan over clean in the middle of the ring at WrestleMania 30. If WWE had wanted to do Bryan vs Batista just two months later, they should have really had Orton take the loss in April. That would have left Batista with more of a reason to face Bryan, he would have been protected at Mania with June in mind. Instead a situation was created where Batista would have lost to Bryan twice in the space of two months on pay-per-view. Batista wan’t cool with that, so instead we have The Shield Vs Evolution and Bryan vs Kane at Payback.
Source - whatculture
