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).

The 2014 event was the 27th event in the Royal Rumble chronology and was scheduled to be held on January 26, 2014, at the Consol Energy Center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, which opened in August 2010 replacing the former Mellon Arena, making the first WWE pay-per-view held in this venue, although the arena was originally going to host the 2012 Survivor Series.

[12][13] A highly promoted match featured WWE World Heavyweight Champion Randy Orton defending the title against long-time adversary John Cena.

At Survivor Series in November 2013, Orton successfully defended his WWE Championship against Big Show,[14] on the same night the World Heavyweight Champion John Cena defeated Alberto Del Rio to retain his title.

[14] The next month, at the TLC pay-per-view, Orton defeated Cena in a Tables, Ladders, and Chairs match to unify the two titles into the new WWE World Heavyweight Championship.

[17] On the January 13 episode of Raw, Orton suffered an upset loss to Kofi Kingston and took out his frustrations by attacking Cena's father, who was attending the event at ringside.

[18] On the December 30, 2013, episode of Raw, Brock Lesnar returned with his manager, Paul Heyman, to announce his intentions to challenge the winner of the upcoming WWE World Heavyweight Championship match between Randy Orton and John Cena at the Royal Rumble.

[20] Announced on WWE.com, Goldust and Cody Rhodes faced The New Age Outlaws (Road Dogg and Billy Gunn) for the WWE Tag Team Championship on the Royal Rumble Kickoff Show preceding the pay-per-view.

[21] Backstage, the general managers of Raw and SmackDown, Brad Maddox and Vickie Guerrero, respectively, rolled the "Rumble Drum" to give wrestlers their numbers.

Alberto Del Rio, R-Truth, The Real Americans (Jack Swagger and Antonio Cesaro), Kofi Kingston, The Great Khali, and Damien Sandow picked their numbers during the segment.

[28] In the pre-show, Goldust and Cody Rhodes defended the WWE Tag Team Championship against The New Age Outlaws (Road Dogg and Billy Gunn]).

Early in the match, the referee saw Bray's Wyatt Family members Luke Harper and Erick Rowan attempting to interfere, so he ejected them from ringside.

Bryan later mounted a comeback with a running tornado DDT off the ring apron, planting Wyatt's head on the floor.

At the end of the match, Cena again trapped Orton in the STF submission hold, but the lights temporarily went out due to the arrival of The Wyatt Family on the ring apron.

Kofi Kingston, who entered at #8, had two feats of athleticism to escape elimination; first after he was deposited on the guardrail by Rusev (who caught him when Kingston was thrown out of the ring) he jumped back to the ring apron from the guardrail, and later while he was hanging on to the bottom rope with his feet, he fended off Jack Swagger by snatching Swagger's boot and hitting him with it.

Pay-per-view commentator John "Bradshaw" Layfield was announced as entrant #24, making it the first time the JBL character had participated in a Royal Rumble.

[33][39][40] After the show went off the air, Batista (who had been presented on-air as a heroic babyface character) mocked Bryan and gestured his middle finger at the crowd.

They described the event as "uneven", and that "the disapproval of the fans at the Consol Energy Center at how the Royal Rumble match went down will be the lasting memory for anyone who watched the show".

[29] James Caldwell of the Pro Wrestling Torch Newsletter rated the Royal Rumble match 2.5 stars out of 5, commenting that "well, that back-fired".

For the rest of the matches, Tucker wrote that "Lesnar looked like a relentless beast", while "Orton and Cena put on their most lifeless performance ever together.

[49][50] It was reported by the Wrestling Observer that on Monday prior to Raw, Punk had legitimately walked out on WWE when he informed Vince McMahon that he was "going home".

"[53] Punk's WWE contract subsequently expired in July 2014, thus making the Royal Rumble his final on-screen appearance.

[54] However, on an episode of Colt Cabana's Art of Wrestling podcast released in November 2014, Punk said that he was suspended for two months after walking out on the company in January and that after the suspension ended, nobody from WWE contacted him.

Punk also told that when he reached out to them for unpaid royalties, he was given a run-around by company executives until he was handed his termination papers and was fired by WWE on his wedding day with April Mendez (better known as AJ Lee) in June 2014.

[61] The post-Rumble Raw on January 27 began with Triple H and Stephanie McMahon (The Authority) addressing the Rumble event and mocking the audience for not getting what they wanted.

[65] Because of the boisterous negative reaction, Batista responded to the audience on the February 28 episode of SmackDown, saying he didn't come back to be liked, only to be the next WWE World Heavyweight Champion, thus turning into a villain in the process.

[66] The scheduled WrestleMania XXX main event was Orton versus Batista for the WWE World Heavyweight Championship.

[67] However, on the March 10 episode of Raw, Bryan and multiple fans "occupied" the ring and refused to leave, resulting in an irate Triple H agreeing to Bryan's demand for a match at WrestleMania, with the stipulation that the winner would be inserted into the WWE World Heavyweight Championship match at the event.

[74] The Outlaws' reign ended on the March 3 episode of Raw, when The Usos won the Tag Team Championship.

[70] In August 2014, Lesnar defeated John Cena at SummerSlam, capturing the WWE World Heavyweight Championship in the process.