Although Dave Batista's return to WWE was indeed spoiled by local advertisements for live events, it's now being reported that WWE officials actually weren't going to wait until the Royal Rumble event to have Batista return. According to the latest report, their plan was to wait until the last Raw before the Rumble and actually have Batista show up to that last Raw and it would then be announced that he would be returning to action at the Royal Rumble. This would have been done to help boost Raw's rating and to generate more buzz going into the pay-per-view.