10 Burning Questions For WWE Payback
Could Braun become a made man? What is with all the rematches and retreads?
WrestleMania might be in the rearview mirror, but that doesn’t mean that WWE is definitively moving forward.
Of the eight matches slated for Payback Sunday night, three are rematches from 'Mania, while two more are retreads of another WrestleMania bout, and yet another match is a return bout from Fastlane before 'Mania. That means that just two contests on the PPV are truly new match-ups.
That will happen from time to time, but there definitely is a feeling that WWE isn’t exactly blasting ahead in the wake of its biggest show. Instead, it’s nudging ahead, taking a couple small steps while presumably wrapping up some loose ends from earlier this month. Hell, Raw’s first Universal Champion returned from injury and he’s not even on the card. And two of the matches involve wrestlers who compete on SmackDown.
Still, there is the possibility that we could see a major angle play out to chart Raw’s path forward. And several of the matches look good on paper, so it might be a perfectly enjoyable night of wrestling. So let’s not write this off as a major disappointment before it starts, even if it's a little hard to deny that there isn’t a lot of momentum heading into Payback.
With that said, let’s take a look at some of the big questions that need answering on Sunday night…
10. Will The Hardys Break?
The word buzzing around the internet is that WWE is trying to gain the rights to use the “Broken Hardys” gimmick that has helped revitalize Matt and Jeff’s careers. They’re currently caught in a weird limbo where they’re playing a cross between their “broken” personas (at least Matt is) and their Team Extreme characters.
If WWE has successfully gotten the go-ahead to use the Broken Hardys gimmick, it would be pretty cool to set things in motion at a PPV and then play it out the next night on Raw. Who knows how it would actually happen, but the Raw Tag Team Championship match between the Hardys and Cesaro & Sheamus is pretty nondescript as it is. Perhaps something sets Matt off and he starts down that path…?
As previously mentioned, the Hardy nostalgia tour only has so much gas in the tank. We saw with the Dudley Boyz previously that eventually, that Attitude Era pop wears off and they’re suddenly two guys hovering around 40 doing the same gimmick they did when they were 23.
In this case, there’s a ready-made gimmick change that would be new and different to the WWE audience.