10 Last-Minute WWE Extreme Rules 2017 Rumours You Need To Know
Which of the five will survive?
This Sunday, WWE's Raw brand presents Extreme Rules 2017, and the trend of B-level PPV shows drawing little to no interest is certainly continuing. Hot off the heels of Smackdown's Backlash comes another event that only seems enticing to the most devoted of WWE fans.
To be fair, this time, there's a bit of an excuse. Braun Strowman - who was factoring heavily into Raw's main-event plans - suffered an injury, forcing him to the sidelines for at least a couple of months. Strowman had beaten Roman Reigns at Payback and was expected to face Universal Champion Brock Lesnar at Great Balls of Fire, so odds are his role at Extreme Rules would have been substantial.
With Strowman out, the main event signed for Extreme Rules is a five-way contest pitting Reigns against Bray Wyatt, Finn Balor, Samoa Joe, and Seth Rollins, with the winner getting a Universal Title shot at Great Balls. That's pulled other men from elsewhere on the show (initially it looked like we could be getting Balor-Wyatt and Joe-Rollins matches) and left the whole card weaker.
Either way, there's a PPV coming up, and that means important matches, major repercussions, and surprises! Here are 10 last-minute rumors you need to know for Extreme Rules 2017. As always, they've been ranked from the least plausible to the most plausible, hopefully giving us an idea of what to expected at the notorious no-rules show.
10. WWE Starts Booking Bray Wyatt In A Way That Helps Get Him Over
It's a sad indictment of the way WWE works that Bray Wyatt was WWE Champion just a few months ago, but this Sunday's main event still has fans asking if he may finally be getting his chance to break through to the company's upper echelon. After all, a decisive win in the five-way match followed by victory over Brock Lesnar may be enough to permanently energize Wyatt's stop-start push.
Given all that we've seen over the past four years, though, there's no reason to call that anything but exceptionally unlikely. WWE seems quite satisfied with the way they've been using Wyatt, which is as a means to an end - he's someone with whom babyfaces feud before they feud with someone more important, and his style of delivering meandering promos that never really say anything makes for WWE writers' candy.
In a world where The Undertaker's career is likely over and another fascinating and mysterious character could be just what the doctor ordered, Wyatt could feasibly have a promising future. Unfortunately for him, that's something WWE has proven time after time that they're just not interested in exploring.