10 Things That Must Happen Ahead Of WWE Fastlane 2017

Though it’s only been around for a couple of years, WWE Fastlane has endured a pretty rough ride since becoming a fixture on the pay-per-view calendar.

At the inaugural event in 2015, the main event saw Roman Reigns defeat Daniel Bryan just four weeks after being booed out of the building at the Royal Rumble. Safe to say that once again, fans weren’t particularly best pleased. The following year saw a much better show-closer as Reigns, Dean Ambrose, and Brock Lesnar squared off, but a vocal minority still managed to ensure that #CancelWWENetwork was trending on Twitter after the show.

This year, the PPV has the chance to deliver a much better show, with mega-babyface Goldberg already announced in Universal Championship action.

Still, for the event to fully deliver on its potential, a few things need to take place in order to get the show off on the right foot...

First things first with a minor housekeeping note.

With six full hours of Raw programming still to fit in before Fastlane rolls around, if the writers want to ensure that those six hours remain watchable then they need to ease off on the gimmicky lingo.

This past week on Raw, after Brawn Strowman had laid waste to Roman Reigns, Michael Cole issued a word of warning: “Roman Reigns may want to get out of the fast lane, no pun intended”.

No, Cole, that pun was completely intended. There’s no way that language like that would feature in his commentary if the namesake PPV wasn’t right around the corner, and it only makes the show feel even more contrived and over-produced than usual.

Granted, this was likely a line that was fed to Cole from the powers that be backstage, and so criticism shouldn’t be directed at the announcer himself. But for the sake of keeping Raw's commentary bearable, whoever’s responsible for these overly forced lines should think about Roman Reigning it in a little. Pun very much intended.