6 Ups & 7 Downs From WWE Fastlane 2021

2. Putting The Horse Before The Cart

Sheamus Drew McIntyre
WWE.com

We’ll get to the positives of the Sheamus/Drew McIntyre match, but we have to unload on one glaring issue: the utter, total lack of stakes behind this match.

Yes, it’s a foregone conclusion that Drew was destined to face Bobby Lashley for the WWE Championship at WrestleMania. It was written in stone the minute Miz cashed in his Money in the Bank briefcase and won the title from McIntyre. But that doesn’t preclude them from making the Fastlane match a #1 contender’s bout.

Doing so would have given more purpose to the match other than “two friends end their 20-year friendship and beat the hell out of each other.” It would have given the announcers something else to talk about, and a reason to care about the outcome of the match – other than just hoping Drew wins the feud.

But instead, WWE announced the title match the week before the PPV, which really shows there was no real reason they couldn’t have made this bout for the title match and delayed promotion by six days. Dopes.

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Contributor

Scott is a former journalist and longtime wrestling fan who was smart enough to abandon WCW during the Monday Night Wars the same time as the Radicalz. He fondly remembers watching WrestleMania III, IV, V and VI and Saturday Night's Main Event, came back to wrestling during the Attitude Era, and has been a consumer of sports entertainment since then. He's written for WhatCulture for more than a decade, establishing the Ups and Downs articles for WWE Raw and WWE PPVs/PLEs and composing pieces on a variety of topics.