7 Ups And 4 Downs From WWE Extreme Rules 2022

WWE lets him in while wrestlers get extreme in Philly.

The Fiend
WWE.com

How do you rate a premium live event where the highs were pretty high, but the lows were lower than usual? That rollercoaster of an event certainly makes for a very tough grade for WWE Extreme Rules.

WWE delivered a massive return Saturday night, meeting and even exceeding expectations after a fantastic viral program that captivated fans online for weeks as they dissected clues to determine who was coming and when. Most matches were good or produced good results, even if the bouts themselves were lacking. The donnybrook match was a fantastic piece of business that let six men just batter the hell out of each other for 15 minutes.

But Extreme Rules also saw a match where pepper spray was used in the finish. A title match was embarrassingly bad, and no amount of smoke and mirrors could cover for it. And a match featuring a Hall-of-Famer was a long, drawn-out affair that went well beyond the tolerance limit for time and then turned into Run-In City – which actually is what partially saved it.

Overall, you’ve got to award Extreme Rules passing marks, but it wasn’t a home run of a show. It did deliver in several areas, and it will be remembered well for the final five minutes. But it won’t contend for PPV/PLE of the year.

Let’s get to it…

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Contributor
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.