WWE Extreme Rules 2022

Believe it or not, kids, this is another WWE modern PPV musings and on a Monday rather than the usual Wednesday slot. Meanwhile, I have still yet to watch the past two AEW PPV events. Are the tides turning and I'm slowing veering back to the land of McSon-In-Law? Stay tuned for further developments as they happen, but for now, let's dip into this Extreme Rules PPV, which wasn't a total dumpster fire.

The Brawling Brutes (Sheamus, Holland, and Butch) defeated Imperium (Gunther and his two lackeys) in what was dubbed a "Good Old Fashioned Donnybrook" or no holds barred street fight with weapons. Great opener with six fuckers of varying sizes beating the fuck out of each other. A good continuation of the feud between these two teams of absolute bruisers and seeing Sheamus get the win to build towards another match with Gunther down the road is a good move since that's the match that everyone really wants to see. (I'm being sincere; that one they had in Wales was fucking great.)

Ronda Rousey ends the Liv Morgan Women's Champion experiment with some sort of submission maneuver (or something) after a thing that happened. I'm trying to be nice here, but this wasn't very good. It looked like a sloppy performance between two people who had no fucking clue what they were doing, which isn't something you want from people who have been doing this for years. Kids playfighting on their bed could pull off a more entertaining match than these ladies did and that's a bit of a shame.

Karrion Kross defeated Drew McIntyre in a strap match, with the finish involving Drew getting sprayed with pepper spray, allowing Kross to hit his finish for the win. Why not use the spray earlier to end this quicker? Match wasn't too bad, but I was never a big strap match guy, so this did nothing for me, really.

RAW Women's Champion Bianca Belair defeated Bayley in a ladder match... it was fine. Typical ladder match schlock where they spend more time trying to be creative with their spots than trying to win the match and tell some semblance of a story.

Finn Balor defeated Edge in an I Quit match, with Edge saying the words after Balor's partners threatened to conchairto Beth Phoenix, thus looking like a hero throwing the fight to save another. This ran almost a half hour, but was actually quite fun for a while. This might've been the first Edge match I've seen since his return that I've actually enjoyed. Could've been a little shorter and things really didn't pick up until the last third with all the run-ins. Maybe that's a hint or something.

Matt Riddle defeated Seth Rollins in a "Fight Pit" match, which is a fancy steel cage thing with a platform on top and no ring ropes. For something that was supposed to be a big time, feud-ending, blood-curling grudge match, this felt really, really tame. Almost like that one Rollins vs. Ambrose match or that one HHH vs Orton match at Mania, which was supposed to be intense and ended up being lame. One shot I have to question is the Matt Riddle drop from the top of the pit onto Seth... what the fuck is that supposed to be? Was he supposed to hit Seth with his back? His ass? What the fuck is that fucking move? Other than that, I was just "meh" on the whole deal. Also, the special ref was UFC fighter Daniel Cormier, who seems happy to be there. Maybe he gets to do more than ref a dull cage match in the future. Or maybe he can go back to having real fights.

And then Bray Wyatt shows up to pay off weeks worth of White Rabbit stuff that I can't be bothered to recap here because I haven't been following it as much as others. Long story short; a bunch of codes showed up that would lead people to websites and they'd follow the rabbit trail. Everyone figured it was Bray coming back and sure enough, it was Bray coming back. Some would call this a chef's kiss, but I'd imagine these days most people would chef's kiss a plate of three-day-old mac-and-cheese nuked in the microwave for five minutes at least five times a day. Honestly, I would've preferred an actual white rabbit being the pay-off and challenging that Theory guy for the briefcase, win it, and then cash in on Roman to finally end his reign at a random house show in Tupelo or something.

So I guess we've got another Bray Wyatt run coming up and I guess this time, it'll be good, right? That's what I keep hearing these people say, right? That it'll be good now that Vince is gone? I guess we'll see about that, but after the maggots and Fiend nonsense, I'm afraid Bray has jumped the shark and my only expectation is for whatever he does now to NOT suck. Pass that bare minimum and keep at it until Mania and there might be a chance.

And that was Extreme Rules... stuff happened, I guess. Not exactly a high note or anything, but still better than the usual WWE stodge. See you for Survivor Series... maybe.

[No, I am not touching the Blood Money show.]