Blame WWE’s Booking, Not Pittsburgh For Extreme Rules Mess

WWE Extreme Rules 2018 was met with negative reviews, and a lot of blame has been pointed at the fans in attendance in Pittsburgh, PA.  The Steel City residents were clearly agitated, but WWE and their lazy booking on Sunday is actually to blame.

Now let me first give the readers an idea of why my defense of Pittsburgh holds a lot of weight.  I am from the Philadelphia area, and anyone who lives in the Keystone state knows there is a real rivalry between the two cities.

The city of Philadelphia is a top six populated city in America, while Pittsburgh is not even a top 50 populated city.  Yet, when it comes to winning championships, the city of Pittsburgh has a much more accomplished history.  So there is clear jealousy on my part, and I should have every reason to throw shade at my neighbors to the west.

With that said let’s move to last night at Extreme Rules, where as a viewer from my couch everything appeared to be chess pieces moving to setup the next month of television for the build to WWE Summerslam 2018.  Here is the problem for those in attendance, they paid a lot more than $9.99 for their tickets and were not interested in a filler pay-per-view.

Did Carmella beating Asuka again make sense so that both superstars can move forward?  Yes.  Is WWE clearly moving forward with Alexa Bliss vs. Ronda Rousey?  Yes.

The problem with both Women’s Championship matches were that they were a circus.  In one match a guy was the focal point of the contest, and in another there were three women outside of the ring that played a part in the result of the match.

While the furthering of one feud and ending of another made sense to viewers at home, neither were high quality matches for the fans in attendance.  Keep in mind, WWE has ranked Pittsburgh as one of their A graded cities and know the passion of their fans.

This could be a reason why WWE decided to move Bobby Lashley and Roman Reigns out of the main event for the night.  The lack of interest in the match was evident, most fans likely perceived it as two Vince McMahon guys that are fighting for the chance to potentially face Brock Lesnar.

Still despite the predictable hatred for the pairing of these two superstars, Reigns and Lashley put on a really physical match which eventually got the fans to come around.  The fans became invested by the end, and for that they deserve credit.

I shouldn’t need to point out that while Shinsuke Nakamura vs. Jeff Hardy was booked to further that story, imagine all the fans who were excited to see Hardy.  Nothing like a sub ten second match to get the WWE Universe to their feet!

Then there was the Iron Man match, where the crowd seemed to get even more disengaged.  The WWE Universe has seen Dolph Ziggler vs. Seth Rollins wrestle a number of times, yet somehow in a match where both men should be pacing themselves there were a number of successful pin attempts in the first half of the match.

The involvement of Drew McIntyre throughout the contest took a bit of the shine away to the live crowd who were expecting a classic.  When the WWE Universe talks about all-time great Iron Man matches, most do not cite ones where interference was responsible for around half of the rewarded points.

This might be an obvious statement to point out that the main event was not a great match, but that is why the Pittsburgh fans were annoyed.  Also, let’s not act like New York City, Chicago, and Philadelphia wouldn’t have acted the same way.

So to recap: fans watched two chaotic Women’s Championship matches with little wrestling, two superstars they never wanted to see against each other in Reigns and Lashley, a two move encounter between Hardy and Nakamura, and a watered down Iron Man match that made little sense.

WWE knew that Pittsburgh was a passionate crowd long before last night, and the lack of quality matches was always going to backfire.  There were good moments from last night, and I personally enjoyed a lot of spots, but I also watched from my couch.

Before you rush to judge an entire city, make sure you at least give an unbiased look from their perspective.  This is another example to go along with the WWE Royal Rumble events from 2014 and 2015, as well as WWE WrestleMania 32 and 34.

Next: WWE Raw Review, Highlights, Grades, and Analysis

Yes, there are differences between all of those events, but at the same time the similarity is that WWE keeps ignoring all of the data in front of them and because of that they are leaving live crowds in disgust.