WWE Fastlane 2021: Three things the company got wrong on the PPV

As an overall product, WWE has produced far worse pay-per-view outings than WWE Fastlane 2021. We saw a few good moments throughout the roughly two-and-a-half-hour event, but fans also had to endure plenty of issues that should aggravate even the most ardent of WWE defenders.

Included in that muck is whatever that “match” was between Randy Orton and Alexa Bliss — it was basically an extended angle with 3-4 minutes of stalling and second-rate special effects — but I don’t feel like litigating all the awfulness contained in that “bout” (and the feud in general).

Plus, The Fiend’s new mask looked cool enough.

So, let’s focus on everything else that wasn’t good.

These are the things WWE got wrong at WWE Fastlane 2021

3. The finish to Big E vs. Apollo Crews

Given how vicious and personal the Big E/Apollo Crews feud had become, it was encouraging to see these two keep that same energy in this Intercontinental Championship match.

Forgoing a traditional lockup in favor of heavy blows and high-impact offense, these two matched the tenor of the angles and promos they took part in prior to this contest.

Unfortunately, WWE fell into their usual trap of booking a finish designed to protect both wrestlers only for it to make the combatants look worse than they did going in.

That’s right, the company once again went to its “bad finish” roulette wheel and apparently landed on “weird surprise rollup finish that was so surprising that it confused the announcers”. With Crews attacking Big E after, it begs the question: Why not just have Crews win the title?

If WWE didn’t want either man to lose, holding off on this match until WrestleMania 37 was also an option. It would’ve been much better than what we got here.

2. Everything WWE did with Bianca Belair and Sasha Banks

The build to a Bianca Belair vs. Sasha Banks match at WrestleMania 37 shouldn’t be this hard to pull off, yet here is WWE once again making the easy look impossible.

Instead of having Belair and Banks beat separate opponents for weeks while showing sit-down interviews and training montages, we instead got Reginald and TWO WWE Women’s Tag Team Championship matches that no one could’ve possibly asked for.

Astoundingly, WWE managed to book a finish for this one that was significantly worse than the one they cooked up for the same match at last month’s Elimination Chamber show.

The ending came after Banks had the match won after locking Shayna Baszler in The Bank Statement, but Nia Jax shoved Belair into Banks to break it up.

This of course led to more squabbling between Banks and Belair, which then led to Baszler rolling up Banks to retain the tag team titles for her and Jax.

As bad as that was, things got much worse after the match.

Following their loss, we got more bickering and finger-pointing between the two women set to wrestle for the SmackDown Women’s Championship at WrestleMania before Banks slapped Belair across the face, called her a “rookie” once again, and left.

And what did Belair do in response to this? She pointed at the WrestleMania sign instead of chasing after and fighting Banks. And people wonder why WWE eventually turns all their babyfaces heel.

Goodness, why does WWE have to make the simplest things so hard?

1. WWE Fastlane 2021’s existence on the pay-per-view calendar

As the build and some of the match results indicate, this show didn’t need to happen, particularly given how close this event is to WrestleMania.

More than half of this show felt like an extended episode of SmackDown or a slightly condensed version of Raw (or those Saturday Night’s Main Event’s the company ran during the mid-to-late 2000s).

At least those shows don’t cost extra to watch.

As WWE leans more and more into becoming a “content mill” wrestling promotion that values quantity over quality, the promotion will eventually need to address the ongoing oversaturation of the product at some point, lest they risk further eroding a consumer base that’s been dwindling for the better part of two decades.

Yes, there will always be a segment of WWE fans who will — or are required to as part of being a media member — watch just about everything the company produces, but it doesn’t need to worry about catering to those fans. It needs to worry about how these excess amounts of shows negatively impact the very storytelling they claim to specialize in.

After all, what’s the point of running all of these PPVs if there’s nothing to entice people to watch outside of “it’s a WWE show”?