Let me start right at the top. Braun Strowman getting injured was huge. This guy has never held a WWE/Universal Championship. He has never held any titles in the WWE. I don't even consider him a long-term A-tier player. And yet, his injury really led to a shake up. He was feuding with Roman Reigns, and looked likely to move on to feud with Brock Lesnar. His likely Ambulance match against Roman Reigns this Sunday would have been one of the extreme matches to look forward to.
With his injury, however, the WWE has gone with a 5-man match to determine a number 1 contender for the Universal Championship. The first criticism for this match is obvious. Doesn't feel extreme enough, does it? That is a little disappointing.
The other issue is that the WWE has to take various feuds and essentially muddy them for the sake of throwing all these guys together. Seth Rollins and Samoa Joe were still feuding. Bray Wyatt looked like he would get a feud with Finn Balor. You now have all that in one match.
The storyline/feud issue is only part of it. This takes a number of matches off the card. This leaves the WWE with more time to kill for the PPV. One thing to do is obviously make some matches longer. I can definitely see the main event lasting at least half an hour. But they still need more matches than they have announced so far.
Will the answer come in the women's division? The key injury here has been Emma. Again, she never held a title in the WWE and is not someone I consider an A-tier player. She likely will get a title run down the road as a credible jobber. Right now, however, if she was healthy, she would be getting her storyline with Dana Brooke. Not a feud that would have led to a great match, but still something with some creative interest, and something that could have taken up some time at the PPV.
With that off the table, has the WWE done a good job creating other women's feuds on Raw to fill that spot? No. Sasha Banks has a "feud" with Alicia Fox where they are really just trading wins. It is not that interesting and some fans are annoyed by it. They want better for Sasha Banks. Mickie James and Nia Jax could have had a legitimate feud going on. A couple weeks ago, there seemed to be a partnership created between Alexa Bliss and Nia Jax. Nia Jax helped to distract Mickie James in a match to allow Alexa to win. Nia then attacked Mickie James after the match. And the WWE has just not followed up with this. Alexa Bliss is back on her own, including her beating Mickie James cleanly this week, then attacking her with a kendo stick. What the WWE has done here has just not helped the partnership potential between Alexa Bliss and Nia Jax and the feud potential between Mickie James and Nia Jax. Needless to say, it has really hurt Mickie James the most. Her last two Raw matches have been losses and her getting beaten up more after the match. And the failure to properly follow up with Nia Jax attacking her just leaves her looking buried.
And yet, I would not be surprised to see another women's match added to the card. Aside from being a non-title match, it will be a match between credible jobbers. Whether it is Sasha Banks vs. Alicia Fox or Nia Jax vs. Mickie James, none of these women are pushed as stars. And that makes whatever the WWE chooses to do just a pure filler match.
That is actually something you never really saw in the diva era. How often did you see two credible jobbers have a feud that led to them facing each other in a PPV non-title match? You can bring up Melina vs. Jillian when both were on Smackdown, but Smackdown didn't have a women's title back then. Everything was non-title. Moreover, Melina and Jillian had gotten some periphery angles on Smackdown. They were not yet getting the filler and jobber pushes that credible jobbers get. We are now at a point where the WWE is willing to put two women against each other that don't have anything going for them besides wrestling credibility, and are getting lackluster, sloppy feuds. Some people might consider women getting this treatment progress. It's filler. Melina vs. Jillian was a more meaningful PPV match back at Judgment Day 2006 than whatever non-title filler match the WWE chooses for the women at Extreme Rules, if they choose anything.
The last injury to bring up is Dash Wilder, a member of The Revival. Once again, someone that had no title success on the main roster. The team hardly got a chance to do much since debuting. And yet, the WWE was obviously interested in pushing them. They would definitely have been getting another PPV match this weekend.
The WWE still has something for The Hardys to do, defending the titles against heel Sheamus and Cesaro. But what about the other teams? The WWE might be able to throw something together. Once again, much like I said with the women's division, whatever the WWE chooses to throw together will be filler. This PPV feels like it will have a lot of filler. Most of the blame cannot go on the WWE. Injuries happen. But they do deserve some of the blame for not building up these other feuds and storylines better.
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