WWE Great Balls of Fire 2017 review: What we learned, takeaways, future projections

What we took away, what we learned and what the future holds for the superstars of Monday Night RAW following Sunday night’s WWE Great Balls of Fire pay-per-view.

WWE held the first-ever Great Balls of Fire pay-per-view on Sunday night in Dallas and let’s go ahead and get the chuckles out of the way, shall we? The name of the event was just so bad on so many levels, but hey, at least Twitter had a good night with it and the opening video

package

piece was pretty entertaining. Was it just me or was Booker T having way too much fun saying “Great Balls of Fire in Big D?” I mean, things did get a little

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crazy on Sunday night but the Hall of Famer was just out of control.

Okay, now that we’ve got that out of the way, there actually was some decent wrestling to discuss from Sunday night, starting with the kickoff show. It’s still disappointing that the cruiserweight division has essentially been shoved aside because Neville might be the best-booked champion in WWE right now. The Tozawa ascent was done very well and these two put on a very entertaining match, even if the finish was a little off. However, that seems to be par for the course for a WWE pay-per-view recently so at least we got some entertainment out of it and it did get the crowd ready, which is what they were supposed to do and the Dallas audience stayed into things pretty much the entire night.

Let’s take a look at the main card — well, most of the main card anyway. I’m just letting you know up front that there will not be a slide dedicated to the instant classic between Heath Slater and Curt Hawkins. I know how much a lot of you were into that match and were devastated not to be able to see the finish but there was a little something else happening at the time. Let’s kick things off with the worst-booked program from the show.

Seth Rollins vs. Bray Wyatt

What we learned: When this match began, I was all set to say we learned that creative continues to stick it to Bray Wyatt but the surprising result here doesn’t exactly lend itself to that, does it?

The buildup to this match was done very poorly and it was extremely difficult to care about. Outside of simply giving both guys something to do, WWE creative didn’t really have much to go on for this one — I’m still a little disappointed that they seem to have just scrapped Bray Wyatt vs. Finn Balor — and this match just seemed like a filler. That’s fine for a Monday night but I’ve never been a fan of just having a match on a pay-per-view just to have a match, even if Bray actually did pick up a nice win here.

The match itself was perfectly fine but nothing to get overly excited about. There were some good spots and Rollins, as always, took some very nice bumps — l loved the DDT on the apron and the shove into the barricade — as Bray controlled most of the contest, which isn’t to say that Wyatt didn’t take some good shots himself, including that very nice Falcon Arrow. The end saw Wyatt poke Rollins in the eye with the ref shielded (more puns), which set up Sister Abigail and a rare big victory for The Eater of Worlds.

What’s next: It’s very hard to say what happens from here. History tells us that when WWE builds up Bray Wyatt, the next step will be bringing him right back down. I don’t think this feud gets all the way to SummerSlam but a rematch is likely in order given the finish. Trust me, I’m not saying I would mind a prolonged feud between these two but going into the second-biggest show of the year, I think there’s better things out there for both of these guys right now. Wyatt and Balor is an easy call and while Rollins won’t be in the Universal Title picture for a while, there’s plenty of guys on the midcard who could benefit from a feud with him. Perhaps an Intercontinental Championship run is in his future. His former Shield brethren couldn’t get it done so perhaps he steps up as a new challenger.