WWE Extreme Rules 2022 review: The return of Bray Wyatt

Saturday’s WWE Extreme Rules will likely be remembered for one thing and one thing only: the return of Bray Wyatt. 

Indeed, once Matt Riddle’s hand was raised at the end of the show, a long…performance piece, I guess, started. It began with real-life counterparts of The Firefly Funhouse puppets appearing in the crowd. Images of the Firefly Funhouse, now decrepit, dustry and broken down, were shown. A door off the stage was then seen, and after a Max Headroom-like unintelligible promo played, the door opened. 

And sure enough, it was Wyatt with a new mask, blowing out the lantern as the show ended followed by a final full screen image of what I guess is a shiny new logo.

Wyatt is a unique persona who is very creative: two things that made him stand out in an era of WWE where everything felt stringent and stale. But his last persona, The Fiend, was booked so poorly it actively hurt everyone he came into contact with (Seth Rollins perhaps being the best example). 

It also doesn’t help that Wyatt, at best, is an average wrestler, something that stands out with a roster filled with good-to-great workers. I’m all on board with giving this latest run a try, as perhaps Triple H will refrain from tapping in into aspects of Wyatt that were actively bad. But at the same time, it wasn’t like I was actively rooting for his return, either.

Six matches took place prior to the big reveal at the end of the show.

Going into Extreme Rules, I thought this had a chance to be a very strong show. So it was surprising that, in the end, it just ended up being, as I wrote on Twitter, an aggressively okay show.

The highlight of the event ended up being the opener where The Brawling Brutes bested Imperium in the second-ever Good Old Fashioned Donnybrook match. These teams have terrific chemistry with one another and it showed — just awesome violence that even had Gunther taking a Razor’s Edge into a table. 

With The Brawling Brutes’ win, I don’t expect the feud to be over as I feel like there could be at least one more match between Gunther and Sheamus in the future.

Matt Riddle finally got a win over Seth Rollins in the Fight Pit match. 

The match was okay, good in some places, but the triangle finish felt like it came out of nowhere, and as a result, the match kind of felt flat. I thought their match last month at Clash at the Castle was way better. Former two-division UFC Champion Daniel Cormier, who was the advertised special guest referee, did nothing of note. There were legitimately points in the match where I forgot he was there. I don’t remember any part of the match where he got involved, only at the end where he raised Riddle’s hand. That was weird.

Bayley and Bianca Belair had a good ladder match that had some cool spots. The problem, and I think this was a theme throughout the show, is that I can only see so many ladder matches, table spots, kendo stick shots, and other WWE trademark violence that it all kind of blends together, and I think this match and others hurt because of that. 

I never thought Bayley was going to win the title here, but I do wonder where her stable goes following this loss. I guess we could build towards a Survivor Series WarGames match with Bayley and Belair captaining teams, but we’ll see.

The SmackDown Women’s title match wasn’t particularly good. 

Morgan sending Rousey through a table was a cool spot, but that about ends the positives. The baseball bat spots just didn’t work and the finish was weird with Liv laughing as she passed out via a weird submission that I didn’t think came across well in execution. The goal eventually seems to be Ronda and Becky Lynch at WrestleMania, so naturally I’d expect Ronda to remain champion up to that point.

Karrion Kross probably shouldn’t have lost his first match back in the company. Problem is, he had this kind of match as his big return match. While there were some cool stiff shots during his strap match against Drew McIntyre, the match never really got going, and the pepper spray in the eyes finish was not something I would have done. Kross wasn’t someone I had in mind when it came to bringing back people, and this match didn’t really sway me otherwise. Cool entrance, though.

Edge and Finn Balor had a very long I Quit match that went 30 minutes.

Shave ten minutes out of this match, which involved a lot of brawling around the arena, and it would have been better. Still, this wasn’t bad by any means and had a strong storyline-driven ending with Edge being forced to quit after Rhea Ripley threatened to conchairto Beth Phoenix, who got involved during the match. Once Edge quit, Ripley gave Beth the conchairto anyway, because she’s mean. The crowd was super into the drama at the end, including Dominik taking out his father Rey and Edge low blowing Dominik, so this was a success,

I was hoping for a better show than what we got out of Extreme Rules, but there was definitely some good stuff throughout the show, specifically in the Balor vs. Edge and Brawling Brutes vs. Imperium match. Next up is Crown Jewel on November 5, which…hoo boy. I better save anything involving Saudi Arabia in its own column.