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EditorialWWE Great Balls of Fire 2017 PPV Card Predictions for Match Lineup

WWE Great Balls of Fire 2017 PPV Card Predictions for Match Lineup

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No matter the jokes, WWE is officially going ahead with Great Balls of Fire, which means the next step for us to take is to try to figure out if the card is going to look as much of a laugh riot as the name of the event is.

Per usual, I like to try to give my extended projections for which matches I think we’ll be getting on the card, what makes the most sense, what missteps WWE may take and so forth before it’s all been fully fleshed out and announced while also recapping what we do know for sure is being set up. This also allows everyone else to leave their comments below to sound off on which directions they think WWE will go so we can trace back to this point and say we were right all along, or that we wish they would have done something different, so on and so forth.

Tonight on Raw, we saw the fallout from Extreme Rules 2017 and as such, this is what I see in my crystal ball when trying to guess the lineup for Sunday, July 9th.

CONFIRMED MATCHES

Universal Championship: Brock Lesnar (c) vs. Samoa Joe

PRESUMABLE MATCHES

Intercontinental Championship Match: The Miz (c) vs. Dean Ambrose or Finn Balor or Roman Reigns

Who participates in this match is entirely dependent upon whether or not Braun Strowman is ready to wrestle.

At first, I thought this would be an obvious rematch where Dean Ambrose faces The Miz. After all, their feud hasn’t ended judged by the actions that went down on Raw this week.

However, Elias Samson is still in the mix. He may work his way into the feud enough that by the time Great Balls of Fire comes along, someone else is named the new No. 1 contender to The Miz’s title and Ambrose has set his eyes on Samson.

Hypothetical scenario: Ambrose challenges The Miz next week for the title, Samson interferes, costs Ambrose the win and we still have several weeks where either Roman Reigns or Finn Balor can begin a feud with The Miz.

Between those two options, if Strowman is available to wrestle, he’ll clearly go after Reigns, meaning Balor vs. Miz is the Intercontinental Championship match. If not, then Reigns is a definite possibility as WWE surely won’t ignore putting him on the card.

Dean Ambrose vs. Elias Samson

As mentioned above, I think this is a definite possibility if Ambrose vs. Miz isn’t dragged out until the pay-per-view.

Roman Reigns vs. Braun Strowman

Likewise, if Strowman is able to return, then I think Reigns vs. Strowman is a guarantee. I don’t think that will necessarily be the case, but we’ll have to see…

Seth Rollins vs. Bray Wyatt

I guess WWE opted to not go straight to the Finn Balor feud and showed us this in two ways: 1) Balor didn’t bother putting on the face paint at Extreme Rules, so they’re likely holding off on that until they can make it feel special with Wyatt, and 2) Rollins put a lot of emphasis on not being Wyatt, who later interfered in his match against Samoa Joe.

The general rule of thumb is if someone interrupts someone else’s match, that’s the easiest call in the world that those two will feud for a bit, so Rollins vs. Wyatt looks to be as close to a lock as anything else.

Raw Women’s Championship Fatal 4-Way Match: Alexa Bliss (c) vs. Nia Jax vs. Mickie James vs. Dana Brooke

I cannot imagine WWE wanting to follow up the Alexa Bliss / Bayley feud with one starring Nia Jax. They have to know that Jax is their toughest woman to book as she not only is the least experienced in the ring but she also dwarfs everybody—particularly Bliss.

A match between just those two will be absolutely awful and the inclusion of Dana Brooke and Mickie James gives me hope that we’ll get a Fatal 4-Way instead, as that will help mask the problems with Jax (and Brooke for that matter) while giving the writing team time to figure out where they want to go next. It seems rather obvious they are waiting until SummerSlam can kick into gear and I wouldn’t expect much, if anything, to come out of any division on Raw until then—least of all the women’s division that, sadly, never quite gets the attention that the SmackDown division does.

Cruiserweight Championship Match

Neville is set to defend the Cruiserweight Championship against TJP on 205 Live, but not only do I think he’ll retain, I also think he’ll move on to a different feud in the meantime. He’s already wrestled Jack Gallagher enough, so I don’t think it will be him, and Austin Aries is out of the picture for sure, while Mustafa Ali is still tied up with Drew Gulak.

Ruling out the other heels like Brian Kendrick and Tony Nese, as well as the ever-absent HoHo Lun and Gran Metalik (and the injured Lince Dorado), the go-to choices have to be either Akira Tozawa or Cedric Alexander, as we’ve already seen Rich Swann drop the belt to Neville.

Between those two, I’m not sure who I’d say this leans more heavily toward. Alexander is building up some steam after returning from injury, so he may be the one they go with, but Tozawa just ended his feud with Kendrick and will be looking for something else to do. The random tease of him being associated with Titus O’Neil has me wondering if O’Neil will start managing someone else from 205 Live and that person will feud with Tozawa, but I may be reading far too much into this.

Neville against Tozawa or Neville against Alexander are both matches I’d like to see, so I’m down either way.

Raw Tag Team Championship Match: Cesaro and Sheamus (c) vs. The Hardy Boyz

Enzo Amore and Big Cass may be in a feud with Luke Gallows and Karl Anderson right now, but may not. They also had teased a potential feud with The Revival, yet that tag team is still out of the ring for a while. Heath Slater and Rhyno were jobbed out this week, so they surely aren’t going to get title shots. Basically, unless we get a random new tag team that surges in the next week or two, the easy call is to just assume The Hardy Boyz will take advantage of their rematch clause and this will be the end of the feud between these two teams, with Cesaro and Sheamus retaining.

POTENTIAL OTHER MATCHES

Goldust vs. R-Truth

These two have to fight at some point, right? They aren’t just going to sit backstage and cut promos for the next 10 weeks, I hope.

Big Cass vs. Big Show

If this continues, we might see Big Show temporarily feuding with Big Cass as the top suspect in the beatings, even though it doesn’t make much sense why Show would be the one to attack both Enzo and Cass. To tell you the truth, I think WWE’s creative team doesn’t even know what they want to do with this, and they’re just looping this into storylines with the hopes that by the time it gets to where they feel they need to pull the trigger, they’ll have settled on a name. At least for now, Big Show is the person most tied to Enzo and Cass and the tension between Show/Cass could lead to something.

Something with Kalisto vs. The Titus Brand

Maybe Kalisto teams up with Akira Tozawa to face Apollo Crews and Titus O’Neil. Maybe by this point, Crews and O’Neil are no longer a thing and they are fighting each other while Kalisto does nothing. Maybe Crews will turn on O’Neil, who will get a new tag team partner, and we’ll see Kalisto and Crews team up against O’Neil and TBD.

Those are my predictions, but what matches do YOU think will be on the card? Drop your guesses in the comments below!

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