Backstage News On Why The Extreme Rules Multi-Man Match Was Canceled

So the answer is….Vince? Last week on Monday Night Raw, General Manager Kurt Angle announced a multi-man match with details to be announced for Extreme Rules to crown a new #1 contender for Brock Lesnar’s Universal Title. Bobby Lashley and Roman Reigns were both named to the match, with more names to be announced. Then this week, Angle announced that due to some contractual issues, the match had been canceled. That was the on screen reason for what happened, but what was the backstage reason?

Tuesday on Wrestling Observer Live, Bryan Alvarez shed some light on the situation, talking about what caused the match to be changed. According to Alvarez, the reason was simply that Vince McMahon changed his mind on the match. The previous week McMahon had wanted to do the multi-man match and changed his mind at some point in between, meaning the match was scrapped. Alvarez went on to say that the match had nothing to do with Lesnar, who is just waiting to be told what to do. Here are Alvarez’s comments, with transcription courtesy of Ringsidenews.com:

“Yesterday I guess I was talking about ‘maybe Brock Lesnar really doesn’ want to face Roman Reigns again?’ Maybe Brock Lesnar would rather face Bobby Lashley — none of that’s true, none of that happened. It was Vince just decided. He had announced a multi-man match and sometime during the week he had decided, ‘I don’t want to do this anymore.’ And so he scrapped it. That’s the story. Had nothing to do with Brock Lesnar. Brock’s just sitting there waiting to find out what they’re going to do. Vince just changed his mind.”

Here’s how Reigns and Lashley handled the news.

Brock Lesnar's contractual negotiations hit a snag: Raw, June 25, 2018

Opinion: I can completely see this making sense as McMahon is kind of known for being all over the place and it’s not surprising to see him change his mind this fast. That being said, I’m glad that he did as I don’t need to see another multi-man match anytime soon. Those things have been way too common in WWE as of late and having another one seems to be quite a bit of a stretch as far as being creative with the booking. Give us something a little more personal and see if things don’t feel a bit fresher.

Do you think there is more to this than McMahon changing his mind? What do you want to see at Extreme Rules? Let us know in the comments below.

Thomas Hall has been a wrestling fan for over thirty years and has seen over 50,000 wrestling matches. He has also been a wrestling reviewer since 2009 with over 5,000 full shows covered. You can find his work at kbwrestlingreviews.com, or check out his Amazon author page with 27 wrestling books. His latest book is the NXT: The Full Sail Years Volume III: From Dallas To New Orleans.

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