Ranking every main roster PPV of 2017
2017 was a year of high highs and low lows in the WWE Universe, and the pay-per-view events were no exceptions. There were 16 in total, a number that trended more into overkill territory than finding a sweet spot. Fortunately, 2018 will only have 14 such events. While still high, it's an improvement.
With the final PPV, Clash of Champions, now in the books, it's time to look back on the events that delivered and the ones that didn't. Unfortunately, one of the downsides of the WWE Network, priced much lower than the old PPV model, is that the company often feels content to slap together a card that feels more sleepy than spectacular. After all, $9.99 is much less to part with than $60 or more. Nevertheless, 2017 still gave us a few gems. The trick is finding them.
#16 Battleground (July 23)
Ask wrestling fans to rank things and the consensus is often impossible to find. At best, you get an agreement, in principle, on a rough list. Unfortunately for everyone who witnessed it, this event is easy to get a consensus on. By miles, it was the worst pay-per-view of 2017.
Battleground featured not one, but two of the five worst matches of the year. The flag match between John Cena and Rusev was truly awful, a perfect storm of all of professional wrestling's worst tropes. Not to finish there, Battleground also showed off a horrid excuse for a main event in Randy Orton meeting Jinder Mahal for the WWE Championship inside a Punjabi Prison. An atrocious 30-minute borefest, it was hard to decide which was worse - the prison limiting your visibility or the fact that you would instinctively want to see what was going on inside.
The undercard was terrible too, giving us a completely unremarkable bout between Shinsuke Nakamura and Baron Corbin that dented the former's momentum and further exposed just how bland the latter really is, yet another directionless multi-woman match that featured Lana (enough said), and Sami Zayn defeating the soon-to-be invisible Mike Kanellis in a totally one-dimensional affair. Even a match featuring AJ Styles vs. Kevin Owens was rather disappointing by their standards and seemed to have a botched finish.
There was one good match - The Usos vs. The New Day and that match was very good indeed, but it wasn't enough to save this disaster.
Don't be surprised if 2017's Battleground winds up in contention for the worst PPV of the 2010s.