On Monday’s episode of Raw, WWE announced one of their featured matches for Extreme Rules. Raw Women’s Champion Becky Lynch will team with Universal Champion Seth Rollins to face Lacey Evans and Baron Corbin in a mixed tag team match.
Both Lynch and Rollins’ titles will be on the line in this match, but if Corbin and Evans lose, neither will receive another championship match for either belt as long as Lynch and Rollins are champions.
The build to this match began during the main event of Sunday’s Stomping Grounds pay-per-view, starting with Lynch once again forcing Evans to tap out to the Dis-Arm-Her to retain her championship in the opening match of the show.
Later in the evening, Rollins defended his belt against Corbin in a match where Corbin chose the special referee. Following a week of Rollins pulverizing prospective refs with a chair, Corbin selected Evans to officiate the bout.
Naturally, Evans used all the heel ref tropes to give Corbin an unfair advantage — slow counts, the “hurt arm prevents the three-count” routine, and a low blow — before Lynch, Evans’ aforementioned archnemesis and Rollins’ on-screen and real-life girlfriend, ran to the ring and quickly disposed of Evans, allowing Rollins to hold on to his gold.
WWE followed-up on this in the opening segment of Raw, when Lynch and Rollins brawled with their respective rivals before bantering back-and-forth to set up the upcoming match.
Ostensibly, this is seemingly the payoff to WWE making Lynch and Rollins’ legit relationship part of their canon. The company has spent weeks subtly and not-so-subtly referencing their relationship in multiple backstage segments.
We’ll see if this leads to more than just another match to extend the Lynch/Evans and Rollins/Corbin feuds for another month.
Extreme Rules will be live at the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia on Sunday, July 14.