How predictable was Extreme Rules 2021?

When a WWE pay-per-view (PPV) event is on the horizon, the staff of Cageside Seats usually offers predictions for all of the advertised matches on the card. This data can be used to calculate a simple predictability rating for any event.

Seven different staff members predicted the winners for the matches that took place on September 26 at Extreme Rules 2021. Staff members received credit for a correct prediction of the winner of any match, even if they were wrong about the context of that victory.

The Cageside Seats match preview articles for Extreme Rules also offered polls allowing Cagesiders the chance to weigh in with their predictions.

The following chart contains the prediction results for these matches. The leftmost column includes the match list. Below each staff member’s name, the number “1” is a correct prediction and the number “0” is an incorrect prediction. Empty boxes indicate where no prediction data was available. The rightmost column contains the overall predictability rating for every match, and the very last row shows the overall accuracy of each individual staff member.

The New Day’s match against Bobby Lashley, Omos, and AJ Styles was omitted since it was not booked until the day of the show.

The line for Liv Morgan’s match can be interpreted as follows: “7 out of 8 predictions for Liv Morgan’s match were correct, which is a predictability rating of 87.5%.”

These numbers add up to 30 correct predictions and 18 incorrect predictions, which means the overall predictability rating for Extreme Rules is 62.5%.

This decreases the overall predictability rating for 2021 WWE PPVs from 69.6% down to 68.9% (323 correct vs. 146 incorrect predictions). For comparison’s sake, the overall predictability ratings each year from from 2015 through 2020 were 63.4%, 61.1%, 61.6%, 58.7%, 63.7%, and 65.5%, respectively.

Now here are the voting percentages from the Cageside community polls for the winners of these matches:

• 86%: Liv Morgan
• 71%: The Usos
• 42%: Charlotte Flair
• 66%: Damian Priest (30% Hardy, 4% Sheamus)
• 18%: Bianca Belair
• 60%: Roman Reigns

WWE did not announce a winner of Bianca Belair’s match against Becky Lynch, which ended after Sasha Banks interfered. Sasha attacked Belair first, so I am judging Bianca to be the winner by Disqualification. Banks did attack Lynch later on, and no winner was announced, so one might also argue that it’s a No Contest.

Since then, Belair has gone on to wrestle in two Raw main events (Oct. 4 & Oct. 18) and win those by DQ as well. She also wrestled in a tag team match without a winner on the Oct. 11 episode of Raw. It sure would be nice if WWE stopped being so creatively bankrupt and actually booked some interesting finishes, particularly in matches at or near the main event level. As of this writing, three consecutive Raw main event matches have ended in DQ or count out. At least the DQ finish at Extreme Rules featured the return of a big star in Banks.

The Cageside staff members weren’t buying for a second that The Demon had a chance against Roman Reigns, but 40% of the community voters wanted to believe. Their hopes were dashed after Finn flopped around like a fish on the outside of the ring and then fell off a broken ring rope. It’s a malfunction that WWE never bothered to explain.

Charlotte Flair once again keeps everyone guessing about the outcomes of her PPV matches. The seven Cageside staff members slightly favored Flair to win at Extreme Rules, whereas the community voters slightly favored Alexa Bliss.

A very high percentage of voters correctly figured Liv Morgan would beat Carmella on the pre-show. Morgan went on to lose against Carmella in the match that actually mattered a couple weeks later in the first round of the Queen’s Crown Tournament.

The staff of Cageside Seats had an average night with predicting the winners at Extreme Rules. How did you fare, Cagesiders?