Predicting the match order at Fastlane 2021

It’s one thing to predict the winners and losers at Fastlane 2021, but how about taking a guess at the match order on that card?

Fastlane takes place tomorrow night (Sun., Mar. 21, 2021) from the ThunderDome at Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, Florida, with the main card beginning at 7 pm ET on Peacock and the WWE Network.

WWE has announced eight different segments for the main card of this event. Here is my subjective view of how important each of these eight segments rank, ordered from most important to least important.

1. Roman Reigns vs. Daniel Bryan
2. Alexa Bliss vs. Randy Orton
3. Jax & Baszler vs. Banks & Belair
4. Drew McIntyre vs. Sheamus
5. Braun Strowman vs. Shane McMahon
6. Big E vs. Apollo Crews
7. Shinsuke Nakamura vs. Seth Rollins
8. Matt Riddle vs. Mustafa Ali

This is such a strange card, as you can tell from seeing a scheduled match between Alexa Bliss and Randy Orton. I’m ranking that one near the top because it feels like this could be the night that The Fiend finally returns from the dead.

We don’t even know if Strowman vs. McMahon is happening. The match was made official on Monday. But it was wiped off WWE’s web site 24 hours later and currently remains missing from their official match listing for Fastlane. However, the match was hyped up by last night’s SmackDown commentary team as if it’s still taking place. Who knows what the hell is going on here?

Maybe it’s all just an angle for Shane to point out how stupid Braun is for thinking that he would actually wrestle him at this event. For the purposes of this exercise, I’m keeping this bout on the card. If this match happens, it’s more important than the mid-card and low-card matches because McMahon and Strowman are both presented as upper card performers.

McIntyre’s match is severely hurt because it has zero stakes, and Drew already has a much bigger match lined up for WrestleMania 37. But McIntyre’s status as the top babyface on Raw, combined with the No Holds Barred stipulation, are still enough for me to rank it ahead of the two mid-card championship matches.

Similarly, Rollins’ history as an upper card performer in WWE keeps his match ahead of Ali and Riddle. This is also because RETRIBUTION is a joke, while Riddle is a goofball on a scooter who only has a title because he pinned consistent loser John Morrison.

Main event

This one is obvious. Roman Reigns has not main evented a pay-per-view in nearly six months, but that’s going to change at Fastlane when he defends the Universal championship against Daniel Bryan, with special enforcer Edge also part of the mix. The only way this match isn’t the main event is if WWE has some incredible supernatural cinematic angle planned for Bliss and Orton that mandates the show-closing visual.

Opening match

The opening match of the night is usually one of the mid-level attractions with good work rate that doesn’t require a dedicated video package ahead of time to hype it up. I’d say the bottom four matches from the list all have a decent argument for receiving this position.

There are enough strange matches on this card that I still prefer keeping McIntyre’s No Holds Barred match for the second half of the night, just in case the Bliss and Strowman matches end up being angles (or not happening at all) rather than actual fights.

The least important match of the evening normally doesn’t start the main card, which veers me away from Riddle. That makes it a choice between Big E or Rollins. I’ll go with Rollins here, since his match definitely doesn’t need any kind of big hype video ahead of time, but is still a solid bet to deliver a worthwhile opener.

That gives me the following card:

Segment 1: Shinsuke Nakamura vs. Seth Rollins
Segment 2:
Segment 3:
Segment 4:
Segment 5:
Segment 6:
Segment 7:
Segment 8: Roman Reigns vs. Daniel Bryan

Upper card

I’ve already explained why I prefer keeping McIntyre’s match towards the end of the card. However, it could very well be the longest match of the night right along with the main event, so I don’t want to run them back-to-back. Therefore I’ll put the Bliss segment in between them, assuming it is more of an angle than an actual match.

That gives me the following card:

Segment 1: Shinsuke Nakamura vs. Seth Rollins
Segment 2:
Segment 3:
Segment 4:
Segment 5:
Segment 6: Drew McIntyre vs. Sheamus
Segment 7: Alexa Bliss vs. Randy Orton
Segment 8: Roman Reigns vs. Daniel Bryan

Everything else

Segment 2 is usually reserved for one of the least important matches of the night, so I’m putting Riddle and Ali there.

I’ll just follow along with an increasing level of importance from that point, so Big E goes in Segment 3, Shane lands in Segment 4, and the women’s tag gets Segment 5. Even in a scenario where Shane’s match doesn’t actually happen, I think it can be easily removed from this sequencing without disrupting the overall card.

Finalized card

So here is my final prediction for the match order at Fastlane, along with guesses on the bell-to-bell match times:

Segment 1: Shinsuke Nakamura vs. Seth Rollins (12 minutes)
Segment 2: Matt Riddle vs. Mustafa Ali (8)
Segment 3: Big E vs. Apollo Crews (13)
Segment 4: Braun Strowman vs. Shane McMahon (10)
Segment 5: Jax & Baszler vs. Banks & Belair (11)
Segment 6: Drew McIntyre vs. Sheamus (20)
Segment 7: Alexa Bliss vs. Randy Orton (3)
Segment 8: Roman Reigns vs. Daniel Bryan (18)

That’s my prediction for the match order at Fastlane 2021. What’s yours?