Murphy’s Blog: WWE Sunday Night’s Main Event Predictions – Will Oba Femi vs. Bron Breakker have a clean finish? Will Randy Orton beat hometown hero Cody Rhodes?

By Don Murphy, ProWrestling.net Contributor (@DonThePredictor)

WWE presents another edition of Saturday…excuse me….Sunday Night’s Main Event. This edition takes place Sunday night in Atlanta, Georgia, at State Farm Arena. Unlike recent Main Event episodes, this feels like a more loaded show than usual, even though there are only four matches advertised (with a fifth match likely to happen as you’ll see below). It’s a curious decision to do this on a holiday weekend, but that seems to be the norm these days with companies leveraging the holiday weekends for pay-per-views and premium live events. I also think this is WWE/TKO’s way of throwing a bone to their other streaming partner, NBC/Peacock, to help potentially grab a few extra subscribers. The top two matches would arguably be main events on higher-profile shows, with one in particular that has me scratching my head a bit. More on that below. Let’s run down the card!

Oba Femi vs. Bron Breakker. The timing of this match baffles me. On the one hand, I get it. WWE/TKO is in the process of strapping the rocket to Femi, and it’s likely that by the time we get to WrestleMania next year, he’s in one of the main championship matches. That said, I don’t get why, at this point in the journey, they’re pitting him against Breakker. Sure – Breakker has been plagued by injury and suffered a couple of losses to Seth Rollins. Despite that, I think he still has a tremendous upside, and there’s room for two stars at the top. They have multiple brands and multiple paths they can take. I would have saved this for down the line. Send them both on a journey and make their first meeting mean something. I don’t see a scenario where Femi loses, and my only hope is that Breakker continues to look strong.

Coming out of this, I would think and hope that the play would be to have Breakker turn babyface and leave the Vision, which is on life support as it is. The logical feud would be Breakker and a returning Bronson Reed. I’m not sure how I feel about that because I don’t want either one of them to take a loss in that program. But if Breakker was to go over, I am confident that Reed could keep his heat, especially if they keep him with Paul Heyman.

As for Femi, if the plan is to have him challenge for one of the titles at WrestleMania (likely Roman Reigns), we have a lot of time to get there, and aside from Breakker and Reed, the pool of heels is a bit shallow. I suppose they can start having him feud with Jacob Fatu, Royce Keys, or any of the players involved in the Bloodline universe before he gets to Roman, but that’s seven months of storytelling that they’ll have to make interesting.

Don Predicts: Oba Femi defeats Bron Breakker.

Cody Rhodes vs. Randy Orton. WWE/TKO is really trying to paint Orton as the villain here. The show is in Atlanta, so I think you’ll get mainly a pro-Cody crowd, but I think Orton, at this stage of his career, is beyond a traditional heel or babyface. He’s seen as a legacy star and is going to be cheered by a portion, if not the majority, of the fans, whether he’s babyface or heel.

I expect this match to be a setup for Money in the Bank in October, with some form of a non-clean finish to create the need for a rubber match and the culmination of the feud.

Don Predicts: Randy Orton defeats Cody Rhodes.

U.S. Champion Baron Corbin vs. Lil Yachty in a five-minute challenge (Trick Williams will get a same-night U.S. Title shot if Yachty survives the five minutes). I see how some people would say that this is silly and wasteful booking. I’m actually OK with it. I respect Yachty putting his all into his role, and down the road, if they chose to do so, I could see him playing a good antagonist to Williams by turning on him. Plus, if you go back as far as I do with this show, the Main Event has often been the place for sports entertainment silliness (e.g., pie-eating contests, food fights, weddings, etc.) Given this, I’m good with this match serving as a conduit to get us to another match between Corbin and Williams on this show. By the way, I’ve enjoyed Corbin’s run thus far. No more campy, silly gimmicks – just a straightforward heel. I see no reason to take the title off him at this stage.

Don Predicts: Lil Yachty lasts the five minutes against Baron Corbin; Corbin defeats Trick Williams to retain the U.S. Title.

Charlotte Flair, Alexa Bliss, and Tatum Paxley vs. Jade Cargill, B-Fab, and Michin in a six-woman tag. The SmackDown women’s division is spinning its wheels a bit while Chelsea Green is preparing to face Nia Jax as her first challenger for the WWE Women’s title. The odd couple pairing with Bliss, Paxley, and Flair has been cute in continuing to give Flair more personality, but ultimately, it’s not advancing anywhere from a storyline perspective. I feel the same about Cargill in the baddies, who have seemingly been spinning their wheels since Cargill dropped the title.

Don Predicts: Charlotte Flair, Alexa Bliss, and Tatum Paxley defeat Jade Cargill, B-Fab, and Michin in a six-woman tag.

Quavo will open the show with a performance of an unreleased track from his forthcoming album. Join Jason Powell for his live review of Sunday Night’s Main Event as the show streams live on Peacock in the United States (and Netflix internationally) at 7CT/8ET. Jake Barnett and Jason will team up for a same-night audio review, available to everyone as next week’s Pro Wrestling Boom Podcast. Enjoy Sunday Night’s Main Event and enjoy wrestling!