WWE Great Balls of Fire was a professional wrestling pay-per-view (PPV) and livestreaming event produced by WWE. It was held exclusively for wrestlers from the promotion's Raw brand division. The event took place on July 9, 2017, at the American Airlines Center in Dallas, Texas. The event's title referenced Jerry Lee Lewis' song of the same name, which was used as the event's theme song. It was a one-off event by WWE, as following WrestleMania 34 the following year, brand-exclusive PPVs were discontinued, resulting in WWE reducing the amount of yearly PPVs produced.
Nine matches were contested at the event, including one on the Kickoff pre-show. In the main event, Brock Lesnar defeated Samoa Joe to retain the Universal Championship. In other prominent matches, Braun Strowman defeated Roman Reigns in an ambulance match, Cesaro and Sheamus retained the Raw Tag Team Championship against The Hardy Boyz (Jeff Hardy and Matt Hardy) in a 30-minute Iron Man match, and in the opening bout, Bray Wyatt defeated Seth Rollins.
This date's event was originally announced to revive the Bad Blood PPV and be held at the XL Center in Hartford, Connecticut, which would have been the first Bad Blood since 2004 and the fourth Bad Blood event overall. However, these plans were scrapped and this event was held instead.
Production
Background
On March 21, 2017, WWE announced that it would be reviving the Bad Blood pay-per-view (PPV) to be held on July 9, 2017, from the XL Center in Hartford, Connecticut. This would have been the fourth Bad Blood event, the first held since 2004, and the first Bad Blood to livestream on the WWE Network. On April 28, however, the company announced that these plans were scrapped in favor of a new event titled Great Balls of Fire which would instead be held at the American Airlines Center in Dallas, Texas on July 9. Tickets went on sale on May 5 through Ticketmaster. To coincide with the brand extension that was reintroduced in July 2016, in which the promotion again split its main roster between the Raw and SmackDown brands where wrestlers were exclusively assigned to perform, the event was held exclusively for the Raw brand.
The event's title referenced Jerry Lee Lewis' song of the same name, which was ultimately used as the event's theme song. WWE Hall of Famer Jerry Lawler stated that his personal attorney, who also represented Lewis, had asked him about pursuing legal action over the title, but that he "called them and got everything worked out", including securing rights to use the song itself as part of the event. The name received negative criticism on social media.
Storylines
The event comprised nine matches, including one on the Kickoff pre-show, that resulted from scripted storylines, where wrestlers portrayed heroes, villains, or less distinguishable characters in scripted events that built tension and culminated in a wrestling match or series of matches. Results were predetermined by WWE's writers on the Raw brand, while storylines were produced on WWE's weekly television shows, Monday Night Raw and the cruiserweight-exclusive 205 Live.
After Brock Lesnar won the Universal Championship at WrestleMania 33, Lesnar's advocate Paul Heyman teased a match between Lesnar and Roman Reigns as they were the only two men to have defeated The Undertaker at WrestleMania in the following episode of Raw. Lesnar was notably absent from Raw for several weeks due to his status as a part-time wrestler. During this time, Reigns, Braun Strowman, Seth Rollins, Finn Bálor, Bray Wyatt, and Samoa Joe each expressed their desire to challenge Lesnar for the Universal Championship. Due to Strowman being sidelined from an arm injury, General Manager Kurt Angle scheduled an extreme rules fatal five-way match at Extreme Rules between the remaining five, with the winner earning a title match at Great Balls of Fire. Joe won the match and confronted Heyman the following night on Raw, stating that he did not fear Lesnar and wanted to face him. Joe then applied the "Coquina Clutch" on Heyman to send a message to Lesnar, who returned the following week and got into a brawl with Joe, which was broken up by the Raw locker room. On the June 26 episode, as Lesnar was making his entrance, Joe ambushed Lesnar from behind and applied the "Coquina Clutch" on him three times, nearly causing Lesnar to pass out. Joe stopped the third attempt only after some other wrestlers pulled him off of Lesnar. On the final Raw before Great Balls of Fire, the two had a live split-screen interview. They taunted each other and an enraged Joe left to find where Lesnar was. He eventually found him, but was held back by security.