WWE left their fans in stitches this week when they announced the name for their new pay-per-view.Following Payback, which takes place tonight as of this writing, we’ll have Randy Orton’s WWE Championship defence to look forward to when he battles Jinder Mahal at the SmackDown-exclusive Backlash event, before the Extreme Rules and the always-exciting Money in the Bank event takes place.

NEW PAY-PER-VIEW

However, WWE made a big change this week to their July 9 pay-per-view, which was originally pencilled in to be the return of the Bad Blood event, but WWE nixed those plans.

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Instead, Brock Lesnar will make his first defence of his Universal Championship inside the American Airlines Center at the Great Balls of Fire event and you can imagine how fans - and even current WWE stars such as Big E and Becky Lynch - took that decision.

However, a new report from Ring Side News has shed some light on why WWE may have made this decision, and you can’t blame them for making the change even if the new name isn’t exactly the best WWE has produced.

GREAT BALLS OF FIRE

Their report comes from the latest edition of the Wrestling Observer Live featuring Bryan Alvarez, where he speculated that the death of Brian Pillman may have played a role in WWE going ahead with the change.

Fans will remember the popular ‘Loose Cannon’ most famously for his gun incident back in 1996 when he was feuding with Stone Cold Steve Austin in a segment that’s still shocking to this day.

Sadly, Pillman passed away on the same day WWE held its 1997 event, Bad Blood: In Your House where Pillman was scheduled to face Mick Foley’s Dude Love character on the show, but was found dead earlier that afternoon.

The speculation is that this is why WWE is opting not to use the name of the event as the death and the event happened on the same day, even though the company did go on to have more Bad Blood events even after Pillman had passed away.

The report adds that WWE is now more politically correct than it was compared to 2003 or 2004 – two years where the event did take place and witnessed matches such as Triple H vs. Shawn Michaels inside of a Hell in a Cell, along with Goldberg vs. Chris Jericho the year earlier.

Great Balls of Fire isn’t a name you can take seriously, but you can understand why WWE would want to move away from Bad Blood; even if there were probably several better options available.

What do you make of the rumoured reason WWE changed the name of the event? Have YOUR say in the comments section below and the second episode of GiveMeSport’s WWE podcast is here! Check out the inside info from our coverage in Orlando. https://soundcloud.com/user-818579649/givemesport-inside-wrestlemania-33

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