WWE.com Great Balls of Fire will take place on Sunday, July 9th.
Great Balls of Fire, the latest WWE pay-per-view, is almost here. The event will kick off at 8:00 p.m. Eastern Time on July 9th, but before the show itself, there will be the Great Balls of Fire kickoff. At least one match is always scheduled for the pre-show, so what can fans look forward to this time around?
The Great Balls of Fire kickoff show will actually feature a title match: the Cruiserweight Championship match between Neville and Akira Tozawa.
This feud really began with Titus O’Neil, who has recruited Tozawa to his “Titus Brand” and who claimed that Tozawa could beat Cruiserweight Champion Austin Aries in a match. Titus subsequently announced that he had negotiated a Cruiserweight Championship match between the two for Great Balls of Fire.
On a subsequent episode of 205 Live, Titus O’Neil promoted the Cruiserweight Championship match, and Neville said that Titus was just concerned about his brand and about making money. On the most recent episode of Raw, Neville showed his dominance by defeating Mustafa Ali in a match, getting Ali to submit.
Some fans have expressed disappointment that a title match did not make the show itself, especially after the cruiserweight division has been handled on WWE programming since its inception. Live crowds tend to not care about anything related to the cruiserweight division, potentially because the WWE makes it seem like something that is completely separate from the rest of the company by giving the segments purple ropes and having a lot of story developments take place on a different show. The only time that the cruiserweight division has really interacted with the main division was at Extreme Rules last month when Rich Swann teamed up with Sasha Banks in a match.
In addition to this match, Great Balls of Fire will also feature discussion among the hosts and some backstage segments. There is some speculation that there might be an impromptu match or segment between Finn Balor and The Drifter, with this possibly occurring on the kickoff. However, this is currently just speculation.