Before Extreme Rules 2021 had even started, WWE was already telling fans to get ready for Crown Jewel and Survivor Series, making Sunday's pay-per-view feel like a bit of an afterthought.

That was further illustrated by the complete lack of attention given to the idea of gimmicks and stipulations for these bouts, which is traditionally the whole point of the event.

Extreme Rules did have some matches with a lot of potential on the card, though, regardless of the poor setup.

Fans finally got a chance to see what would have happened if Bianca Belair had a real match with Becky Lynch instead of a 26-second squash. The Tribal Chief had a demon to conquer, and Charlotte Flair had a "possessed" opponent of her own to counter.

Now that the event has finished, let's look back on what transpired and run down the results and the biggest takeaways from the show.

Full Match Results

• Liv Morgan defeated Carmella by pinfall.
• Six-man tag team match: The New Day defeated Bobby Lashley, AJ Styles and Omos by pinfall.
• The Usos defeated The Street Profits by pinfall to retain the SmackDown Tag Team Championships.
• Charlotte Flair defeated Alexa Bliss by pinfall to retain the Raw Women's Championship.
• Triple Threat match: Damian Priest defeated Jeff Hardy and Sheamus by pinfall to retain the United States Championship.
• Bianca Belair defeated Becky Lynch by disqualification due to interference by Sasha Banks. By the champion's advantage, The Man retained the SmackDown Women's Championship.
• Extreme Rules match: Roman Reigns defeated Finn Balor by pinfall to retain the Universal Championship.

This Never Should Have Been Called Extreme Rules

One look at the "Extreme Rules" title should have indicated it was filled with gimmick matches. After all, that was the entire point of this pay-per-view's name.

However, exiting Monday's Raw, only one match had any gimmick attached to it: the Triple Threat for the United States Championship, and that's far from "extreme."

Balor vs. Reigns wasn't designated an Extreme Rules match until after Raw via a random Twitter announcement.

Even then, the whole idea of an Extreme Rules match is just a No Disqualification match to begin with. Whether you call it No Holds Barred, Unsanctioned or Street Fight, it's all the same, and the bare minimum of what this event should have had.

Despite a wide variety of options available for ladder matches, Falls Count Anywhere, Last Man Standing and other stipulations, WWE not only didn't bother to properly build to any of that, but it also seemingly refuted those ideas entirely. There weren't even last-minute announcements on the Kickoff show.

Why weren't Alexa Bliss and Charlotte Flair fighting in a creepy playground? Why wasn't Sasha Banks in a Triple Threat match for the SmackDown Women's Championship, rather than building this just to have a disqualification and stall even longer?

Had this been No Mercy, Fully Loaded or another generic name that doesn't come with a theme, this card would have made more sense. Instead, it exposed how little WWE cared to follow through on its own ideas.

No Excuses for Continuing Peacock Issues

If WWE and Peacock were responsible, they would have sorted out all the issues with the WWE Network transition from the very beginning. It's reasonable to assume there would be a few glitches, but even the smallest hiccups are still problems.

To give themselves this arbitrary goal that everything would be fine by SummerSlam was an excuse they created to give them a break after months of issues.

Now that we're post-SummerSlam, why are there still problems?

There hasn't been a single WWE PPV since the switch that hasn't had some sort of major fault that affects all customers, be it an inability to sign in, the show not starting on time or the lack of a rewind function until recently.

This time, it was that all the commentary teams were airing at the same time. With everyone talking over each other, it made listening to the feed an awful experience. Many fans tweeted their displeasure, how it messed with their audio sensory and how this is par for the course with this platform.

Each month, these problems continue. If WWE puts no effort into the card and Peacock doesn't want to have a single event air correctly, how is this a winning combination or something fans should keep being willing to forgive?

Liv Morgan Lacks Credibility If Her Threats Mean Nothing

Liv Morgan vs. Carmella was a match that didn't have enough steam behind it to be worthy of a PPV slot in previous years. These days, WWE spreads everything so thin that fans are supposed to think it's good enough, even if it would have been a midcard SmackDown match any other night.

The hook to this was supposed to be that Morgan would make sure Carmella couldn't run and she'd make her look as ugly on the outside as she is on the inside.

That would have implied some sort of gimmick that allowed her to mess up her good looks, like a steel cage to slam her into. Instead, this was a normal bout in which nothing noteworthy happened.

Morgan won. So what? She lost to Zelina Vega two nights ago. They're just a win and a loss that balance each other out on the record books and nothing more.

There were no stakes, she didn't follow through with her intentions to ruin The Most Beautiful Woman in WWE's looks, there was no sense of finality to this storyline and...this bout really didn't matter.

It feels like Morgan's been on the cusp of a push 100 times, but WWE never wants to pull the trigger and actually go anywhere with her. If this was an attempt to take another step in that direction, the company pulled the rug out from underneath her by having her threats amount to nothing but a normal win in a normal match on the pre-show that few likely even bothered to watch.

WWE Showing No Confidence in Big E as WWE Champion

When CM Punk held the WWE Championship for over a year, he only main-evented five out of 17 pay-per-views. Time and again, John Cena's match was prioritized, even if it was a No Disqualification bout against John Laurinaitis.

Those five matches were just because The Cenation Leader was in two of them, The Rock was in another, and two cards didn't have a Cena match to contend with to take priority.

That made it clear that even with the main title, Punk wasn't as important to WWE as Cena.

Already, Big E is heading down the same road, and if WWE doesn't course correct immediately, the validity of his title reign will be in jeopardy.

Big E won the belt by cashing in his Money in the Bank contract on a weakened champion. It was essentially a gimme win and not something that legitimized him as a worthy successor. Then, he lost two matches on the follow-up episode of Raw.

Sunday, Big E didn't have a WWE Championship defense. Instead, a standard backstage brawl on the pre-show led to an all-too-common six-man tag team match to kick off the main card.

None of this positions Big E as a big deal. He looks like a replacement champion at a time when there are fewer options available, rather than someone the company is behind and wants fans to put on a pedestal.

The fact that he may lose the title on Monday's Raw prior to the draft is even more nerve-racking.

You Can Always Bet on The Usos and The Street Profits

When was the last time The Usos or The Street Profits had a bad tag team match? The two duos are consistently great.

This contest wasn't much more than a repeat of what we've seen on SmackDown and should have had some stipulation to spice things up, but it was still rock solid nevertheless.

While it's easy to overcomplicate things, the lessons to be learned from every show are often straightforward. Sometimes, it's as simple as: "If you let good wrestlers wrestle, they'll give you a good match."

Betting on whether either of these teams would walk out with the title didn't have a guaranteed answer. However, betting on this match hitting the mark was an easy choice, and the two teams didn't disappoint.

The Demon Needs a Booster Shot

It was obvious Finn Balor didn't have much of a shot to dethrone Roman Reigns after seeing more attention placed on Brock Lesnar and the match at Crown Jewel on Oct. 21.

Donning The Demon gimmick was a worthwhile way to inject some life back into this title opportunity, but it wasn't enough.

Granted, since this was an Extreme Rules match, it wasn't as though Balor lost a straight-up bout. That helped protect him a little, along with the whole bit of being revived and only losing due to a malfunctioning top rope. However, it still means The Demon has lost on both NXT and the main roster now.

Once the seal has been broken, it's hard to recapture the mystique. WWE will now be tempted to have The Demon lose to the next person who needs to look strong, too.

The only way to counteract that is to give the Irishman a few more wins with the facepaint on, but to ensure those wins matter. They need to be against big-time Superstars to illustrate how this loss was a fluke on the record and only because The Tribal Chief is that special.

Regular Balor can lose to anyone, but The Demon could use a shot of adrenaline to counteract this loss.

Anthony Mango is the owner of the wrestling website Smark Out Moment and the host of the podcast show Smack Talk on YouTube, iTunes and Stitcher. You can follow him on Facebook and elsewhere for more.