Reports broke at around 6:30PM EST that WWE WrestleMania 27 opened the live portion of its show with a dark match between Sheamus and Daniel Bryan.
This United States Championship bout was originally scheduled and advertised for the main card, so it appeared WWE made the call to pull the bout. Organized as a Lumberjack Match, it appeared it was going to replace the annual WrestleMania battle royal as WWE’s trick for getting the unbooked wrestlers on the card.
However, word has since come in from F4W’s Bryan Alvarez that the scripted lumberjack match got “out of control” and was turned into the annual Battle Royal.
It is unclear if WWE will re-book the US Championship match for the main show, but it is known that there have been the textbook concerns about time constraints due to interest in going long with the card’s key matches. It thus looks somewhat pessimistic.
