Pro wrestling betting sites were way off on Fastlane, a break from 100 percent record so far in 2017 (w/Keller’s Analysis)

So far this year, and at a very high rate in recent years, online betting on WWE PPVs has been accurate. They didn’t get one match wrong at the Royal Rumble or Elimination Chamber. It got to the point that some pro wrestling websites were treating the betting odds as spoilers, assuming insider information was getting out. That all changed last night at Fastlane.

The webmaster of www.BetWrestling.com emailed us a report on how wrong oddsmakers were this time around.

•Nia Jax was the -1700 favorite (meaning you had to bet $1,700 to win $100) going into the show. This was the first upset of 2017. Sasha was the original favorite, but it changed quickly in favor of Jax, suggesting insider information swayed the lines.

•Braun Strowman was the -1200 favorite.

•Undertaker was a prop bet in the Euro Market as showing up to cost Reigns the match. That didn’t happen.

•Charlotte was favored at one point at -1750. The lines shifted the day of the show to her being only a slight underdog at -160. That led to a belief a non-finish was most likely. Instead, Bayley did win.

As noted by BetWrestling.com, “This makes the pro wrestling betting more volatile and unpredictable going into WrestleMania and it should be interesting to see if these regular upsets will become more frequent again.”

Keller’s Analysis: I had suggested last month on the PWTorch Livecast that this was getting out of hand and ruining a lot of suspense and surprises for WWE fans. The news of Randy Orton winning the Rumble gained so much steam in the days leading up to the Rumble, it was nearly impossible to miss it unless you went on a total social media and pro wrestling website and podcast blackout for two weeks before the event. All WWE had to do to throw this off was change finishes at the last second as wrestlers were at the Gorilla position, and keep the plans to change the finish in a very small circle of just one or two people besides Vince McMahon until the producer and wrestlers were told. It’s possible WWE deliberately did that, or maybe this was a case of some last second changes by Vince that have no connection to trying to go against betting lines. Either way, it serves to make WrestleMania actually unpredictable in the sense that no one will have the same level of trust that finishes will always match betting lines. That’s a good thing for fans wanting to avoid what had in essence become spoilers.