Extreme Rules (2010)

The 2010 Extreme Rules was a professional wrestling pay-per-view (PPV) event produced by World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE). It was the second annual Extreme Rules and took place on April 25, 2010, at the 1st Mariner Arena in Baltimore, Maryland, held for wrestlers from the promotion's Raw and SmackDown brand divisions. The theme of the event was that it featured various hardcore-based matches. Although this was the second Extreme Rules event, it was the first to feature the titular Extreme Rules match, which is just the name that WWE uses in place of hardcore match or hardcore rules and was adopted from the former Extreme Championship Wrestling, the assets of which WWE acquired in 2003. After the inaugural 2009 event was held in June, the 2010 event was moved up to the April/May slot of WWE's PPV calendar, replacing Backlash in the post-WrestleMania slot. There were eight matches scheduled on the event's card, all of which were contested under a hardcore stipulation. There was also one dark match that occurred before the live broadcast. In the main event, John Cena defeated Batista in a Last Man Standing match to retain Raw's WWE Championship. In SmackDown's main match, which was an interpromotional match, Jack Swagger defeated Raw's Randy Orton in an Extreme Rules match to retain the World Heavyweight Championship. The event received 182,000 pay-per-view buys, the same as the figure achieved by the 2009 Backlash event. This was the final Extreme Rules event held before the original World Tag Team Championship was deactivated in August in favor of the WWE Tag Team Championship, which became available to both brands; since WrestleMania 25 in April 2009, both titles were held and defended together across all brands as the Unified WWE Tag Team Championship. It would also be the final Extreme Rules event...