Payback (2017)

The 2017 Payback was a professional wrestling pay-per-view (PPV) and livestreaming event produced by WWE, held primarily for wrestlers from the promotion's main roster brand, Raw. It was the fifth annual Payback and took place on April 30, 2017, at the SAP Center in San Jose, California. The concept of the event was based around wrestlers seeking payback against their opponents. Eight matches were contested at the event, including one on the Kickoff pre-show. Due to that year's Superstar Shake-up (draft) that occurred just two weeks before Payback, the event included two interbrand matches with wrestlers from SmackDown as the matches had been scheduled before the Shake-up occurred. In the main event, Braun Strowman defeated Roman Reigns. In other prominent matches, Raw's Bray Wyatt defeated SmackDown's Randy Orton in a House of Horrors match, which was a cinematic match, and Seth Rollins defeated Samoa Joe to end his undefeated streak since joining the main roster. The event also saw two titles change hands: in the opening bout, Raw's Chris Jericho defeated SmackDown's Kevin Owens to win back the United States Championship, thus transferring Jericho to the SmackDown brand, and Alexa Bliss defeated Bayley to win the Raw Women's Championship, becoming the first woman to hold both it and the SmackDown Women's Championship. This was the first Payback held since the reintroduction of the brand extension in July 2016 and it was the final Payback held until 2020. It was originally planned to return as a SmackDown-exclusive event in 2018, but following WrestleMania 34 in April that year, WWE discontinued brand-exclusive PPV and livestreaming events for the main roster, reducing the amount of these events produced per year. As a result, this was the only brand-exclusive Payback held.