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Extreme Rules (2012) was a professional wrestling pay-per-view (PPV) event produced by WWE. It took place on April 29, 2012 at the Allstate Arena in Rosemont, Illinois. It was the fourth event under the Extreme Rules chronology. Eight professional wrestling matches were scheduled on the event's card and one pre-show match was streamed on YouTube. It featured Brock Lesnar's first WWE match since WrestleMania XX in 2004. The concept of Extreme Rules was that the event would feature various hardcore-based matches. There were three main events: John Cena defeated Brock Lesnar in an Extreme Rules match, CM Punk defeated Chris Jericho in a Chicago Street Fight to retain the WWE Championship, and Sheamus defeated Daniel Bryan in a 2-out-of-3 falls match to retain the World Heavyweight Championship. The pay-per-view received universally positive reviews, and all three main events drew high praise from critics and fans. The event received 263,000 buys, up 25.8% from the 209,000 buys for the previous year's event.