I have barely recovered from the chaos that it Wrestlemania season and yet Backlash is already around the corner. The 25 year old event has been a favourite among wrestling fans. Probably because the PPV provides nostalgia as it was born at the height of WWE’s popularity. However, there have been plenty of great matches in more recent Backlash events. Damien Priest and Bad Bunny ignited Puerto Rico with their Street Fight in 2023. Ronda Rousey worked her best singles match in 2022 against Charlotte Flair in an I Quit match. And of course, who can forget the deafening return of Steve Austin in 2000 to aid The Rock and against the McMahon-Helmsley regime.
Unfortunately, we are not here to glaze WWE for the times they got things right. We are here to steal their pocket money and give them Chinese burns for all the things they have done wrong. In no particular order, here are 10 of the worst matches in WWE Backlash history.
Honourable Mention, Backlash 2020
I apologise for travelling back to the worst year in recent existence, but I couldn’t make this list without talking about this. The world was losing their mind in 2020. None more so than Vince McMahon and his crack den of writers trying desperately to inject entertainment value into crowd-less wrestling. Trying to manage a wrestling conglomerate through a pandemic, is not a job I would be eager to take on. But bloody hell surely there are better creative decisions than whatever the hell this was supposed to be.
Raw tag champions the Street Profits and the Viking Raiders embarked on a feud over the phrase “anything you can do, we can do better.” Instead of actually wrestling each other they competed in basketball, axe throwing, golf and bowling. Juvenile and bit naff, but nothing too outlandish considering Matt Hardy and MVP had a similar feud that was actually kinda great.
This leads to a match at Backlash 2020 but it never happens due to both teams getting into a brawl backstage. Ladies and gentlemen, we have another cinematic attempt by WWE. At least the prior cinematic stuff had an objective and a coherent plot. This was pure random nonsense that probably made Vince McMahon “rofl” or “lmao”. Here are a few examples of bollocks that is in this segment.
Montez Ford slams Ivar on top of Braun Strowman’s car so all 4 men run away in fear. Ivar is in a daze after being tackled through a glass door and we literally see his dream sequence involving turkey drumsticks. Akira Tozawa drops in flanked by a gang of motorbike riding ninja. Omos makes his WWE debut as a 7 foot giant ninja to scare off the briefly aligned Viking Profits. The two teams fall into a dumpster and are attacked by a spooky tentacle monster. That is how the match ends! Fuck off with that.
WWE have never been great at comedy, but this was the peak of them running an idea into the ground for their own entertainment. They made Montez Ford annoying, which should be a crime.
1) Braubby Strowley vs Sami Owens, Backlash 2018
Hello Backlash 2018, I wish this is the only time I have to talk about you today but I know that my hopes and dreams will be crushed. Just like the hopes and dreams were crushed for anyone attending this show looking for a good time. The show began pretty strong, Seth Rollins vs The Miz for the IC title was an absolute banger of a match and one of WWE’s best of the year. Everything else though, bad to the point it is embarrassing.
Daniel Bryan’s first singles feud after returning from retirement being against Big Cass. AJ Styles vs Shinsuke Nakamura ended in a no contest because these guys are OBSESSED with whacking each other in the meat and two veg. The general and two colonels. I’m talking about their cock and balls. However, those are far from the worst on this show.
Bobby Lashley and Braun Strowman formed the meatiest team to take on the conniving dirtbags Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn. This feud began with Sami Zayn mocking Bobby Lashley’s relationship with his “sisters”. Remember that? Wrestling is a painful hobby. This is a slow and basic house show level match in front of a crowd with the excitement of a graveyard.
Then, the finish. Legal man Sami Zayn tries to walk out of the match, he and Kevin Owens get into a little squabble. This goes on for longer than it should. Eventually, Sami throws Owens into the ring, he takes a vertical suplex from Lashley and loses the match, even though he was not the legal man.
A poorly booking waste of time. Owens and Zayn came out of this looking incredibly weak thanks to more beatings post-match. Bobby Lashley looked like a nobody only a month after his WWE return and Strowman did not look any stronger than he already did. At least Michael Cole and Corey Graves acknowledged the wrong man was pinned. Jonathan Coachman tried to spin a bullshit narrative about how Owens might have actually been the legal man. Speaking of the Coach…
2) Jonathan Coachman vs Taijiri, Backlash 2004
There are very few acceptable moments that a non-wrestler can have a wrestling match. It is rarely on a PPV. The McMahons have at least proved they have some semblance of wrestling psychology, whilst Eric Bischoff is a big name that can draw. Who the hell wants to watch a Jonathan Coachman match? He isn’t even a good broadcaster never mind wrestler.
This was never going to be good, but there is a reality where this serves its purpose and provides entertainment. Jonathan Coachman has been the annoying lackey for Raw GM Bischoff for some time. He has been making life hard for certain babyfaces, including Tajiri and it is time he received some comeuppance. Coachman gets the shit kicked out of him for a couple of minutes, Tajiri hits the buzzsaw kick and gets the win. Easy lay-up right? Except, “whoopsies” says WWE, “I think I made a Giant Baba boo-boo.”
What we got was a 6 minute match with Jonathan Coachman OUTWRESTLING TAJIRI. No cheating, no tricks. Coachman outwrestles the legitimately great Tajiri. He even works over the leg, like what are you doing Coach? Are you going to win with a figure four you melon? The thing is, the action isn’t even that bad. For a broadcaster, Coachman did okay. The booking here though is absolutely nonsense and the crowd rejected the match immediately.
Tajiri fought back in the final minute of the match, but a run-in from Garrison Cade allows Coachman to get a roll-up to win and made the entirety of Edmonton sad. The biggest issue of brand exclusive PPVs meant that the card had to be filled out with matches people didn’t want to see. If you’re asking me “who is Garrison Cade?” my fucking point exactly!
3) Triple H vs Hulk Hogan, Backlash 2002
At Wrestlemania X8, The Rock and Hulk Hogan stole the show with their legendary Icon vs Icon match-up. The face of wrestling’s past vs the face of wrestling present. Although the 48 year old Hogan was limited in the ring and initially the heel, Toronto cheered their Canadian butts off for him, presumably out of sheer nostalgia. Everything that needed to work, worked. They wrestled a simple 15 minute match, focused on crowd work and created a historic Wrestlemania moment.
I am positive someone walked by and said to Vince “bet you couldn’t pull something like that off again” and McMahon retorted with “just watch me pal”. Quite a few significant changes here. First off we’re in Kansas City, Missouri which were a decent crowd but no where near as passionate as the Canadians were at Wrestlemania. Second, Triple H plays the role of The Rock but he lacks the charisma and connection to the fans that Rock has. Triple H also does not wrestle like a sports entertainer, which was what is required against Hogan. Trips is a Harley Race emulator but not as great at doing the long matches. Finally, this match goes on 22 painful minutes. Who’s idea was that?
This match does everything wrong. It is an absolute slog to get through because nothing happens. 90% of Hulk’s offence is just punching. He manages to do a suplex once. He also pulls out a Diamond Cutter as a transitional move for some reason, fuck DDP I guess. Triple H wears down Hogan’s leg for AGES, leading to a 90 second figure four spot, immediately followed by a minute long sleeper spot. Just dreadful, boring stuff. Of course, Hogan “hulked up” rendering the entire process pointless. Why are you wasting my time WWE?!
Then it ends with nonsense interference from Chris Jericho and The Undertaker. Jericho, Triple H’s biggest rival and former champion, attacks Hogan for some reason. Taker attacks Triple H, Hogan refuses to win unfairly so he takes out the Deadman but he capitalises on the attack and wins anyway. Boring, dumb bullshit.
4) Kane vs Viscera, Backlash 2005
In 2004, Kane fell in love with Matt Hardy’s girlfriend Lita but she did not reciprocate those feelings. Kane kidnapped Lita to try and make her fall in love with him. Lita would later reveal that she was pregnant, Hardy assumed it was his but Kane says that he impregnated Lita to preserve his legacy. Lita would attack Kane and try to trick him into chokeslamming her so that she would miscarry the baby. Are you still following? Good.
Kane would beat Hardy at Summerslam to earn the right to marry Lita. After their marriage, Kane would accidentally fall on top of Lita after Snitsky hit him with a chair, causing her to lose the baby. Kane turned face and sought revenge against Snitsky. After taking some time off to film See No Evil, Kane returned and reunited with Lita who was on crutches due to a legit injury. They would target Lita’s rival Trish Stratus, so she would convince Viscera to be her bodyguard by offering sex in return. That brings us up to date. Now go bleach your eyeballs after having to read such atrocious storytelling.
This is the worst version of Kane. A maskless good guy stripped of everything that made him cool, scary and interesting. Viscera/Mabel/Big Daddy V has never been good. So, by simple mathematics, this was a recipe for disaster. Vince McMahon has a big, sweaty men fetish and forgets that these matches rarely result in something watchable. To top it off, Trish calls Viscera a “chicken-eating loser” after the match which feels ever so slightly racially charged.
At least this has Lita cracking Trish with a crutch to a chair. That looked awesome, but this match certainly wasn’t.
At least Vince learned his lesson about boring super heavyweight matches. Oh wait, no he didn’t…
5) Kane vs Big Show, Backlash 2006
Former tag partners turned enemies after Kane began hearing voices and being haunted by the words “May 19th”. In storyline, this was the date his parents died in a fire. In reality, this was the release date of his movie See No Evil. Yep, this entire angle is a promotional tactic for Kane’s shitty slasher movie. If you’re wondering, See No Evil has a 9% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
This was another clash of the giants, which was like watching two refrigerators rub each other’s bellies in a ball pit. Actually, that sounds infinitely more interesting than this. A dreary 8 minute match with endless movie plugging by commentary, and it ends in a no contest. The ring is engulfed in red lighting, the words “May 19th” and other voices ring out throughout the arena and Kane freaks the hell out. This goes on for an incredibly long time, before Big Show brains Kane with a steel chair to put him out of his misery. Big Show cries and he leaves as the crowd boos. Kane sits up, smiles and that is the end. Insulting booking paired with terrible wrestling and shameless movie promoting makes this a stinker in every way.
This was terrible. The chokeslam counter into a DDT was botched and looked amateurish. One of the worst versions of Kane is wrestling one of the worst versions of Big Show. He is massively out of shape and moves with all the grace of a giraffe on ketamine.
Well it took them a year but at least WWE finally learned to not pair uninteresting super heavyweights in a singles match. OH WAIT, NO THEY DIDN’T…
6) Big Show vs The Great Khali, Backlash 2008
After a year of absence, Big Show returned to WWE in February 2008 in much better shape to feud with legendary boxer Floyd Mayweather ahead of Wrestlemania XXIV. Not long after, Big Show turned face and crossed paths with WWE’s new favourite immobile giant, The Great Khali. I understand why this match was put together. Big Show is “the worlds’ largest athlete” whilst Khali is taller and not far off in weight either. There is a level of intrigue here. It is a spectacle, like watching a demolition derby but all of the cars are tractors. You hear that and think “I know that probably isn’t going to be very good, but I want to see what it looks like.”
That is exactly what this match is. You want to see Big Show and Great Khali cross paths just to see what they can do to each other, but once it starts you want the match to be over. There is a lot of standing and trading blows, all of Khali’s offence looks like shit of course. This match features 3 separate rest hold segments. Khali does a nerve hold, a surfboard stretch and even a goddamn STF. He locks that tighter than Cena ever does.
Somehow though, I think this might be better than the two previous matches I covered. It is bad but at least the booking is kept simple. Big Show overcomes the bad guy and hits an admittedly impressive chokeslam to win. I’ve seen better wrestlers than Big Show struggle to get anything out of Khali, so that’s something.
7) NIa JAx vs ALexa Bliss, Backlash 2018
Hello again Backlash 2018, I don’t want to be back but here I am. We touched on this show briefly earlier, but strap in and strap on because the next 3 entries are all from this one abysmal show. First, let’s talk about this Wrestlemania rematch. For what its worth, the feud between these 2 women was fine. Alexa Bliss was at her peak era as a heel and Nia Jax transitioned into being a face as a victim of her bullying. Their Wrestlemania match was exactly what it needed to be. Nia Jax got a big championship win and got revenge against her mean girl ex-bestie. That was the story nicely wrapped up, or so we thought.
The feud continued into Backlash 2018 with more bullying by Alexa Bliss and more body positivity by Nia Jax. There was nothing new or interesting worth setting up a PPV rematch and that translated in the match that we got. This never left first gear and it was booked weirdly. Alexa Bliss was extremely dominant for portions of this match which is completely unrealistic considering the differences in stature. Imagine watching Rey Mysterio wear down the Big Show with relative ease using punches and headlocks. It would be ridiculous.
The entire match Nia barely gets any offence in. She catches Bliss maybe 5 or 6 times and tries to take her up to the top rope for a Super Samoan Drop but Alexa always escapes. Then, Nia catches Alexa’s attempt at Twisted Bliss and just hits a normal Samoan Drop to win. Why were you attempting the top rope move then if you didn’t need to? A waste of time and it made Nia look stupid.
Her face run didn’t last very long. She was booed during her post-match speech about being bullied, which isn’t a great look. It came across as a PR campaign for how WWE are anti-bullying, which they are not. Nia Jax is just a far more convincing baddie than a goodie. Those are the breaks.
8) Charlotte Flair vs Carmella, Backlash 2018
The Backlash 2018 trio of trash continues here with a battle of the Queens. Carmella’s WWE title reign was received pretty poorly and I have to agree. I think it happened too early. Carmella looked great and she was a good annoying heel, but she was not capable of having world championship level matches at this point in her career. She made a lot of improvements over the years and I think would have had a better shot as champion in 2020/2021. I’m pretty certain she only got the push because she was hot. She wasn’t massively popular and she wasn’t talented enough to be in this position.
The silence was deafening for this match. I think Carmella’s constant screeching about how she is the champion and better than Flair became too annoying. Her voice was very grating. She sounded like a combination of every terrible ex-girlfriend in history. The biggest issue is that she can’t wrestle. She can throw a superkick, her Code of Silence finisher looks good but the rest of her offence was punches and rest holds. There was nothing interesting from her and Charlotte was not able to carry her to a good match here. Mella did not even get that cheap of a win. She capitalised on Flair tweaking her knee with a roll up. She actually looked smart, which is not really what her character is about.
The beat down and heel heat from Carmella lasted far too long. It exposed Carmella as a vastly inferior worker and resulted in go-away heat. We’ll probably not see her back in WWE after she claimed they ghosted and fired her for having a baby, which she also claimed was taken out of context which I personally disagree with.
9) Roman Reigns vs Samoa Joe, Backlash 2018
These last two matches we’ll talk about are representative of glaring issues we have had with WWE for the longest time. This match, has A LOT OF things wrong. First off, why the hell is this match the main event of the show? There is barely a rivalry between these two, there is no match stipulation, there are not stakes. Plus, we know the feud won’t continue because Joe was traded to Smackdown whilst Roman remains on Raw. That leads into my second point which is WWE hating their own world championship which has been a concurrent theme since the early 2010s. AJ Styles vs Shinsuke Nakamura for the WWE title is a main event calibre match, but they chose to put it in the midcard and have with a dumbass finish.
Thirdly, it is the continuation of WWE’s stubborn booking that turned so many fans away from their product. They had so many opportunities before 2020 to turn Roman Reigns heel, but they refused and severely hindered his career by keeping him as a good guy. Roman was not connecting as a face at all and their forceful booking made the fans reject him more. To an outsider, Samoa Joe is the good guy in this match because he is the only guy being cheered for.
Then there is the match itself. It starts off hot before the bell with an attack and an announce table spot. However, a couple minutes after the match begins it becomes the most boring shit you could ever see. Samoa Joe works over Roman Reigns with various rest holds for an eternity. The Big Dog fights back and just wins. There is zero heat, zero life, zero substance. The fans turn HARD on this whole thing. Plenty of booing. They chant “beat the traffic”, “CM Punk”, “boring”, “Johnny Wrestling”, “Delete” among other things. Some of the fans even leave early because why would they stay and watch this heatless crap with no reason to care?
An insulting match, capping off one of the worst PPVs WWE have ever produced.
10) Damian Priest vs The Miz, Wrestlemania Backlash 2021
We talked earlier on about the weird storyline between Kane and Big Show that was primarily created just to plug Kane’s new movie, See No Evil. This match saw that, doubled it and gave it to the next person. The next person being us wrestling fans and holy hell weren’t we punished and ridiculed for being wrestling fans with this one. Damian Priest vs The Miz in a lumberjack match is booked for the show. At the show, John Morrison notices a locker room is full of zombies and tries to warn The Miz. Miz doesn’t take him seriously and thinks he must have been mistaken. They leave to go to the ring, the camera pans further backstage and we indeed see a horde of zombies walking towards the camera.
Yep. Zombies. Not fake zombies. In storyline, these are real zombies. Commentator Adnan Virk (who the fuck remembers this guy?) says the zombies makes sense because of Batista’s new upcoming movie, Army of the Dead. We then see a tweet from Batista, who reveals that he sent the zombies to the show in his absence to be the lumberjacks. The zombies surround the ring, commentary run away to a “safe location” to call the match and everyone is selling how real and dangerous the zombies are. WHAT DO YOU MEAN REAL ZOMBIES?!
There was no way that Priest or Miz could make this work. They wrestled a terrible match, because of course they did there are fucking zombies at ringside! John Morrison and The Miz gets captured and eaten by zombies which commentary completely undersell. They’re making jokes about two men essentially dying. It all ends with Damian Priest doing his arrow firing taunt to the ceiling and a massive ad for Army of the Dead appears.
Terribly incorporated sponsored bullshit. WWE have been gradually selling their own entertainment value for their sponsors and this is one of the most egregious examples. How Damian Priest managed to become a world champion after this is a testament to his ability.
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