Review for WWE Backlash 2020

Backlash buckled under its own hype. If you are going to promote something as ‘The Greatest Match Ever’ you have to deliver. When you consider the number of Five Star, Matches of the Year that have come before. I will come to this match later… suffices to say, it wasn’t.

The event started off with a pretty good Triple Threat match for the WWE Women’s Tag Team Championship. All three teams (Champions: Bayley and Sasha banks, Alexa Bliss and Nikki Cross and The IIconics) work really well together and the stipulations made perfect sense. I am surprised that they are still holding off on splitting up Bayley and Sasha Banks which is inevitable, but the ending of the match was great.

Jeff Hardy against Sheamus is not a bad match, in fact it has some great moments. My issue is that this match had a great build, but a terrible finish and I do hope this is leading to something more.

The RAW Women's Championship match between Asuka and Nia Jax was hugely disappointing and I’m not sure what they are trying to do with it. Both worked well at times, but the ending was such a let down that I’m really not sure who it benefitted.

The 1-On-2 Handicap Match for the Universal Championship should have been amazing. The sight of Braun Strowman against both The Miz and John Morrison should have been full of action-packed spots and insane moments. Instead it just felt like any run-of-the-mill match and really should have played more on the two fighting over who would pin Braun. There was also very little to show Braun as dominant, which is a bizarre move.

The WWE Championship Match between Drew McIntyre and Bobby Lashley was fine. That’s it. It wasn’t great, it wasn’t awful, it just existed. The feud leading into it made no sense with this ‘unbreakable’ Full Nelson of Bobby Lashley. This is a gimmick that has been done before, but usually it is a slow build with the champion being the only person who can avenge all the people who had fallen to it. Instead it was just a match.

After this we had the insane mini-movie of The Viking Raiders against the Raw Tag Champions The Street Profits in a match that didn’t happen. Instead, it ended up just being a mad brawl interrupted by Akira Tozawa and a bunch of Motorcycle Ninjas!

I can’t believe I have just written that sentence.

I can only presume this was an attempt to parody or pay homage to the fight scene from the Anchorman films, just not as funny and I still do wish that WWE would stop doing this.

Finally, we have Randy Orton against Edge in… sigh… The Greatest Wrestling Match Ever!

Where do I even begin with this? Firstly, the build and feud has been fine. I understood why they were facing and the idea of wrestling being for Edge ‘Everything’ while for Orton it was just Plan B was very interesting.

The match itself? Was not the greatest. I would go so far as say I don’t even think it’s the greatest either of them have ever had (The Orton/Cactus Jack Backlash 2004 and any of the Edge and Christian/Hardys/Dudleys TLC matches would easily take this).

This match definitely had its moments and the use of other people’s finishers was a nice touch, but the match just seemed to go on and on. In my opinion this would have been much better if it had been an Iron Man match and considering it went on for over forty minutes there would have been a lot more excitement if this had been the stipulation. As it is (especially as Edge is now out with an injury) this is potentially a sad end to a great career and certainly did not deliver the hype of calling it ‘The Greatest’.

Included is the Kickoff Match for the US Championship between Apollo Crews and Andrade. This featured a hilarious commentary by Kevin Owens in a tie. The match itself was fine, but nothing special, though I do have to admit I am curious as to what Kevin Owens wants out of his ‘friendship’ with Crews.

Backlash 2020 was built as having the Greatest Match Ever. When you make that kind of promise you need to deliver on it. This PPV didn’t. There is nothing on here that I would want to watch again and that’s not to say that it is unwatchable, just not worth watching again.

This is a problem that WWE seem to be having at the moment. PPVs are just average, not really offering much more than any weekly episode of Raw and Smackdown. Considering all the issues that Covid-19 and how they don’t need to worry about filling arenas, this is the time WWE could make those risks, try something new… and no I don’t mean lots more mini-movies.

Instead, the backlash to this PPV is it didn’t feature the Greatest Match Ever.