10 Things WWE Regrets About Backlash

10. Pissing Off Steve Austin In 2002

Vince McMahon seemed intent on cycling Steve Austin out in 2002. At Backlash, he worked the Undertaker. And he did work.

It was a long, drab match, so much so that it must have felt like a company-wide conspiracy that incorporated the otherwise sparring production and creative departments. Austin lost a near-half hour slog to the Undertaker the month after he was originally scheduled to job for Scott Hall and two months before he walked at the notion of jobbing to Brock Lesnar on free TV.

The match was a grind. Couldn't Rob Van Dam and Eddie Guerrero done more with those five-to-eight baggy minutes? Or did they want Austin, almost completely broken down, to endure them? Austin was a paranoid figure in 2002, but just because you're paranoid...

And, all the while, a familiar ghost had returned to haunt him: Hulk Hogan, who was rewarded for an abject performance with the Undisputed WWE Title Austin never once won after the unification. Austin in appalling contrast had destroyed his body to elevate it to its former glories above the "trinket" Hogan had buried it as all those years ago, and was outdrawing Hogan on SmackDown as his analogue on RAW.

Booking like this hastened Austin's departure in June, and Austin's departure hastened the end of WWE as a mainstream concern.