10 Things WWE Regrets About Backlash
Not the most ideal name for a pay-per-view.
WWE is almost assuredly going to regret promoting the upcoming Randy Orton Vs. Edge Backlash rematch as the "greatest ever".
It's so obviously untrue, even before it happens, that people have struggled to even rip the piss out of it. It's almost pathetic. The billionaire company with an horrendous worker's rights record and a penchant for a bit of the ol' blood money has somehow conspired to evade scathing criticism because there's nothing else to say beyond "It is extremely unlikely to be the greatest wrestling match ever".
Because it's not going to the greatest wrestling match ever, is it?
There's no crowd, it's on WWE's main roster, and Randy Orton works like a member of the NXT core demographic driving a minivan up a mountain en route to Yosemite National Park.
What were they thinking?
That's not a rhetorical question. What, to them, constitutes great? It will be long. Edge will do something heinous, and inconsistent with his otherwise virtuous character, and stare at his hands to express his inner conflict. Did I want to do this? He will ask. Or did I have to do this? Is man inherently violent? And if so, why?
In any event, WWE will endure a hailstorm of image-damaging scorn, much like when...
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.