10 Things WWE Regrets About Backlash
6. Most Of Backlash 2001
WWE had an opportunity to reverse the events of WrestleMania X-Seven - which the crowd effectively no-sold, because the closing angle felt like a mistake more so than a transgression - at Backlash.
They did not, and proceeded, even in the absence of The Rock, to tell the Two Man Power Trip storyline that was designed to ultimately get Triple H over as the top babyface in the company. Its main event saw Triple H and a profoundly miscast Steve Austin work the Brothers of Destruction in a match with ostensibly major winners-take-all stakes, but the sudden and convoluted insertion of them - via last-minute title switches and the increasingly tedious McMahon family legal chicanery - rendered the feature attraction warty and scattershot.
It was a carny main event only a WWE fan could love, but there were fewer of them, after the Austin heel turn, leading to a poor buy rate. The undercard also reeked of Monkey Tennis desperation: the wildly divergent Ultimate Submission and Duchess of Queensbury Rules matches felt less like adventurous creative and more like an obligation to do something - anything - different.
The show accelerated WWE's steep decline in popularity and was, in short and without hyperbole, the beginning of the end.