10 Things WWE Wants You To Forget About Backlash

9. No-So-Super Cena (2007)

Santina Backlash
WWE.com

At WrestleMania 23, John Cena beat Shawn Michaels to retain the WWE World Championship in a great match. For the second year in a row, he cleanly submitted one of the founders of DX in the main event of the show of shows, making it clear that he was WWE's top star.

At Backlash, Michaels got another shot at the title... along with Edge and Randy Orton, who made the bout a Fatal Four-Way. The match was an exciting contest, and in a way, it tied up a lot of loose threads, as Edge and Orton (known as Team Rated-RKO) had been chasing the title for a while.

The finish, however, was one of those "make the winner look weak" endings that WWE has truly innovated. Cena pushed Orton into a Spear from Edge, then hit Edge with the Attitude Adjustment. Michaels then nailed Cena with Sweet Chin Music, but Cena fell on Orton and pinned him.

After putting Cena over strong at WrestleMania, there was no reason to basically let Michaels get his win back like this. Even worse, it didn't build to a rematch between the two - Cena went straight into a program with The Great Khali.

Contributor
Contributor

Scott Fried is a Slammy Award-winning* writer living and working in New York City. He has been following/writing about professional wrestling for many years and is a graduate of Lance Storm's Storm Wrestling Academy. Follow him on Twitter at https://twitter.com/scottfried. *Best Crowd of the Year, 2013