The Good: There was a recurring theme throughout much of 2002: great undercard, crappy main event. Backlash provided three great matches in the run up to another predictably poor main event. The best of these matches was Edge versus Kurt Angle, which proved to the masses that Edge could be the singles star many predicted he would be. Just on after them was Eddie Guerrero versus Rob Van Dam, their first ever televised singles match. It was good, although they would have better ones in the future. A real match of two halves, RVD dominated the opening stages but then Eddie just dismantled him for the remainder, finally pinning him with his version of the frog splash. In the opener, Billy Kidman and Tajiri had a surprisingly hot Cruiserweight Title match. The Bad: The old boys were clogging up the main events, still. Steve Austin and The Undertaker had a near-thirty minute match, which was awful and Hulk Hogan beat Triple H in a main event that lasted over twenty minutes, way longer than Hogan should have been out there for. The Rest: Chris Jericho, who had just main evented WrestleMania the previous month, wasn't even booked on the show. A young rookie named Brock Lesnar, was, however: The Next Big Thing made his PPV debut by absolutely destroying Jeff Hardy.
