Backlash 2018: 5 reasons to watch WWE’s May’s PPV

It feels like it’s been forever since a WWE pay-per-view, but that’s only because Saudi Arabia’s Greatest Royal Rumble, in addition to being hours of propaganda and a place where WWE’s women couldn’t even appear on screen without public apologies from government agencies, was a glorified house show.

Luckily, we’re back in a place where the women can wrestle and Sami Zayn isn’t being written off of television before said glorified house show because of his Syrian ethnicity, so let’s focus on that!

Backlash begins at 8 p.m. ET, and it’s the first show with WWE’s new strategy of making every pay-per-view include both RAW and SmackDown wrestlers and stories. Thankfully, that doesn’t make the show longer: they’re saving that for the Big Four (or Big Five, depending on Money in the Bank plans. We’ll get there when we get there, though). For now, Backlash!

Charlotte Flair defeated Asuka at WrestleMania 34, proving she’s the top woman in WWE (and likely setting up a year-long build to the Queen vs. Ronda Rousey at WrestleMania 35). In her next show, though, Carmella took advantage of a beatdown by Peyton Royce and Billie Kay to finally cash in her Money in the Bank briefcase and become the new SmackDown Women’s Champion.

Now, Carmella has to defend that title against Charlotte at Backlash, and I can’t wait to see how she manages to do it. You see, there’s basically no way that Carmella is going to defeat Charlotte one-on-one: Charlotte just took down Asuka, remember, who no one was able to defeat for literal years, and Carmella took roughly 15 tries just to get her briefcase opened in time to pin the SmackDown Women’s champ while they were still on the ground writhing in pain.

So, how does Carmella defend the title against Charlotte here, so that she isn’t just a one-and-done champ who only held on because of the briefcase? You pair her up with someone or someones at the exact moment that it will hurt Charlotte the most, and then the Princess of Staten Island has downed the pride of Queen City once again — all without Charlotte having suffered a very strange clean defeat as a followup to winning the most significant women’s match ever held at Mania. Just who and how we get there has me on the edge of my proverbial seat.

Shinsuke Nakamura vs. AJ Styles at WrestleMania 34 was a pretty ho-hum affair. It wasn’t bad, it just kind of was, and it had me wondering if Nakamura was just washed at this point in his career. It turns out that face Nak is the washed one: heel Nakamura and his obsession with trying to uppercut through Styles’ junk is extremely my jam.

He’s finally got the jerky swagger that made Nakamura extremely popular in the first place, and he is using it for something other than “is weird.” We’ll have to see if this WWE Championship match is a huge improvement over Mania, but the storytelling has been far better, and I’m totally here for Nakamura entering my second favorite Ric Flair phase: the one where he just low-blowed his way to victory whenever possible.

That’s it. Seth Rollins is wrestling. That’s a reason to watch now. That’s the kind of run he’s been on in 2018, from wrestling for an hour and five minutes on RAW — the longest any one person has ever wrestled a match on that show — during a Gauntlet match to his WrestleMania victory for the Intercontinental Championship to his ladder match with Finn Balor on his week’s RAW.

Rollins will be taking on Miz, who has been another reason to tune in on Monday’s for some time now, as he attempts to take back the Intercontinental title he lost at Mania. Will Miz win and begin a record-tying ninth reign as IC champ, which will then likely allow him to set the record for days holding that particular strap, too? Or will Rollins persevere once more and help continue the work Miz started making this secondary championship supremely relevant once again?

We got Daniel Bryan’s return to the ring at WrestleMania 34, and it was heartfelt and wonderful and it’s so good to have him back. Now, though, we get a Daniel Bryan singles match at a pay-per-view! Sure, it’s against Big Cass, who was busy boring the crowd in Brooklyn the last time he wrestled on a pay-per-view before an injury cut that push short, but if Cass has any real potential in that unteachable frame of his, then Bryan is the one to get it out.

I know it’s kind of lame that Bryan didn’t show back up on television and tap Nakamura on the shoulder to say, “I got next,” but also WWE needs to know Bryan isn’t just healthy, but is going to stay healthy, before they commit to putting him back on top of the world. So, for now, we get Bryan vs. A Guy Who Needs The Rub, which might be how things work for a little bit. It’s not a monkey’s paw situation where we get Bryan back but only against dudes we don’t want to see him work against: it’s “let Bryan do some work lower on the card before launching him further up it.” There’s a difference, as one of those is practical and the other is a curse.

It feels like Roman Reigns is still being pushed down the throats of fans, but at the same time, his long-rumored coronation at WrestleMania 34 never came to pass, and then his “what if we have him win the title in front of a crowd that doesn’t hate him as much” Saudi Arabia opportunity came and went without a victory against Brock Lesnar, too. And Samoa Joe is out here telling Reigns that he’s a loser who can’t win the big one and the crowd is very loudly responding by asking Reigns “where’s the lie though” and Roman just kind of smirks and goes “Joe, you’re fat, bro” which, for one, Samoa Joe is not fat, he’s thicc, and come on Roman we’re not out here to body shame in 2018, and thirdly, Joe is going to kill you.

Well, maybe. That’s where the indecision in the section header comes from! Samoa Joe should, unquestionably, murk Roman Reigns at Backlash. He should then move back into the conversation for the WWE Universal Championship by virtue of being Not Roman Reigns — and this is coming from someone who likes Roman Reigns. If Mania wasn’t the moment, and Saudi Arabia wasn’t the backup moment, then can we please just eschew any potential future moments against Brock Lesnar and instead go about finding out who actually can beat him? Thank you.

Will that be what we see here, a true commitment to the end of Reigns vs. Lesnar one-on-one affairs by virtue of Samoa Joe kicking Reigns’ head in? idk probably not, did you see how long Randy Orton vs. Jinder Mahal went on for last year, we are so screwed.