Backlash 2018: 5 things we learned from Sunday’s WWE event

Backlash, WWE’s latest pay-per-view and the first of the new “co-branded” era, was kind of a slog, but there were high points. And we’re going to spend most of this recap talking about those high points, but the rest is also unavoidable. Let’s get to it.

If you want the full blow-by-blow account of Backlash, you can check out Sunday’s live blog. Here, we discuss a few key things we learned from the show, such as...

The best match of the night — and it wasn’t a close competition for that honor — goes to Seth Rollins successfully defending his Intercontintental Championship against the Miz, who was seeking to tie Chris Jericho’s record of nine IC title reigns. Miz tried to pick Rollins apart by attacking his surgically repaired knee again and again, and landed multiple Skull Crushing Finales on him by taking advantage of Rollins’ knee pain, but it just wasn’t enough to put Seth away. The Intercontinental champ battled back again and again, not ignoring the pain in his leg but instead powering through it until match’s end, and we got ourselves one of the better pay-per-view matches of the year out of it.

Rollins is performing on a level where it’s clear he should be in the main event battling for the Universal Championship or on SmackDown chasing the WWE Championship, and really, so is Miz. These are two of the best performers on the show, and Miz has managed to keep up in the ring with the guys considered WWE’s top in-ring wrestlers for some time now.

This is not the same thing as saying they need to be in the main event: the work Miz and now Rollins have put in to elevating the Intercontinental Championship is hugely important, too, as it should be a secondary title in name only: you still want top guys caring about and chasing this title, and establishing some lengthy reigns with wrestlers who will capably defend it and its honor is great in both the short- and long-term. When Miz and Rollins are done with their IC run, though, there’s a space waiting for them higher up the card.

In the meantime, they can just put on the match of the night, nbd.

Charlotte Flair defeated Asuka at WrestleMania 34, ending the latter’s years-long undefeated streak. The next thing they had Charlotte do was lose the SmackDown Women’s Championship to Carmella via Money in the Bank cash-in and a beatdown by the debuting Peyton Royce and Billie Kay, which is totally logical and a great way to have Charlotte drop the belt: it’s not losing fair, it’s not losing clean, it’s a numbers game thing where Carmella does what heels are supposed to do with their guaranteed contract shot in the Money in the Bank briefcase by taking advantage of a situation.

At Backlash, though, Charlotte lost clean to Carmella. Yes, Carmella did Charlotte dirty by kicking her in the back of the leg, but this wasn’t an eye rake or outside interference or a hidden weapon or anything of the sort: it was Carmella going, “oh, hey Charlotte just hurt her knee, and I should kick it now.” Sure, it’s unseemly, but it’s not cheating to beat WWE’s top woman. The finish was just... strange. It didn’t ruin what was an otherwise good match (outside of too many extended rest holds, which were only tolerable because Carmella knows exactly what pitch to shriek in to make fans boo her during them), but it did cause everyone watching to simultaneously go, “huh?” which brings us to right now, where I have no idea what they’re doing with Charlotte.

I get that Carmella beating Charlotte makes her seem more legitimate, but Carmella just went for weeks talking about how she beat Charlotte all by herself to win the SmackDown Women’s title, which is only technically true in the sense that she and Charlotte were the only ones involved once the bell rang for their match, but purposefully ignores that Charlotte was already beat to heck by Peyton and Billie beforehand. Carmella only needs “technically correct” to succeed as a heel, not “actually correct,” which is just going to make Charlotte seem bitter and unsympathetic when she complains about how Carmella hitting her with a legal kick in a wrestling match was crossing some kind of unwritten boundary.

I’m still invested enough to see if the plan is to paint Charlotte as maybe being overly confident and suddenly susceptible to losses following her incredible defeat of Asuka, which will then lead to Charlotte powering up further to reverse course, but for now, I’m mostly scratching my head.

Rest holds serve an important purpose in a match: they’re good for pacing, they give the crowd a chance to start cheering a face wrestler back into the match, and so on. When basically every match on the card is overusing rest holds, though, a show that’s well over three hours long is going to feel a lot longer. And in a show where there were a number of weird finishes and overall boring matches, well, it’s going to feel like three-plus hours wasted.

Maybe don’t use the “too many rest holds” strategy in every match, especially ones where they don’t fit. Roman Reigns being built up for a big comeback via incessant rest holds isn’t great, especially when it’s clear most of the crowd is cheering for Samoa Joe instead. Carmella and Charlotte had far too many rest holds in their match, to the point of just kind of making Charlotte ineffectual. Lean up some of these bouts, and the show will be much better for it. Or, at least, find different ways of doing things: the rest holds felt like when an episode of RAW has the same kind of finish four times in a night, which dilutes the impact said finish has.

I’ve been a huge proponent of Roman Reigns for years now. The dude is great in the ring, and his matches are often wonderful, but man, this recent push just isn’t working. He needs to be somewhere else on the card, and soon, besides the main event. Reigns got a WWE Universal Championship shot against Brock Lesnar at WrestleMania 34, and got his ass handed to him. Then he got Lesnar again in a steel cage match a couple of weeks back, and lost again. Samoa Joe was calling him out for all of the losses, and the crowd was behind Joe for it, so at Backlash, Reigns... came back from a huge beatdown that was being cheered and defeated Samoa Joe.

Reigns can win matches, that’s fine! The issue is entirely his placement on the card. He’s still here main eventing on a show that features the WWE Championship, because Roman Reigns. He’s winning against Samoa Joe, who has been and will be a far more intriguing opponent against Universal champ Lesnar going forward. Braun Strowman is stuck out here in a meaningless tag match with heat vacuum Bobby Lashley instead of wrestling Joe or calling out Brock or carrying around the Universal title already.

Just... put Reigns in a story not involving a championship. Or have him turn heel and go after current megaface Seth Rollins for the Intercontinental strap so he can hit reset and the crowd will still have a reason to boo him. There are options here, and “beat Samoa Joe to maintain main event status” was one of the worst ones.

Sorry, Roman, it’s not you, it’s how they use you.

A no disqualification match ending in a no contest should be a deflating ending, because it feels like a DQ even if it’s something else entirely. However, Shinsuke Nakamura vs. AJ Styles ended in double dick kicks, with the two walloping the other’s groin with their foot at the exact same time. It was a beautiful moment in pro wrestling history and I will not let your negativity sully that, world.

For a no disqualification affair, this one took some time to get going, as both Styles and Nakamura basically ignored that and instead wrestled what looked like one of those matches where the ref is just giving them some leeway outside the ring — it wasn’t bad, it’s just that it needed something more, especially with the implications of the stipulation. Once Nakamura brought a chair into play, though, the pace quickened, the violence escalated, and the dick shots began. That second act leading into a very short third act was killer. More of all of that, please.