The show begins with MVP defending his United States Championship against Matt Hardy. MVP and Hardy had good chemistry, but their output is and was a bit overrated as I'm not sure I could point to any single match as being an absolute classic, just a series of good-to-really good TV matches. Kinda like The Rock and Ken Shamrock. They get a fair bit of time (a little over 10 minutes) and the crowd is very much behind Matt Hardy, but MVP cuts off his momentum continually, at one point dropping him with a nasty release Samoan. What doesn't make any sense is the commentary or even the post-match interview as Hardy's win is treated as the biggest singles win of his entire career. Um...by this point, he'd had a much, much higher profile feud with Edge that was literally about his real-life girlfriend cheating on him and then getting fired by the company. Plus, he'd actually been a fairly notable Cruiserweight Champion a few years before this. A good match but nothing I'd go out of my way to seek out. (3/5)
Kane defends the ECW Championship against Chavo Guerrero in the next match. At WrestleMania XXIV, Kane squashed Guerrero in something like 2 minutes, but Guerrero now had Bam Neely (a nod to the tough-as-nails Boston Bruins star) at his side and, in the weeks building up to the match, done some damage to Kane's knee (with help from Edge). Still, the result of this match was never really in question, which makes it a bit of a bore. Adamle and Taz are not a good pairing on commentary, either. This goes 8 minutes but feels longer in a bad way. (1.5/5)
The Big Show takes on The Great Khali next. I don't think I was paying too much attention to the WWE around this time, but at any given point between 2006 and 2010, one of these guys was getting a push that would last until someone needed "the rub" of beating them - usually Taker, but sometimes Cena. I forget which of those two they were heating Big Show up for, but that seems like the point of this match. For some reason this goes 8 minutes despite these two having zero chemistry. The Big Show has had some good matches in his career, but Giant vs. Giant battles work best when you have two monsters with surprising agility - like Bossman and Vader - or the willingness to do brutal things against eachother - like Lesnar and Taker. I don't think Big Show has ever had a really great Monster vs. Monster match and this certainly isn't one. At least we get a definitive finish? (0.5/5)
After another backstage segment involving Randy Orton, its time for one of the "spotlight" matches of the night: Shawn Michaels vs. Batista with Chris Jericho as the Guest Referee. The build-up for this match was cool; Batista was upset about Shawn Michaels retiring Ric Flair at WrestleMania and Jericho accused Batista of wanting to do it himself. Batista was not officially a heel at this point - and wouldn't really turn heel for some time - but was in a bit of a "tweener" role. The story of the match is Shawn trying to outwrestle and outmaneuver Batista while The Animal uses his power to keep HBK down. Shawn targets Batista's shoulder, fighting a bit dirty. I can understand why they wanted Shawn to work as the pseudo-heel, especially considering the finish (which sees Shawn fake a knee injury to prevent a Batista Bomb and then catch Big Dave with a Sweet Chin Music), but it does go against what the crowd clearly wanted. I think these two had a much better match in them, but the roles would've had to have been defined more clearly (and with each guy in the right one). An extra half-point for trying to do something a bit different. (3/5)
A 10-man Divas match follows with the heels - Beth Pheonix, Victoria, Melina, Jillian Hall, and Natalya taking on Mickie James, Michelle McCool, Ashley Massaro, Cherry, Kelly Kelly, and Maria. Not much to say about this match aside from the fact that it was obviously designed to fill time, cool down the audience, and maybe make up for the lack of representation/ring time at the WrestleMania pay-per-view a month earlier (where most of these women served as "lumberjills" for a Pheonix & Melina vs. Ashley & Maria Playboy-themed contest). Victoria would leave the company a year later and, by that time, Michelle McCool was either starting or would be about to start a great run with Layla and the Bella Twins had debuted and become arguably the most promoted act of the entire division, even if Beth Pheonix, Gail Kim, and Mickie James were still largely responsible for carrying the actual wrestling end. As a palate cleanser, this is inoffensive and effective, but that doesn't make it worth watching. (1/5)
The World Heavyweight Champion, The Undertaker, defends his title against the former champion - Edge - in the next bout. The commentators make a big deal about how Edge has some sort of great record against the Undertaker, but he'd lost to him, cleanly, by submission, at WrestleMania just a month earlier so the whole notion that Taker had never "pinned" Edge is silly. I remember really liking the Edge/Taker match from that Mania show, but this one didn't grab me the same way. At the time, it was a foregone conclusion that Edge was not going to be ending the Deadman's streak, but the fun of that match was the sheer insanity of the false finishes, that there were somehow moments when it seemed like maybe - just maybe - Vince and Taker were going to cash-in their chips to give Edge a huge rub. The stakes are much lower in this match so the drama is lower too. A largely forgettable match that would've benefited from a stipulation. (2.5/5)
Main event time - Randy Orton defending his WWE Championship against John Cena, JBL, and Triple H in an elimination rules Fatal Fourway Match. Even on paper this looks like the WWE had no idea in which direction to head after WrestleMania so they just collapsed all their main event-level guys onto each other and hoped for the best. Unfortunately, this match just doesn't work at all. There are glimmers of could've-been-interesting moments, especially in seeing the interplay between the match's two heels, Orton and JBL, but those moments are fleeting as JBL and Cena succumb to a double-elimination about a third of the way into the match. The crowd is somewhat pleased by this as Cena was definitely not super popular with this crowd, but its not like the audience is particularly jazzed about what becomes a 20-minute Randy Orton/Triple H rematch, a match that fans had seen - on PPV and TV - multiple times since 2004 (and would see multiple times again in the coming months). The best spot of the match comes when Triple H counters a piledriver on the steps attempt by slamming Orton hard, back-first, onto the steel, which earned an audible gasp from me as I watched, jogging on my treadmill. Aside from that, this is your standard HHH/Orton match and while there is nothing inherently wrong with that, it definitely suggests that the WWE's creative juices were spent and that fresh blood was desperately needed in the WWE Championship scene. Sadly, that fresh blood wouldn't really arrive for a number of years, which is why the WWE's 2008-2011 run is considered mostly garbage until CM Punk finally got a chance to shine and Brock Lesnar returned. (2.5/5)
One of the least exciting, least enjoyable WWE PPVs I've seen in a couple years and one that definitely makes me hesitant to check out any of the other shows from 2008. Backlash 2008 is a WrestleMania hangover show, largely irrelevant in the grand scheme of things and coming across more like a glorified house show than an event that, at the time, would've cost $40-50 to watch. Not a single match, except for maybe the opener and the HBK/Batista match (the only match on this show to really have any future storytelling implications), could be considered above-average. Neither title match is worth seeking out with the second one, despite featuring three certified main event-level talents (and JBL), being booked with about as much creativity and risk-taking spirit as butter on toasted white bread. Even with a Kwang Score of 2.0-out-of-5, higher than it probably should be, this is not a show worth your time.
FINAL RATING - DUDleyville
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