WrestleMania Backlash 2022 from the Dunkin’ Donuts Center in Providence was a tale of two shows. If you simply enjoy a Sunday night of mindless pro-wrestling action for $4.99 on Peacock, there were some good matches and two great matches. If you’re looking even a little deeper, to find out who the next challenger for Roman Reigns is, what the major feuds are going to be heading into the summer or any big angles, well, you got nothing resembling that.
The show didn’t look particularly promising going in. Even though there are eight active championships on Raw and SmackDown (if you exclude the 24/7 title), there was only one title defended on the PPV. You’d have to go back a long, long time to find a WWE PPV where only one title was defended. The irony is that for weeks WWE advertised a unification match with RK-Bro and The Usos squaring off with both the SmackDown and Raw tag team titles on the line, and then, just over a week ago, the company shot an angle to add Reigns and Drew McIntyre to the match, making it a six-man tag. Fans speculated that perhaps WWE would add a stipulation where all the belts were on the line in the match (Roman holds the unified world and universal titles), but no, it was changed to just a six-man tag team match with no stipulations. What was amazing about this decision is that it was not the usual “plans change”; instead, the idea from Day One was that it would just be a nontitle six-man, but the company still spent weeks teasing a title unification match it had no plans to deliver. It’s especially weird because years ago, The Miz and Daniel Bryan had a great feud building up on Talking Smack, but Vince McMahon immediately nixed it, because he doesn’t like to tease matches that he cannot deliver (Bryan was considered permanently retired at the time). Here, he had no issue teasing the match and not delivering, and at this point it’s not like the match is just delayed; as of this weekend, it was off the books altogether.
The only title match saw Ronda Rousey beat Charlotte Flair in an “I Quit” match to win the SmackDown women’s title. The match was great, the best Rousey match since she returned after having a baby, and the best Charlotte match in months and months. They pummeled each other in a very physical match, using gimmicks such as kendo sticks and even ringside cameras. The key spot was Charlotte sarcastically wishing Rousey a happy Mother’s Day. Ronda, who left wrestling to start a family and has talked about how she wants her child to watch her to learn what a strong woman is all about (like her own mother), got fired up, put Charlotte in an armbar through a steel chair and forced her to say “I Quit.”
