Backlash 2000: The WrestleMania Ending WWE Should Have Given You Four Weeks Earlier

This is a compact opener with four wrestlers who know exactly how to make eight minutes feel useful. Road Dogg and X-Pac control enough of the match to give Edge a meaningful comeback, while Edge and Christian are already learning the opportunistic champion personality that will define their run. The bell-shot finish is cheap but appropriate for newly established heel champions, and the crowd is hot enough that the shortcuts feel like fuel rather than disappointment. It never develops into a major tag classic, yet it accomplishes every opener job: clear pace, clear characters, a few satisfying counters and an ending that advances the champions' identity.

The miracle is not that Malenko wrestles a great technical match; that is expected. The miracle is that Scotty 2 Hotty meets him there without losing the personality that made him over. The match gradually converts a crowd expecting a midcard novelty into one treating every counter like a championship crisis. Malenko's precision gives Scotty's bursts of offense credibility, and Scotty's timing keeps the wrestling from becoming a clinical exhibition. The super DDT finish is spectacular because it is the logical final escalation after both men have spent eleven minutes turning increasingly difficult counters into believable nearfalls.

Four tough wrestlers produce a match that sounds more appealing in a sentence than it feels in motion. Bradshaw and Faarooq bring believable physicality, Bull Buchanan has impressive athletic flashes for his size, and Boss Man can still organize a basic heel control segment. The problem is that nothing on the card depends on the result. The audience understands the teams, understands the violence and then waits for the finish. The nightstick shortcut gives the heels a reason to win, but it also confirms that this is transitional undercard material rather than a feud anyone needs to revisit.

The six-pack structure works because the Hardcore Championship is supposed to feel barely governable. Crash Holly spends much of the match surviving rather than controlling, while every other wrestler gets a recognizable piece of chaos: Hardy dives, Tazz submissions, Saturn weapon shots and Hardcore Holly's blunt-force offense. Unlike some Attitude Era hardcore matches, this one has enough ring geography to remain readable. The final sequence, with bodies flying outside and Crash stealing the pin on Tazz, perfectly fits a champion whose entire identity is escaping situations he should not survive. It is not elegant wrestling, but it is very good genre wrestling.

This is a comedy segment with a bell at the beginning and another bell at the end. Big Show enters dressed as Hulk Hogan, leans fully into the Showster bit and overwhelms Kurt Angle before a real match can form. As television character work, it has some charm because Angle's seriousness is an ideal target for Show's ridiculousness. As pay-per-view wrestling, it is almost nothing. The saving grace is duration: two and a half minutes is exactly how long the idea should last, and WWF wisely leaves before the joke can become a punishment.

The wrestling is sturdier than the feud. Test and Albert provide size, the Dudleys know how to structure a traditional tag match around a crowd waiting for Bubba Ray's comeback, and Trish Stratus gives the heels an obvious distraction weapon. The finish is basic Attitude Era interference, but the audience is less interested in who wins than in whether Trish will eventually meet a table. That post-match payoff gets the enormous reaction WWF wanted, even if the gendered humiliation angle has aged badly. Before that, the eleven-minute match is solid enough to maintain the card's momentum without threatening the stronger material around it.

Eight minutes is plenty when both wrestlers move like the ring has a fast-forward button. Guerrero already understands how to make his character visible inside the wrestling, while Rios supplies the aerial risk and Chyna and Lita give the match additional personality at ringside. The pace is aggressive without becoming completely weightless, and Eddie's neckbreaker variation finish is nasty enough to stop the sprint cleanly. The match would benefit from another few minutes of escalation, but on this card its brevity is an advantage. It arrives, flies and leaves the audience wanting slightly more.

This is fifteen minutes of two wrestlers treating every transition as a disagreement. Jericho attacks with urgency, Benoit counters with violence, and both men make routine rope breaks feel personal. The match is technically excellent without becoming sterile because the rivalry is visible in the tempo. The disqualification finish is the one meaningful deduction: Jericho using the title belt costs him the match and allows Benoit to retain, which protects the program but denies the audience the clean conclusion the work deserved. Even so, the match reinforces that WWF's upper midcard in 2000 could produce near-main-event quality without needing a gimmick.

The main event is overbooked with extraordinary confidence. Shane slow-counts, Vince interferes, Patterson and Brisco appear, referees disappear, and every new obstacle makes The Rock's position more ridiculous. The match survives because Triple H and The Rock never lose the center of the story: The Rock is trying to win a championship while an entire political machine is trying to prevent it. When Stone Cold Steve Austin finally walks out, chair in hand, the arena detonates. He clears the Regime, Linda McMahon restores Earl Hebner, and The Rock finally lands the People's Elbow that WrestleMania had denied him. It is not a pure wrestling classic. It is something WWF was often better at in 2000: a perfectly timed piece of populist chaos.