Backlash 2025: One Last Time, and Then Some

Backlash opens by putting four men in a match whose real assignment is to advance three different stories without looking like a committee meeting. It succeeds.

Fatu is the center of gravity. His speed and explosiveness remain strange in the best way: the movement of a much smaller wrestler attached to someone who looks capable of throwing the furniture. Knight provides the crowd connection, while Priest and McIntyre bring a feud hot enough that they eventually stop pretending the championship is their only concern.

The structure is efficient. Rather than waiting for the obligatory one-at-a-time parade of signature moves, the match keeps intersecting rivalries moving. Priest and McIntyre sabotage one another, Knight repeatedly finds openings, and Fatu gets the kind of showcase that reinforces why the audience is already responding to him as something more than another Bloodline enforcer.

The South of Heaven through tables gives Priest and McIntyre a violent exit from the decisive stretch. Solo Sikoa then interferes to save Fatu from Knight, which creates the doorway for Jeff Cobb's WWE debut. Cobb attacks Knight, Fatu takes advantage with the moonsault, and the champion retains while looking suspicious rather than grateful.

That final reaction is the important detail. Cobb's arrival is the headline, but Fatu's discomfort is the story. WWE gets a debut, protects Knight, continues Priest-McIntyre and nudges Fatu toward eventual separation from Sikoa in the same finish.

The interference costs it a cleaner conclusion, but the match is hot, organized and consequential. B+ / 8.2.

This is the match Backlash should be remembered for if wrestling quality gets a vote.

Valkyria and Lynch work nearly nineteen minutes without treating the championship like a prop between larger names. The match is built around counters and accumulated familiarity. Valkyria has beaten Lynch before, Lynch knows it, and the story becomes less about whether the younger champion belongs than whether she can keep answering when the veteran changes the question.

Lynch's heel work is useful because it gives the match shape rather than simply supplying expressions between moves. She controls long stretches, taunts Valkyria's fiancé at ringside and becomes increasingly frustrated when the Manhandle Slam does not finish the job. Valkyria's offense feels earned instead of scheduled, and the crowd gradually accepts that the champion might actually win this without a rescue.

The exposed-turnbuckle distraction creates a delayed count after Nightwing and introduces some unnecessary machinery, but the final counter sequence restores the point. Valkyria reverses Lynch's pin attempt and gets the three herself.

Then Lynch attacks afterward, because professional wrestling has never met a clean victory it could not immediately complicate. The post-match assault keeps the feud alive, but it does not change the record: Valkyria beat Becky Lynch and left with the title.

That matters. It is a star-building match disguised as a title defense. A- / 8.6.

Dominik Mysterio and Penta are given nine minutes and decide not to waste any of them. The match has the speed and visual variety of a very good television title defense. Penta brings the dives, sling blades and Mexican Destroyer; Dominik continues the quiet transformation from a wrestler whose heat once covered his limitations into someone increasingly capable of using that heat to frame competent, confident offense.

There is real chemistry here. Dominik's tornado DDT to the floor is excellent, Penta's crossbody and apron offense keep the pace moving, and the crowd is invested in both men for completely different reasons.

Then the entourage arrives. Carlito, Finn Bálor and JD McDonagh create one distraction, get ejected, and El Grande Americano appears to deliver the loaded-mask headbutt that sets up Dominik's frog splash.

The finish is logical for Dominik's character and advances multiple stories. It is also the second straight championship match on the card to rely on outside involvement, and this one has less match around it to absorb the cost.

Good action, strong crowd response, familiar shortcut. B- / 7.2.

The central question is not whether Pat McAfee can beat Gunther. Nobody in St. Louis believes that, including several people professionally required to pretend otherwise.

The useful question is whether WWE can turn that certainty into a story. For stretches, yes. Gunther treats McAfee like a nuisance. McAfee survives through athleticism and stubbornness. Michael Cole abandons neutrality because the entire feud exists around Gunther attacking him, which gives the match a personal hook that a standard celebrity-understudy bout would not have.

McAfee's offense is best when it looks desperate rather than competitive. His kicks can plausibly stagger Gunther. His athletic counters are impressive. The trouble begins when the match spends too long suggesting a genuine competitive balance. Gunther had spent years being presented as one of the most difficult men in WWE to hurt; asking an announcer to push him for fourteen minutes requires more suspension of disbelief than the story earns.

The ending recovers the hierarchy. Cole interferes, McAfee briefly capitalizes, Gunther survives and then chokes McAfee unconscious. The post-match show of respect gives the angle a clean emotional finish.

It is entertaining sports entertainment and a merely adequate wrestling match. C+ / 6.5.

There are matches evaluated by what happens between the bells, and there are matches where twenty years walk to the ring before either wrestler does.

Cena and Orton benefit from the second category. St. Louis is fully committed to Orton, the roles are reversed from much of their shared history, and every familiar piece of offense arrives with a memory attached. They poke each other in the eye. They counter signature sequences because of course they know them. Orton turns an Attitude Adjustment attempt into an RKO. Later he uses Cena's own move, twice, including through tables.

The early pace is deliberate to the point of inertia. Neither man is pretending to be twenty-eight, and the match initially leans on recognition more than urgency. It gets better as it becomes less normal. Then WWE empties the toolbox onto the floor.

One referee goes down. Then another. Orton hits an RKO without anyone available to count. Producers and SmackDown general manager Nick Aldis enter, so Orton begins handing out RKOs like a civic obligation. R-Truth stops the Punt because he still believes in Cena. Cena responds with a low blow and a championship-belt shot to steal the pin.

It is too much. It is also undeniably alive.

The overbooking fits heel Cena, protects hometown Orton and turns the supposed final singles chapter into something closer to a greatest-hits encore performed during a small riot. As pure wrestling it is below the first two matches. As atmosphere and historical theater it is one of the night's defining pieces.