WWE Backlash 2003 Review

WWE Tag Team Championship Match

Team Angle(c) vs. Los Guerreros

Good opener to say the least and a compelling tag match. Eddie and Chavo start out getting the best of Haas and Benjamin on the mat and they do their hilarious cheating as faces schtick that is always fun to watch. From there I thought they took a really interesting approach to the match because it ended up being Team Angle trying to out cheat Eddie and Chavo. The Guerreros were the first to break rules in the match and they ended up losing from cheating in the end. On one hand I liked seeing how Haas and Benjamin would do the sequence of cheap tricks that Eddie and Chavo just did but on the other hand the match makes you feel a little weird. Watching a new team out Guerrero the Guerreros was just strange to see. Either way the match was smartly worked and it’s always good to see and Eddie match for the first time. The match also have me an appreciation for how unique their gimmick was and how much they would put a team over when they beat them. If the faces cheat as much as the heels any type of win from the heels can be looked at as a clean win. Haas and Benjamin looked like the better team here. They kept things fairly toned down and more basic than some of the great matches but this is still really enjoyable.

***

Sean O’Haire w/Roddy Piper vs. Rikishi

This about as good as you would expect, which isn’t very good. The match lasted for maybe 5 minutes and a good chunk of it was spent on an uninspiring control segment. He did have a couple of cool looking moves but didn’t show much personality. Piper was too over the top as a manager as well. He basically got O’Haire control of the match and then won the match later for him by being a huge distraction.

½*

World Tag Team Championship Match:

The Dudley Boys vs. Rob Van Dam and Kane(c)

Special Referee: Chief Morley

Pretty good match. Kane and RVD were faces were the Dudleys were in tweener mode as they had not decided if they were going to be on the same side as Eric Bischoff. Anyway for most of the match they kept the pace up with neither team establishing control. It was a lot more entertaining than I was expecting and I think that had to do with pacing. RVD didn’t bother me in a tag team setting, Kane was fun in short bursts, and the Dudleys did well with the faster pace. So much fuckery at the end. Morley and the Dudleys had a falling out and Lance Storm ran in for no apparent reason. Solid enough match for me.

**¾

Women’s Championship Match:

Jazz w/Teddy Long vs. Trish Stratus(c)

I really liked this. It was a super fun short match as Trish and Jazz just meshed really well. Jazz was the bad ass bitch and her aggressiveness came across perfectly while Trish played the gritty, injured babyface. Trish went in with injured ribs and Jazz attacked the injury. Teddy Long made a fun heel manager as well. They looked like wrestlers in their and thinking that I used to shit over solid matches like this makes me feel stupid.

**¼

Big Show vs Rey Mysterio

Really fun cat and mouse game. With such an absurd size difference they worked the match perfectly. Big took some offense from Rey but it wasn’t anything that looked dumb and the offense as a whole looked believable. Naturally, everything Big Show did looked fantastic on Rey. The match was sub 5 minutes but it makes my list of awesome short matches.

***

WWE Championship Match:

Brock Lesnar vs. John Cena

The start of the match reminded me a lot of their Extreme Rules match as Brock just killed Lesnar and it looked like he might not get any offense in at all. The ass kicking was just great. Cena was able to take advantage of a cut on Lesnar’s head and opened him up as soon as he got on offense. The blood really worked well for this match as Lesnar looked like the unstoppable monster at first but once he started bleeding the whole dynamic changed and he looked to be in a lot of trouble. When Brock would get some offense in you had the feeling that Cena was just hanging onto control and that he was going to have a problem if he let up even a little. It was fun seeing Cena use some heel tactics to try to stay in the match. Overall I liked the match but Cena wasn’t quite treated like a real main event guy as he was a massive underdog while playing the heel at the same time. Still, this worked pretty well and it was better than I was expecting because I didn’t have much faith that Cena would be having too many good matches this early in his career. But I think that might be a bad assumption because I’ve seen a few quality matches before his first title run now.

***½

Triple H, Ric Flair, and Chris Jericho vs. Shawn Michaels, Kevin Nash, and Booker T

I feel like I saw someone give this a really bad review not too long ago. I won’t say that this was bad at all, my biggest problem with the match is that it was a PPV main event instead of a Raw main event.You saw some nice exchanges involving everyone to start things off before Shawn was able to hit Sweet Chin Music on Flair and Triple H responded with a Pedigree. Flair was able to make the tag and we got a solid isolation segment on Michaels. A lot of the match was focused on Nash getting his hands on Triple H and they teased that encounter really well and they had them meet at the right time. Nash doesn’t exactly make for a hot tag but at least things totally broke down once he made it into the ring. There was a lot of stuff going on, a ref bump, a sledgehammer, and then the heels stole the win. The match didn’t drag Shawn makes a good face in peril, Flair is just the man, and everyone else was perfectly fine in this match. No it isn’t great but there wasn’t anything bad about it either. Nobody would complain at all if this was a Raw main event or something.

**¾

The Rock vs. Goldberg

This reminded me a lot of Cena/Rock II except this lasted 10 minutes instead of 30. Goldberg kicked some ass to start things off, missed a spear, hit the corner, and then they did finishers and signature moves for the rest of the match. It really wasn’t very good at all. The Rock’s heel character was a lot of fun at least and made this entertaining at times. I loved his reaction of shock and happiness when Goldberg missed the spear. Other than the Rock’s antics and Goldberg’s spears looking pretty cool there isn’t anything else positive to say. The crowd wasn’t happy seeing Goldberg go over the Rock and Goldberg’s big debut ended with a “Goldberg sucks!” chant as he set up the Rock for the Jack Hammer.

*

Not a very good show. There are plenty of decent matches but without a really great match this just isn’t worth the time. Maybe watch Cena/Brock because of who they are and the match was good but I hadn’t seen this show and I really wasn’t missing much.