WWE Backlash from the Coliseo de Puerto Rico José Miguel Agrelot in San Juan will be remembered for years, perhaps decades, for the unbelievable crowd reactions up and down the show.
If you watched February’s Elimination Chamber main event in Montreal, where Roman Reigns defended the WWE undisputed universal championship against hometown hero Sami Zayn, and you remember the unbelievable crowd reactions for that match, well, just imagine an entire show with those same reactions. (Ironically, the only match on Backlash that didn’t get that kind of reaction just happened to involve Zayn.) The closest comparison one can draw, which is why this show could be remembered for decades, is WWF’s Canadian Stampede PPV in Calgary on July 6, 1997, over a quarter century ago.
The biggest stars on the show by far were Zelina Vega and Bad Bunny. Vega, real name Thea Trinidad, was born in Queens, N.Y., although she is of Puerto Rican descent. While she’s had some success in WWE, including winning the tag titles with Carmella and the Queen of the Ring tournament a few years ago, she’s often been put in a managerial role and was never pushed to the level of the top women’s stars. Literally, she got the SmackDown women’s title match in Puerto Rico because she went to Adam Pearce on SmackDown and said that she was the only Puerto Rican woman in WWE and thus she should get the shot. The story they told was that there was almost zero chance she would beat Rhea Ripley for the title, but because it was WWE where “anything can happen,” there was a chance. And the match itself told the same story, as Rhea dominated her, Zelina got a very quick comeback, and then Rhea just hit her with her Riptide finish and pinned her.
Story line aside, while she didn’t get the win it probably didn’t matter to her one bit as the reaction she got coming out was so overwhelming that she broke down in tears as they were doing the ring introductions. After the match ended, the entire crowd, a legitimate 17,390, rose from their seats and gave her a sustained standing ovation as she stood overcome with emotion in the middle of the ring, her family at ringside. She will probably forever speak of it as the greatest moment of her career, and one of the best moments of her life.
And, of course, the crowd reaction for Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio (aka Bad Bunny) vs. Damian Priest, was complete madness. The match itself was scheduled to be a tag-team match with Priest, also Puerto Rican, and Dominik Mysterio vs. Bunny and Rey Mysterio. But for whatever reason, when WWE shot the angle on Raw, it turned out that it had been changed to a street fight with Bunny vs. Priest one on one. Although Bunny has wrestled before and did a great job for a celebrity, the tag match seemed like it would have been the safer bet. I don’t think anyone, including the participants, could have imagined that the street fight would have worked out as great as it did. The key was the cameos. About midway through the match, Finn Bálor and Dominik hit the ring to attack Bunny. Rey Mysterio tried to run down to make the save, but it was still three on two. Suddenly, an old, old WWE theme hit, and who should appear to make the save but Puerto Rico’s own Carlito, who had made exactly two WWE appearances since he was released from the company due to personal issues in 2010. He got a monstrous reaction. He helped clear the ring, and then as the heels bailed, another theme hit and Puerto Rico’s own Savio Vega appeared in the aisle to take out Finn and Dominik. His reaction rivaled that of Carlito. Once everyone involved ran off, Bunny ended up hitting Priest with a Canadian destroyer and getting the pin.
Having a celebrity come in and pin a full-time wrestler, especially one the size of Priest, is very tricky, but they worked a very smart match. Priest actually hit his finish about a minute in and had the match won, but he pulled Bunny up at the two-count to deliver more of a beating. Later, he went to throw a kick and hit the ringpost instead. So what cost him the match was not that Bunny was necessarily a better wrestler, but rather that he got cocky as a heel, and the injury that turned the match in Bunny’s favor was actually something that Priest did to himself.
The unique reaction on the show was when the fans decided that Iyo Sky, the heel, was their favorite in her Raw women’s title match with Bianca Belair. It wasn’t just that they wanted to cheer for Iyo—they also decided they didn’t like Bianca and booed her out of the building. They had a fantastic match, and one could argue that the company may as well have called an audible and had Shirai win the title, but WWE of late has been all about setting records, and since Bianca had to win this match to set the women’s title reign record, she had to win. Bell to bell, with no gimmicks, they had the best match on the show.
The main event was also notable in that Brock Lesnar went headfirst into the top turnbuckle in his match with Cody Rhodes and legitimately split himself open. WWE has banned blood in all forms, and at WrestleMania when Bálor got busted open in a cage match it actually stopped the match to control the bleeding and tape him up, which left fans absolutely furious. (To be fair, it was a gruesome cut that required nearly 20 staples to close.) In this match, Lesnar got busted open, and there was none of that. He was leaking blood everywhere, all over himself and Cody, and nobody stopped it. At one point, someone gave the ref a towel, but the ref sheepishly dropped it outside the ring. It was almost like nobody had the nerve to try to stop a Brock Lesnar match. So they wrestled a few more minutes with blood everywhere (apropos, since Puerto Rico was historically an extremely bloody wrestling territory) before Cody finally reversed a kimura into a cradle and got the flash pin.
It was known going in, with Puerto Rico starved for a big WWE show and Bad Bunny having been advertised in advance, first as just the host of the show and later as a main-eventer, that this would be a hot crowd. But it was one of those rare shows in history that goes beyond just being hot and into the realm of magical and historic. It was a must-see event.
