Following on from Wrestlemania is always a daunting task, as Mania season is what most draws in casual audiences as well as lapsed fans checking in to see how things are going. So the first month following Wrestlemania is important to do well and generally have interesting developments to keep people watching every week. And alongside a new Draft and the introduction of a new World Heavyweight Championship with the inagural champion to be crowned at Night of Champions, WWE put on their Backlash Premium Live Event to wide acclaim and it ended up being a really sucessful night for the company both critically and financially.
Continuing to break the cycle of US only premium live events, Backlash was hosted in San Juan, Puerto Rico. And the Puerto Rico crowd showed that they deserve more shows as they were active and loud for the whole night which can only have had a good effect on the show’s quality as a whole. Among other bouts, the San Juan crowd got to see Zelina Vega honor her territory of descent in an ultimately unsucessful title challenge to Judgement Day’s Rhea Ripley. The Usos & Solo Sikoa defeated the team of Sami Zayn, Kevin Owens & Matt Riddle, however tensions in the Bloodline only seems to have hightened, particularly between Jey Uso and Solo highlighted most when near the end of the match Solo, out of frustration seemingly only just managed to stop himself from attacking Jey in the middle of the match. And the Main Event saw Cody Rhodes manage to scrape a win over Brock Lesnar, after not only launching Lesnar into an exposed turnbuckle which busted him open and left him spending the rest of the match bleeding heavily, managed to reverse the Kimura Lock into a sort of rollup to pick up the win and manage to escape the ring without having his arm snapped by Lesnar.
But, in a match which many argue should have main evented over Cody Rhodes’ clash with Brock Lesnar, Puerto Rican artist/lifelong wrestling fan Bad Bunny challenged Damian Priest (having been raised in Puerto Rico) to a “San Juan Street Fight”. And Bad Bunny, after having the entire audience serenading him to the ring with his song “Chambea” continued to prove that he is surprisingly good in the ring more than holding his own against Priest and eventually even defeating him in a match which involved several weapons, and the LWO assisting in dispatching of the Judgement Day alongside Puerto Rican legends Savio Vega and Carlito, who unlike the Royal Rumble in 2021 got to spit in the face, of someone who didn’t want to be cool (Dominik Mysterio).
Backlast 2023 saw a 28% increase in viewership compared to last year’s show. As well as generating the highest gate number in the history of the show, and being the most Social Backlash of all time, with the San Juan Street Fight being viewed over 40 million times/#WWEBacklash trending at no.1 all evening. This has only hightened the belief of many that international PLEs/PPVs are the future as fans most of the time praise overseas/international crowds for being overall better than some American crowds, whether that be Canadians or any UK crowd (as seen at Clash of the Castle last year/will likely be seen at Money in the Bank in July this year), WWE going to these less visited places can only benefit the company as well as the audiences who benefit from seeing the shows.
