WWE Backlash 2025 Review

Linus O'Howell
3 days ago
4 min read

United States Championship: Jacob Fatu VS LA Knight VS Drew McIntyre VS Damian Priest

Backlash 2025 kicked off with the United States Championship on the line as Jacob Fatu had to defend in a Fatal 4-Way against LA Knight, Drew McIntyre, and Damian Priest! This was the match of the night for me, it was such a strong start to the show, and I thought everyone involved did a great job! LA Knight was rolling to begin with, Damian Priest got in plenty of offense in the middle portion of the match whilst Drew McIntyre started to dominate late on! We actually got a great near-fall where Priest fell on top of Knight following a McIntyre Claymore, and we got another brilliant bit where Damian pulled the referee out of the ring to cost Drew the Title! This led to McIntyre and Priest brawling through the crowd before a South of Heaven through a pair of tables took them both out of the proceedings, leading to a “quote and quote” singles match between LA Knight and Jacob Fatu! It actually looked like LA could be in line to win his United States Championship back, but that was thwarted by Solo Sikoa before a debuting Jeff Cobb showed up out of nowhere and destroyed The Megastar! This allowed Fatu to land a Moonsault onto Knight to get the win, and yeah, this was great!

Grade: B+

Women’s Intercontinental Championship: Lyra Valkyria VS Becky Lynch

The next contest was an all-Irish affair as Becky Lynch looked to dethrone Lyra Valkyria for the Women’s Intercontinental Championship! Whilst this match wasn’t as good as the first one, this was still pretty good, I enjoyed it, Lyra and Becky have a lot of chemistry in-ring together, and I thought they did a good job! There were a couple of moments where the flow of things didn’t quite work, probably costing this match from being on the same level as the opener, but the drama was there, with Valkyria kicking out of multiple Manhandle Slams as Lynch tried to capture the Women’s IC Title! Amazingly, in the end, it was actually Lyra who managed to retain her Gold via roll-up, but it was a post-match attack that saw The Man standing tall!

Grade: B

Intercontinental Championship: Dominik Mysterio VS Penta

The third Championship match of the night saw the other Intercontinental Championship on the line as Dominik Mysterio looked to retain against Penta! This was alright, probably the weakest match of the show, but there were still some good moments, particularly Dominik Mysterio’s DDT to the outside, that was absolutely incredible! As always with these kinds of matches, The Judgment Day had to get involved, but for some reason, Finn Balor decided he wanted to use a steel chair, and this amount of added time meant the referee saw everything and chucked them out! However, what the referee didn’t see was El Grande Americano as El Grande dropped Penta with an exposed headbutt, opening the door for “Dirty” Dom to deliver a 5-Star Frog Splash to get the win and retain his IC Title!

Grade: B-

Gunther VS Pat McAfee

In what was the match I was personally most looking forward to heading into the night, Pat McAfee returned to a wrestling ring as he went one-on-one with Gunther! As expected, Gunther dominated this fight, laying in heavy shot after heavy chop on Pat as he looked to prove a point! Michael Cole was great throughout this, shouting at Gunther to just end the match, but The Ring General was having too much fun for that! However, McAfee is great at what he does so he was able to rally late on, getting in some moves of his own, but even a Punt Kick could barely produce a 1 count! For some reason, Michael Cole then decided to get into the ring, and that was pretty stupid, even though it did lead to McAfee almost winning after Cole held onto the leg of Gunther! However, in the end, The Ring General locked in a pair of sleeper holds to make Pat McAfee pass out before he showed some respect to the former Pro Bowl Punter! This was a lot of fun, I enjoyed it!

Grade: B

Undisputed WWE Championship: John Cena VS Randy Orton

And in the Main Event of this year’s WWE Backlash, John Cena and Randy Orton collided one final time with the Undisputed WWE Championship on the line! This match started off slow, which was kind of expected, but it did get going as it went on! Both guys hit their signature manoeuvres, with Randy kicking out of an AA before Orton sent Cena crashing through two tables with AA’s of his own! There were plenty of ref bumps here, 3 to be exact, and this was done to create a lot of carnage whilst also giving Randy a visual pin! Randy Orton was clearly pretty angry by all of this as he started dropping everyone with RKO’s (including Nick Aldis), but it was R-Truth’s arrival that messed everything up for The Viper as this distraction allowed John Cena to deliver a low blow followed by another AA to finally get the win! After the match, John Cena cut a small promo, saying this is what the last real Champion looks like! Overall, this was alright, it had some fun moments, it had some slow moments, but all in all, it was much better than Cena’s Mania match!