WWE Backlash 2020: It’s okay that Edge vs. Orton wasn’t the greatest match ever

The two former world champions didn’t live up to the unreasonable expectations placed before them at WWE Backlash 2020, but they still turned in an admirable main event effort.

Unless you enjoy weak double-countout finishes, disjointed distraction spots that ruin otherwise good matches, handicap championship matches that make a tag team look like a couple of dorks, or whatever that Street Profits/Viking Raiders mess was, chances are you did not enjoy much of this past Sunday’s WWE Backlash 2020 pay-per-view.

Unfortunately, this should not have surprised anyone. On paper, the card did not look that appetizing and the more-or-less nauseating build that accompanied it conveyed the message that the promotion chose to place the show on the collective shoulders of Edge and Randy Orton.

Billing their second encounter in two months with the “Greatest Wrestling Match Ever” tagline, the company hoped the intrigue surrounding Edge and Orton’s ability – or lack thereof – to reach that lofty plateau would draw some extra eyes on a show that offered little else in the way of excitement.

And boy, WWE tried its best to make this match feel worthy of that slogan in the weeks preceding Backlash. Prior to the match, the company brought in several legends and Hall of Famers to give their kayfabe takes on the bout during episodes of RAW.

They used Panic at the Disco!’s cover of “The Greatest Show” in the video packages for the match. And they even dusted off an old Madison Square Garden overhead mic so the ghost of Howard Finkel could introduce both men before the match began.

But, again, the bells and whistles can only go so far. Where this one would ultimately land in the annals of wrestling history depended on two men: Edge and Orton. If nothing else, they certainly tried to make this live up to the hype.

WWE gave Edge and Orton plenty of latitude to paint their masterpiece – they officially wrestled for over 44 minutes, but WWE taped the match on Jun. 7, so they might have worked longer than what we saw on Sunday – and to their credit, they crammed in plenty of good stuff in the allotted time.

The chain wrestling in the opening minutes effectively set the tone for the bout while establishing how Edge had lost a bit of a step thanks to his retirement. Orton forgoing the grappling to ratchet up the aggression and work over Edge’s neck once “The Rated R Superstar” found his footing was a nice bit of heel psychology.

In the closing moments, we saw some slick counters and compelling nearfalls that kept fans engaged. And the finish – which was foreshadowed when referee Charles Robinson emphasized that “low blows” were illegal in his pre-match instructions – expertly reified Orton as a hypocritical jerk who took the road easier traveled when he failed to get the job done in a fair manner.

All of that would have made this rematch a classic … if Edge and Orton did not spend the middle of the match working at a pace too similar to their Last Man Standing match from last April, rely heavily on other wrestlers’ finishers even when it made little sense, spam their own signature moves one too many times, and if WWE didn’t use artificial crowd noise that oscillated between annoying and obnoxious.

Mix the good and the bad and you get a solid PPV main event that did not save an unsatisfactory event.

Yes, the match fell well below WWE’s preposterous expectations and the company should avoid risking legends’ and announcers’ credibility with these sorts of promotional tactics in the future, but they got close enough to the mark to keep it from becoming a complete farce. That should count for something.