Top 5 all-time matches from WWE Backlash/WrestleMania Backlash

Best Backlash matches of all time No. 3: John Cena vs. Shawn Michaels vs. Edge vs. Randy Orton- WWE Championship (Backlash 2007)

Heading into WrestleMania 23, the quadruple of Shawn Michaels, Randy Orton, Edge, and John Cena filled a considerable amount of Raw’s runtime interacting with each other. At first, this merely consisted of Cena taking the injured Triple H’s place as Michaels’ tag team partner (they even beat Edge and Orton for World Tag Team Championship), but as the Cena/Michaels program heated up, things devolved into “can they co-exist?” between the two teams.

This bickering culminated in a fatal 4 way at Backlash 2007. Of course, these four were/are good, shrewd workers, so it shouldn’t surprise anyone to hear how good this was. In addition to effectively playing up the interpersonal animosity throughout the main event, they mixed in plenty of well-timed spots that maintained the match’s steady, entertaining pace.

It all crescendoed with an amazing, albeit confusing, finishing sequence that saw Edge spear Orton after Cena blocked the RKO, Cena hit the F-U (now the Attitude Adjustment) on Edge, and Michaels nailing Cena with Sweet Chin Music…which caused Cena to fall onto a knocked out Orton to score the pin and retain.

Now, this finish seemed to point to another Cena/Michaels match, but given that Michaels got written off of TV not long after this match and Cena feuded with The Great Khali after this, that clearly didn’t happen. That made this finish a bit baffling in the macro, but in the moment, it reinforced how chaotic and random these matches can be.