-Happy 8th Birthday to my nephew, Neko! Hope it was a great dad buddy!
-Proud papa, Kevin Patrick welcomes us to the show and he is joined by his co-host, R-Truth. Kevin asks Truth if he would like to be godfather for his child and Truth accepts. Patrick tells him there is a list of things to do and he needs to meet his wife next.
-We go back to moments ago as Braun took out Lashley and Truth says that Bruan was pissed off. He then apologizes and corrects himself and says that Braun was mad. Braun then drops Drew with the powerslam and with his dominance tonight he has no shot on Sunday.
Commentators: Adnan Virk, Corey Graves, Byron Saxton
It’s the go home show for Wrestlemania Backlash and that means it is time to push the rest of the card forward in a big way. There are currently two Raw matches set for the pay per view so in theory we are going to need some more stuff announced tonight. You can probably guess those matches from here and now we get to see how dull they can make the show that announces them. Let’s get to it.
The opening recap looks at Bobby Lashley beating Braun Strowman and then getting Claymored by Drew McIntyre. As a result: Lashley vs. McIntyre this week.
Hi, hello and welcome to Botched! It’s been a wild few weeks here. For a minute I thought that this column would become impossible to put out, as Twitter and YouTube accounts were seemingly getting shut down by the minute for showing AEW stuff. Turns out that was some type of YouTube algorithm thing, and not AEW getting upset at people making fun of their botches.
So we’ll keep doing this a little bit longer, I suppose. Here we go!
1. Rough night for Rhea & Asuka
Asuka & Rhea Ripley are generally well-regarded by wrestling fans for their in-ring work. They’ve had a tough time getting on the same page though, as the video below illustrates.
WWE Raw Hits
WWE Champion Bobby Lashley vs. Braun Strowman in a non-title match: The coin toss bit to determine whether Lashley would face Strowman or Drew McIntyre was odd, especially when they held the coin toss so early in the show. Why not just advertise Lashley vs. Strowman in advance? For that matter, why wait until the last seconds of the show to announce Lashley vs. McIntyre for next week when they could have hyped it consistently throughout this episode? WWE rarely announces anything a week out, so I guess this is minor progress. The actual match was fine with the McIntyre distraction causing the finish. I just wish that WWE didn’t go so overboard with their repetitive distraction finishes.