Backlash 2020 - The one with the GREATEST MATCH EVER

[SmoothS]

Extreme Rules logo looks like it's being sponsored by The Disney Channel.

[SmoothS]

Samoa Joe has to be thinking that this "GREATEST WRESTLING MATCH EVER" stuff is a load of bull, especially after he went to war with freakin' Kenta Kobashi of all people.

[KawadaSmile]

38 minutes ago, SmoothS said:

Samoa Joe has to be thinking that this "GREATEST WRESTLING MATCH EVER" stuff is a load of bull, especially after he went to war with freakin' Kenta Kobashi of all people.

Speaking of which, it can't be understated how good he is at the commentary desk. Just a natural at putting people and angles over. The RAW team is very good, if we are being fair. It's a shame Cole is stuck with Corey.

[SmoothS]

Just finished watching Orton/Edge... WOW!!! Where do I even begin with this instant classic. A complete turnaround from their dismal WrestleMania match that almost put me to sleep. I loved the classy nod of respect to Howard Finkel, loved referee Charles Robinson (Lil' Naitch) wearing the uniform of a "New Generation" referee. This match had the "Big Fight" aura, and I loved the slow methodical build, the intensity, the drama, the bloodshed (a shot at Cody in AEW), the story of Edge's neck, the movesets of legends from the past and former colleagues being used, did not overkill the kickouts, Edge is a legendary facial expression artist, perfectly timed counter moves, all the way down to the perfectly timed Punt Kick. In the end, Randy Orton killed a Legend, as Samoa Joe put it. This match right here felt like North American Mainstream wrestling King's Road style... King's Road is Gospel in my eyes. WM match was trash, Backlash match was treasure. This was a legit 2020 Match of the Year Candidate. I also love the WWE Performance Center era. I hope they stay there for a long time. *****

[SmoothS]

43 minutes ago, KawadaSmile said:

Speaking of which, it can't be understated how good he is at the commentary desk. Just a natural at putting people and angles over. The RAW team is very good, if we are being fair. It's a shame Cole is stuck with Corey.

Samoa Joe is the only commentator that I want to hear at all on the Main Roster, LOL. Mauro & Joe together? Legendary commentary team right there.

[SmoothS]

If Orton had been wrestling like this the whole time, he would have become one of the greatest workers of all time, EASILY.

[FMKK]

Tbf, any competent wrestler could be made to look like an all time great if they got to do multiple takes of their spots and had crowd heat piped in for them

[SmoothS]

There was no way that this match would have been done in front of thousands of people who don't react to anything anyway, and they probably would not have been given that much time at all. This match was perfectly laid out, and everything had my full attention. I almost forgot about Edge being away for almost 10 years, and the story about his injury during this match. That is how great I felt this match was.

[Coffey]

7 minutes ago, FMKK said:

Tbf, any competent wrestler could be made to look like an all time great if they got to do multiple takes of their spots and had crowd heat piped in for them

I don't like this argument.

If something is good, it's good. We don't need to dissect it to try to discredit it. Much like Savage/Steamboat was great, regardless of if they planned it all out beforehand or rehearsed it or whatever.

When what we see as fans is good, we should be able to say "that was good" without the "yeah, but" part. How many expected the match to be as good as we even got?

[KawadaSmile]

10 minutes ago, FMKK said:

Tbf, any competent wrestler could be made to look like an all time great if they got to do multiple takes of their spots and had crowd heat piped in for them

In theory, this is correct. However, I don't think many would be able to reproduce what those two did, with the quality they did, no matter how many takes they had.

There's some things you just can't teach.

[El-P]

59 minutes ago, Coffey said:

If something is good, it's good. We don't need to dissect it to try to discredit it. Much like Savage/Steamboat was great, regardless of if they planned it all out beforehand or rehearsed it or whatever.

Except that's totally different. Hell, Edge got injured shooting a "retake". This match is a cinematic match passing itself for a real one, with some meta elements put into it (Finkel's voice, the piped-in chants in an arena devoid of real crowd). So maybe it was great, maybe it wasn't, but it sure wasn't a "real" wrestling match and should not be judged as such. I'd rather have true nonsense, out there cinematic stuff like Taker vs AJ Styles or the Stadium Stampede rather than a fake "great pro-wrestling match". But coming from WWE, the idea of a "pro-wrestling match" being enough in itself for a cinematic version almost reeks of irony, which I guess was also the point.

[FMKK]

1 hour ago, Coffey said:

I don't like this argument.

If something is good, it's good. We don't need to dissect it to try to discredit it. Much like Savage/Steamboat was great, regardless of if they planned it all out beforehand or rehearsed it or whatever.

When what we see as fans is good, we should be able to say "that was good" without the "yeah, but" part. How many expected the match to be as good as we even got?

This is Pro Wrestling Only and we're saying we shouldn't dissect shit now? 

Savage and Steamboat still had to nail their spots with one take and get their match over to the live audience. It's a completely different thing. I'm not trying to take away from anyone's enjoyment but you can't really judge this like a normal match because it wasn't carried out like one. This was more like a wrestling match from a movie or something.

[Matt D]

I think all can be true. I think you can appreciate the end product for what it is, try to understand how they got there and pay attention to where you can see the strings both for good and ill, and to judge it conditionally as you compare it to other matches and other performances from the two wrestlers. 

[C.S.]

4 hours ago, SmoothS said:

Mauro & Joe together? Legendary commentary team right there.

My new dream team!

[PhilTLL]

6 hours ago, SmoothS said:

Just finished watching Orton/Edge... WOW!!! Where do I even begin with this instant classic. A complete turnaround from their dismal WrestleMania match that almost put me to sleep. I loved the classy nod of respect to Howard Finkel, loved referee Charles Robinson (Lil' Naitch) wearing the uniform of a "New Generation" referee. This match had the "Big Fight" aura, and I loved the slow methodical build, the intensity, the drama, the bloodshed (a shot at Cody in AEW), the story of Edge's neck, the movesets of legends from the past and former colleagues being used, did not overkill the kickouts, Edge is a legendary facial expression artist, perfectly timed counter moves, all the way down to the perfectly timed Punt Kick. In the end, Randy Orton killed a Legend, as Samoa Joe put it. This match right here felt like North American Mainstream wrestling King's Road style... King's Road is Gospel in my eyes. WM match was trash, Backlash match was treasure. This was a legit 2020 Match of the Year Candidate. I also love the WWE Performance Center era. I hope they stay there for a long time. *****

I know everyone uses star ratings in different ways, but I just have to ask, are you saying there were two 5-star WWE matches in one weekend? How many do you go that high on in say, a year?

[Coffey]

6 hours ago, El-P said:

Except that's totally different

Cool.

[Coffey]

5 hours ago, FMKK said:

Savage and Steamboat still had to nail their spots with one take and... and... and...

Yeah, but

[SmoothS]

I feel that there actually were 2 matches within this past weekend that are deserving of 5 Star ratings in my eyes. This is a MAJOR reason why I want WWE to stay at the Performance Center, they seem to actually care about producing some top quality in-ring action. When I hear that they have pre-taped a match, I now get excited. LOL. The last time that I remember giving a WWE Main Roster match a 5 Star rating was Cena/Punk on RAW in 2013. The closet after that was Cena/AJ from Royal Rumble 2017, that I gave 4.75 to. I would say that Johnny Gargano was the main WWE guy putting on the 5 Star matches up until now against the likes of Andrade, Ciampa, & Cole. But it seems like that has changed for now.

[sek69]

Having a match planned out move for move isn't the same as being able to do multiple retakes mid match. I would suspect nearly every WWE match in the last 10 years has been planned out move for move (and would be nearly certain every NXT match has been), and that's something entirely different than what Edge and Orton did. You can plan all you want, but if shit happens you have to either improvise or everything falls apart. We've seen plenty examples of both happening over the years.

Being able to stop filming and reshoot/redo takes is a whole different animal, and at that point it's just like a movie having a wrestling match as part of the plot.  As was mentioned before, it's Cinematic Wrestling trying to pretend to be normal wrestling. 

[fxnj]

There have been countless matches edited for Smackdown and whatnot over the years, and I'm pretty confident some of those involved the wrestlers redoing moves after botches that got edited out. I can't get onboard with the idea that a match being edited before it airs disqualifies it from being a wrestling match.

[sek69]

I've never heard of edited matches on taped TV shows prior to this being edited more than removing botches and sometimes redoing the finish (which was usually because something was botched). Or like what they did with Nia/Kairi where they edited out the blood and the associated cleanup.  This match had several takes and was more akin to an extended fight scene in a movie than an actual wrestling match. 

It's not that it "wasn't a wrestling match", at least that isn't what I'm saying here.  I'm just saying it can't be judged as the same standards of the usual match that by and large has to be done in one uninterrupted take.

 

[El-P]

1 hour ago, fxnj said:

 I can't get onboard with the idea that a match being edited before it airs disqualifies it from being a wrestling match.

A live performance edited out of his botched spots isn't the same thing at all as a final product that had retakes edited inside the structure of a match.

Edited matches were all over the place in the VHS days (it also made them super tricky to judge back then because you did not know what was edited out). Just like matches joined in progress from NJ and AJ TV, where sometimes you'd juts get the hot work to the finish and did not see what was maybe a super mediocre ten first minutes.

The word I was looking for as match as this match goes is "disingenuous". They cut and edited and did retakes to present what "seem to be" a normal pro-wrestling match, with enough obvious fakery (crowd noise and such) to underline the fact it's not. Like I said before, and maybe I'm totally overthinking this and giving waaaaaaaay to much credit to WWE, and maybe it's all Edge & Orton themselves after all, to me this was kind of the point. Hence the whole thing about the Greatest Match Ever. In a way it's actually totally brillant, conceptually speaking, if not exactly pleasing. As far as execution goes, I'll leave you the judges, apparently some thought it was great, some clearly did not.

[DMJ]

Aside from what's been reported about Edge's triceps injury, do we actually know how many re-takes and edits were done? I can understand criticizing the very idea of doing re-takes and editing, but I'm also not convinced that they shot this like a film where after 10 minutes someone yelled cut and they sat down on director's chairs for a coffee break. I'd wager that Edge and Orton, like most wrestlers, wanted the "performance" to be as live as possible. Considering they've both got thousands of matches under their belt, that would be the most natural way to shoot it anyway ("live to tape" as they say).

To me, I'd have to really know how much they doctored it up to criticize it that heavily. I mean, do we know for sure they didn't doctor up Sheamus/Hardy or AJ/Bryan (which, I believe, was also taped)? Are we just giving those matches the benefit of the doubt but not this one based on  Edge suffering an injury during a retake? If that injury never happens and we never get confirmation that they did re-takes, how does that change your view? Just seems like a questionable demarcation line when the WWE could be doctoring up all of the taped matches and the Edge/Orton one or the Bryan/Zayn one from Mania or Bryan/AJ from SmackDown were *still*, in my opinion, significantly better than average matches. I mean, if we're conceding that these matches are being taped and edited to make them the most exciting presentations possible, why the fuck do I still not care about Drew McIntyre?


 

[FMKK]

Well some reports seem to suggest that the rest of the show went out live and the main event was the only prerecorded match. I couldn't swear to it but I definitely noticed a couple of little moments where it looked like some editing had been done. The most obvious was Orton's cut, which I think may have been cleaned up at some point.