Welcome to the live results watch page for WWE BACKLASH 2023 pay-per-view!
The event is scheduled to start at 7 p.m. ET with the kickoff, followed by the main show starting at 8 p.m.
Follow along here throughout the show for the results of each match as well as my personal thoughts on everything throughout the night down after the separation bar.
Keep refreshing for new updates, check out the quick results at the top of the page for the winners and chat it up with everyone in the comments as the show goes on!
Quick Hits Results:
- Raw Women’s Championship Match: Bianca Belair (c) defeated Iyo Sky by pinfall.
- Seth Rollins defeated Omos by pinfall.
- United States Championship Triple Threat Match: Austin Theory (c) retained over Bobby Lashley and Bronson Reed by pinfall on Reed.
- SmackDown Women’s Championship Match: Rhea Ripley (c) defeated Zelina Vega by pinfall.
- San Juan Street Fight: Bad Bunny defeated Damian Priest by pinfall.
- Six-Man Tag Team Match: The Bloodline (Jey Uso, Jimmy Uso and Solo Sikoa) defeated Matt Riddle, Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn by pinfall (Sikoa pins Riddle)
- Cody Rhodes defeated Brock Lesnar by pinfall.
Author’s POV, Running Commentary & Thoughts:
Kickoff
- Nothing at all of note here, as per usual. Matt Camp, Jackie Redmond and Peter Rosenberg simply went through the card and gave their insights and promotional thoughts to hype up the event.
Raw Women’s Championship Match
- There’s a very hot crowd. That will go a long way in making this event feel more special than what could very well amount to a series of matches that don’t matter and have no bearing on anything going forward (realistically). Belair and Sky are sure to hold down the fort with this opener, though, at least.
- The crowd is actually behind Iyo by an audible margin. I wasn’t expecting that.
- Iyo’s been working on taking Bianca’s arm strength away from her. That’s the overall story of the match.
- Impressive moment with Belair holding Sky up with one hand (and then faceplanting her)
- Iyo’s mostly been in control here. Bianca’s fighting from underneath.
- Bayley and Dakota Kai are out to cause a distraction and Iyo got a VERY close near-fall that a lot of the crowd thought was the end of the match.
- Sky was ready for a moonsault, but the referee caught Bayley holding Bianca’s hair. That led to a few moments of hesitation, where Bianca was able to then move out of the way, hit a KOD and score the victory. She’ll now be the longest-reigning women’s champion outside of this era.
- Great opener.
Big pop for a backstage segment with Bad Bunny and Rey Mysterio when Savio Vega shows up!
Omos vs. Seth Rollins
- Omos was in charge of this match, as expected. The majority of it was Rollins failing to put up a fight.
- Then, eventually, he was able to turn the tides by chopping at the big man’s legs.
- Eventually, that led to what took 3 stomps (one from the top rope) to beat Omos, but Rollins got the job done.
- I don’t really see the point in this whatsoever, and I don’t think the match was anything to praise as being worth it. If you missed this match, you didn’t miss a single thing, in my opinion.
United States Championship Triple Threat Match
- I fully expect Lashley to come out of this looking like he should have won, but Theory will ultimately retain. Let’s see how it plays out.
- Reed and Theory are double-teaming Lashley (until we get the inevitable breakdown of that temporary alliance).
- Theory had Reed up on his shoulders, but couldn’t execute the A-Town Down. Reed’s been proving himself too big of an opponent.
- As expected, Lashley hit a spear on Reed, then Theory tossed Lashley to the outside and stole the pin on Reed to retain.
SmackDown Women’s Championship Match
- Getting my “Rhea Ripley retained by pinfall” text ready to go before this match starts. Hopefully, the crowd will be super fooled into thinking Zelina Vega stands a chance and they’ll make this a hot match.
- Great ring gear for Zelina Vega tonight. She’s out draped in the flag as a cape/robe situation. Very cool.
- Did I just hear “you’re nothing but a pretzel bite” as trash talk from Rhea?
- Zelina eventually starts getting some lucky hits in, mostly from a DDT, but she’s not able to get the job done. Rhea snaps out of it, nails Zelina with a Riptide and keeps her belt to a chorus of boos from the audience—who then give Vega a standing applause anyway.
San Juan Street Fight
- Bad Bunny’s taking a shopping cart filled with a trash can and some kendo sticks to start off the match.
- As expected, Bunny’s been able to hold his own in this match. He’s done his crossbody off the top rope, a Falcon Arrow, a Michinoku Driver and so on.
- No use for the axe handle, unfortunately.
- They start brawling into the crowd. Priest does a Broken Arrow through a table and is firmly in control, dragging Bunny back to the ringside area.
- Priest misses a kick, hitting the ring instead. That’s opened up Bunny working on Priest’s leg for an advantage.
- Bunny takes Priest down with a low blow and its time for Dominik Mysterio and Finn Balor to interfere. That means LWO isn’t far off. And here Rey comes. But so does Carlito!!! Savio Vega also comes out to help, too. Santos Escobar, Cruz Del Toro and Joaquin Wilde also join the fray.
- Bad Bunny almost gets a submission win with a Figure 4.
- Priest eats a face full of steel chair in the corner followed by a Sliced Bread #2, but it’s still a two-count that follows.
- Bunny hits a Canadian Destroyer for the win in a super fun match.
Six-Man Tag Team Match
- Not much to talk about in this match. It’s just been solid, generic back-and-forth stuff. No noteworthy enough spots or standout moments, though.
- The crowd seems to be most into Kevin Owens than anyone else, from what I can tell.
- We’ve got an interesting moment with Solo tagging himself in, only for Jey to then tag himself back in out of anger right after. That’s your “we’re moving the story forward” part of this match.
- Sikoa almost hit Jey with a Samoan Spike while he was going on a roll. More miscommunication within The Bloodline.
- Sikoa hits a Samoan Spike on Riddle eventually for the win.
Brock Lesnar vs. Cody Rhodes
- Cody started the match off by immediately jumping out at Brock before the bell rang. This gave him an advantage to use the steel steps and pummel Lesnar for a bit.
- Not too long after the match officially started, though, Lesnar took back control.
- After a series of suplexes and power moves that you’ve seen in every Lesnar match for the past decade, Lesnar hit an exposed turnbuckle face-first.
- Rhodes capitalized on this with some more disaster kicks and two Cross Rhodes, but only scored a two-count.
- Cody then kicked out of an F-5. Lesnar hooked in the Kimura Lock and reversed into a pinning position to barely get himself a victory.
- Imagine how much more interesting this would have been if it were for the title, or had any ramifications or consequences whatsoever, rather than being an attempt to just offset “as much as possible” of the negatives from Rhodes losing at WrestleMania. And no, I don’t think it undoes that. It just helps get Cody closer to the spot he was before Mania, but still nowhere near that level.
Tell us your thoughts on WWE Backlash 2023 in the comments section, and tune in to my live post-show podcast immediately following the event by clicking on the YouTube video below!
