Comparing Crown Jewel To Backlash 2018

Up until now, if you'd ask most WWE fans which was the company's worst show of 2018, you'd get the word "Backlash" in reply. There's certainly a reason for such fervor. Though I actually believe that July's Extreme Rules event was even worse, May's Backlash event was infamous amongst fans even before the entire affair was over. The show was filled with numerous stinker matches, terrible promos, horribly booked finishes, and an infamous main event that actually saw fans leave the arena before it was over.

However, Crown Jewel has received a backlash similar to what Backlash itself received. Accounting for recency bias, it might now be an open question on what the consensus worst pay per view of 2018 will go down as.

Let's compare and contrast to see if Crown Jewel was indeed worse than Backlash.

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Better: The Matches

Though there was nothing special about this card, Crown Jewel offered a better match catalogue on the whole than Backlash did, if only because Backlash offered stinker after stinker as the night went on. Aside from the Universal Championship match (which we'll get into later), there was nothing on the card that was actively atrocious, at least as far as ring action itself is concerned.

Aside from that one match, there was nothing spectacular on the card, but there was nothing horrible either.

With Backlash, we got numerous worst match of the year contenders on the same night, such as Charlotte vs. Carmella, Alexa Bliss vs. Nia Jax, and Roman Reigns vs. Samoa Joe. Nothing coming close to that infamous lineup ever happened at Crown Jewel.

In fact, up until the last three matches on the show, the card was an average WWE show, whereas Backlash revealed its true nature as soon as the opener came and went.

Worse: Standing out for all the wrong reasons

If Backlash had one saving grace, it was the opening match between Seth Rollins and The Miz, which was a match of the year candidate and certainly one of the main roster's strongest matches in 2018. For me, that match lifted Backlash above Extreme Rules in July and kept it afloat as not being the worst event of the year.

Does it do the same for Crown Jewel? Crown Jewel offered nothing even close to a match like this. There's at least one reason to go back and rewatch something from the Backlash pay per view. Is there a reason to go back and watch Crown Jewel? I would venture it's better to just try and forget that this show ever happened. WWE certainly appears to want to. It almost felt like they knew it was going to be an embarrassment so tried to consciously make the event as such so no one would watch it again.

Better: Shawn Michaels performs

I'm not keen on watching 50-year-old wrestlers in the ring, and I wish Shawn Michaels had stayed retired, but to a lot of people, this was at least a novel thing to see. Shawn Michaels was far from his old self in the ring, but of the four stars taking part in this match, he at least looked like he could go. He still clearly has a few matches left in him if he wants to continue this return to the ring.

People need to be thinking about matches with AJ Styles, Seth Rollins, and Daniel Bryan in particular after seeing this match yesterday afternoon.

A lot of people might wish to revisit Crown Jewel to see Shawn Michaels back for the first time in eight years. That's more than can be said for Backlash to fans of this persuasion, which may not offer them much at all.

Worse: Atrocious booking

Brock Lesnar is Universal Champion again. Shane McMahon gets to enter the World Cup final, and, despite not even participating in the tournament beforehand, walks out with the trophy and is the "best in the world."

This felt like one of the worst times WWE has trolled its own fanbase. The reaction was overwhelmingly negative.

Raw is now in limbo again, just when it appeared the red brand was finally ready to emerge from its 2018 dark age. That quickly proved a false dawn at Crown Jewel.

SmackDown, which was a decent show, is also now threatened. Lest we forget, it was Shane McMahon's omnipresence on the show that was a key reason for the blue brand's woes last year and in the leadup to WrestleMania 34. There were alarm bells when he returned and now those alarms proved to be well-founded.

Bad booking can ruin even a good event, but with this kind of booking, a vulnerable pay per view like Crown Jewel might well have tipped over into the abyss as the worst of the year.