What’s the story?
WWE Backlash will be a SmackDown Live brand event again in 2017. It was announced to the live crowd for Raw this Monday night that the event would be exclusive to the blue brand, and it would emanate from the Allstate Arena in Chicago, Illinois. The show is scheduled to take place on May 21st, 2017.
In case you didn’t know...
Backlash was usually the post-WrestleMania pay-per-view for WWE from 1999 until 2009 when the event name stopped being used by the company. The title was brought back after the 2016 WWE Draft, as they needed more events to compliment the brand split.
Backlash was also a SmackDown Live event in 2016, and it was the first brand-exclusive pay-per-view after the 2016 WWE Draft. The inaugural SmackDown Live Tag Team Champions, as well as the first Women’s Champion for the brand, were crowned at the event.
It was also the event where AJ Styles won the WWE World Championship from Dean Ambrose.
The heart of the matter
Backlash is now the second brand-exclusive event that has been announced as a SmackDown Live exclusive for the post-WrestleMania year. It was announced earlier that Money In The Bank would also be exclusive to the blue brand.
As reported previously by Sportskeeda, the Money In The Bank pay-per-view was initially meant to be a Raw brand pay-per-view, but was changed to a SmackDown! Live event.
For reference, the pay-per-views that have definite venues so far is as follows:
April 2nd – WrestleMania 33 (Dual brand)
April 30th – WWE Payback (Raw exclusive)
May 21st – WWE Backlash (Smackdown exclusive)
June 4th – WWE Extreme Rules (Raw exclusive)
June 18th – WWE Money In The Bank (Smackdown exclusive)
August 20th – WWE Summerslam (Dual brand)
November 19th – WWE Survivor Series (Dual brand)
What’s next?
The next pay-per-view event for WWE is WrestleMania 33. We expect more pay-per-view events to have dates and venues confirmed throughout the year.
Sportskeeda’s take
It’s nice to see that Backlash will be sticking around as a pay-per-view event. We are curious to see if Smackdown Live is given another event before Backlash, as the current schedule would mean a seven-week gap between pay-per-views for the blue brand.
As it currently stands, the seven weeks in between WrestleMania and Backlash would be excellent for properly developing stories for the talent on SmackDown Live. Stay tuned for more updates on the 2017 pay-per-view schedule as they become available.
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