Bray Wyatt vs. Randy Orton for the 9/11 WWE Backlash PPV was confirmed on tonight’s SmackDown after Wyatt issued a challenge.
The current card for the SmackDown exclusive event from Richmond currently looks like this:
WWE Championship Match: Dean Ambrose vs. AJ Styles
SmackDown Women’s Championship 6-Pack Challenge: Natalya vs. Nikki Bella vs. Naomi vs. Becky Lynch vs. Carmella vs. Alexa Bliss
Finals of the SmackDown Tag Team Championship Tournament
Randy Orton vs. Bray Wyatt
– WWE’s new cruiserweight division is set to launch on the September 19th edition of Monday Night RAW. In addition to names such as Rich Swann, Noam Dar, Brian Kendrick and TJ Perkins, fellow Cruiserweight Classic competitors Johnny Gargano and Tommaso Ciampa will also be part of the division.
– As of this writing, the following matches have been confirmed for WWE Backlash, the first SmackDown-exclusive PPV scheduled for 9/11:
It’s worth noting that local ads in Virginia are also promoting Randy Oron vs. Bray Wyatt for the show.
– For once a man of few words, Kevin Owens tweeted the following about his Universal championship win on RAW:
https://twitter.com/FightOwensFight/status/770505050334621696
Finn Balor congratulated Kevin Owens on Monday night, telling his former rival, We have been through it all together. I’ve no doubt we will go through it all again.” The champ has since responded:
https://twitter.com/FightOwensFight/status/770571016544350208
WWE also posted this photo of Kevin Owens being photographed with the Universal Championship.
The card is starting to take shape for WWE Backlash, the SmackDown brand’s first exclusive pay-per-view event of the new era. After this week’s episode of SmackDown Live, here’s what we’ve got so far:
– AJ Styles will challenge Dean Ambrose for the WWE World Heavyweight Championship. The Phenomenal One defeated Dolph Ziggler to earn the title shot.
– A 6-Pack Challenge match will be held to crown the new SmackDown Women’s Champion. The competitors will include former WWE Divas Champions Nikki Bella and Natalya, Becky Lynch, Naomi and Carmella.
– WWE will also crown new SmackDown Tag Team Champions. A tournament will be held over the next several weeks, with the finals taking place at Backlash.
WWE Backlash takes place on Sunday, September 11th from Richmond, Virginia.
– Prior to Tuesday’s SmackDown tapings from Bakersfield, California, Kane won a squash (dark) match, Sin Cara defeated Jinder Mahal for Superstars and The Hype Bros defeated Breezango for Main Event.
After SmackDown went off the air, WWE World Champion Dean Ambrose defeated Bray Wyatt by DQ when Bray hit him with a chair. Ambrose fought back and nailed a Dirty Deeds on Bray to end the show.
– WWE.com posted a promo video for the SmackDown brand’s upcoming Backlash pay-per-view on September 11th featuring a new Backlash logo:
– WWE Backlash, which will be the first SmackDown-exclusive PPV of this new era, is scheduled for Sunday, September 11th at the Richmond Coliseum in Richmond, VA. Ticketmaster.com is running a ticket pre-sale this Wednesday at 10am EST.
– Reddit user @TD_70 astutely noticed that Paige has removed all photos of Alberto Del Rio from her Instagram page. The two have been romantically linked in recent months and as recently as July 9th, Paige posted a message about how inspired she is by Del Rio (also deleted). Earlier this week, the two were drafted to separate brands (Paige to RAW, Del Rio to SmackDown).
– NXT and Cruiserweight Classic competitor Johnny Gargano posted a message on social media on Thursday announcing that his his 12-year run as an independent wrestler is coming to an end on September 23rd in his home town of Cleveland, OH. After teasing an important announcement about his future, here it is:
I'm ready. #ThankYou pic.twitter.com/C84ygJuw0W
— Johnny Gargano (@JohnnyGargano) July 21, 2016
In recent weeks we’ve been hearing that WWE will begin running brand-exclusive pay-per-views after SummerSlam, with only the company’s big 4 “legacy” shows (WrestleMania, SummerSlam, Survivor Series and Royal Rumble) featuring talent from both brands.
On Wednesday, Reddit user /r/Wrestlingleaker leaked WWE’s complete 2016 pay-per-view schedule. We reached out to WWE and have not yet heard back regarding the validity of the schedule, but let’s take a look at this unconfirmed information.
As part of this new pay-per-view format, WWE is reportedly bringing back several retired events, including Backlash and No Mercy. The WWE Network exclusive “Roadblock” show from earlier this year is now a full-fledged pay-per-view and Night of Champions has been replaced by Clash of Champions.
Based on this structure, with legacy PPV’s featuring talent from both brands but all other months featuring brand-specific shows, WWE would be on track to produce 20 “pay-per-views” in 2016. Throw in the quarterly (for now) NXT Takeover shows and we’ve got a WWE PPV every two weeks.
The following is the rumored WWE PPV schedule for the remainder of 2016, with 9 shows booked over the next 6 months.
Here’s the leaked document showing the full 2016 WWE PPV schedule – again, this is unconfirmed: