Sports Illustrated has an article about it:
https://www.si.com/wrestling/2018/0...ocialflow_facebook_si&utm_source=facebook.com
WWE Fans Left in Droves During the Backlash Main Event
By
DAN GARTLAND
May 07, 2018
If you didn’t catch WWE’s
Backlash pay per view on Sunday night, you didn’t miss much.
Aside from a top-notch match between The Miz and Seth Rollins that opened the night,
the show was a serious disappointment.
Not only were the matches generally sub-par, the show followed the current WWE trend of running way too long. It was a three-and-a-half hour card that left the fans in the arena in Newark tapping out before the end.
WWE made the curious decision to put the Roman Reigns-Samoa Joe match—one of the few non-title matches on the card—as the main event, a decision made even more questionable by the booking of the match. It was a slow, plodding match full of uninteresting holds that would have left fans yawning even if it was almost midnight.
It’s tough to blame the fans for heading to the exits in the middle of the match.
https://twitter.com/RYANFALCONE/status/993329132447633408
Fans also chanted “boring” and “beat the traffic.” They really weren’t into it.
When Reigns finally got the pin and was announced as the winner, the camera panned to crowd. If you’re a wrestling fan you know this camera shot. It’s supposed to show the fans reacting to the finish, either cheering, booing or in disbelief with their hands on their head. Instead, it just showed how glad they were that it was over. Their first reaction was to get up and walk out.
It’s not Roman’s fault that his match was the one that inspired so many walkouts, but it’s just another example of WWE’s Reigns push backfiring. That match would have been fine on the mid-card, it just had no business being the main event.
