When 2023 is finished, there’s a good chance wrestling fans will look back at Backlash as one of, if not the single best premium live events of the year. The crowd in Puerto Rico was spectacular. Every single one of the matches was, at minimum, pretty good, and Bad Bunny and Damian Priest put on what might be the best celebrity match in the history of wrestling. I’ll talk about why it worked so well later in the article, but first, we need to talk about Bad Bunny’s all-timer of a ring entrance.
I’ve watched tens of thousands of ring entrances in my noted career as a wrestling fan, and you’re not going to find many better than what Bad Bunny dropped last night. With Damian Priest waiting for him in the ring, the megastar came out to his song “Chambea,” The crowd immediately and thoroughly lost its mind, cheering wildly and then somehow raising its volume after he pulled a tarp off the top of a shopping cart of weapons he had hidden. You can watch it in all its glory below…
You can hear the crowd kick into another gear when ring announcer Samantha Irvin calls out Bad Bunny being from Puerto Rico. It sounds like he’s an avenging superhero, walking to the ring, ready to represent the people and free them from some unjust tyranny. In this case, that tyranny was Damian Priest, who is also from Puerto Rico, and no doubt must have had a ton of feelings fighting in front of a sold out crowd in his home country.
And what a job he did. Unlike other combat sports, professional wrestling is about two people working together to try and make each other look as good as possible, and this match, choreographed by Jamie Noble per Fightful, made both men look fantastic. Damian Priest looked dominant for long stretches and was able to show off why he’s one of the most reliable big man workers in WWE, and Bad Bunny once again proved (with all due respect to Logan Paul) why he’s probably the best celebrity worker in the history of the business.
Obviously, a ton of credit should go to Damian Priest for skillfully leading him through the match in really seamless fashion. He was everything you'd want. I'd love to see him get another run with a belt, but a ton of credit should also go to Bad Bunny who clearly put in the work to learn a bunch of awesome moves. He also sold really well for Priest and took a fantastic table bump. Check out this madness…
There’s absolutely no reason Bad Bunny needs to be taking a bump like this in 2023 when he’s the most streamed artist in the entire world and a gigantic celebrity. It’s like Stone Cold Steve Austin taking the reverse suplex onto the concrete floor at WrestleMania 38. I’m sure people tried to talk him out of it, but he’s obviously here for the love of the game and wants to perform for fans. And what a performance fans got. Both Damian Priest and Bad Bunny were at the top of their game, and we also got surprise appearances from Latino legends Rey Mysterio, Carlito and Savio Vega, who provided some back-up to help the musician win.
WWE needs to do more upcoming premium live events in foreign countries in front of hot crowds, and also, Triple H and company need to do whatever they can to keep these Bad Bunny appearances coming. I’ll be thinking about both this entrance and this match for a long time to come. Something tells me he will too.
