WWE Backlash 2026 preview: Retired John Cena is somehow still WWE’s biggest draw

WWE Backlash 2026 takes place tonight (Sat., May 9) from Benchmark International Arena in Tampa, Florida.

The show begins at 4 pm ET with the free Countdown show, leading right into the main course at 6 pm ET streaming HERE on ESPN Unlimited in the U.S., and on Netflix pretty much everywhere else. The first hour of Backlash will be simulcast on the ESPN2 cable channel.

Retired John Cena is somehow still WWE’s biggest draw in 2026

When WWE’s extremely overpriced tickets for WrestleMania 42 weren’t selling like hot cakes, the decision-makers hit the panic button

and called John Cena out of retirement to host the event. Here we are just a few weeks later at Backlash, and the retired Cena is once again back on WWE PLE, this time with “history-making news” that will “shock the very foundation” of WWE.

That kind of hyperbolic language has created lofty expectations that make Cena’s announcement arguably the biggest reason to tune into tonight’s PLE. The leading rumor indicates that John’s news will be related to the launch of the Club WWE subscription service, which sounds like a huge dud of an announcement, in terms of failing to live up to the hype.

I think a lot of wrestling fans are holding out hope for news that’s much more exciting than TKO’s latest cash grab. Some of the ideas that I’ve seen floated around in the comments here at Cageside include the the end of the brand split for Raw and SmackDown, a future PLE at President Trump’s stupid White House ballroom, a location reveal for WrestleMania 44, the announcement of Great Balls of Fire 2, and the return of The Shockmaster, of course.

It’s hard to make a serious guess as to what WWE and Cena can deliver here that will actually have this kind of earth-shattering effect on the landscape of WWE for fans and wrestlers alike. It seems like WWE is setting itself up to widely disappoint the fan base if this news really just amounts to corporate Cena shilling out for Club WWE so that TKO can go in even harder on draining the bank accounts of hardcore WWE fans. But Cena has always been the ultimate company guy, so it might be foolish to expect anything else.

Make sure to tune into WWE Backlash if you want to see what John Cena’s history-making news is all about.

The rest of the card

Here are the five matches that are currently advertised for Backlash:

Danhausen & Mystery Partner vs. The Miz & Kit Wilson

Danhausen quickly recovered from a very bad debut at Elimination Chamber, and now he is an undefeated phenomenon in WWE. He was rebuked by Miz as his potential mentor along the way, which led to the A-Lister being cursed. Kit Wilson was also cursed by Danhausen prior to WrestleMania, and lost a match against Jelly Roll as a result. Danhausen continued to humiliate these dopes at WrestleMania-hausen by employing an army of mini-hausens.

The heels finally got one over on Danhausen recently after he was tricked by Miz’s straight-to-DVD acting skills. Now Danhausen needs to find a partner to fight them in a tag team match tonight. Some of the rumors on who it might be include Jelly, CM Punk, Mr. Iguana, and Joe Hendry. You’ll have to to tune into Backlash to see the big reveal, which is hopefully not Stephen A. Smith.

Roman Reigns (c) vs. Jacob Fatu for the World heavyweight championship

After defeating CM Punk to become the new world heavyweight champion at WrestleMania 42, Roman Reigns quickly moved to reunite The Bloodline. Jimmy and Jey Uso are right by his side again as a result, but Jacob Fatu came over from SmackDown to make it clear that he doesn’t acknowledge Roman as his Tribal Chief. The Samoan Werewolf wants to provide for his wife and kids, and that means he has to take everything away from the OTC.

WWE is well aware of the strong assumption among fans that Roman won’t lose the title so soon after winning it, so they’ve tried to create more doubt about the outcome by having Jacob unleash the sacred and dangerous Tongan Death Grip that led Haku all the way to mid-card status in WWF decades ago. Roman will probably need to find a way to counter or avoid that move if he plans to retain the gold and force Jacob to acknowledge him at Backlash.

It’s worth noting that Fatu warned The Usos that he will burn everything down if they interfere in this match, and it also seems like Jacob has his own mystery caller.

IYO SKY vs. Asuka

This match should have been booked at WrestleMania 42, but I guess it was more important for WWE to run an insane number of ads and not give any women’s match more than 10 minutes to work with. WWE decided it was better to delay the match until Backlash, but Kairi Sane was released along the way, removing a critical part of the story.

Asuka feels disrespected by her former protégé and wants to cut IYO out of her life for good at Backlash, whereas IYO says the Asuka she used to know and look up to is gone, leaving her with no choice but to finally beat the hell out of this version of The Empress. One recent rumor indicates that Kairi might actually return at Backlash to close out this story, which would be fascinating to witness.

Trick Williams (c) vs. Sami Zayn for the United States championship (ESPN2)

Sami Zayn lost the United States title to Trick Williams at WrestleMania 42. One week later on SmackDown, Zayn ruined Trick’s championship celebration by disguising himself as the Gingerbread Man for a sneak attack, where he also took out Lil Yachty. Sami snapped one week after that when he dismembered and killed the Gingerbread Man’s mannequin body.

Zayn was apoplectic as everyone on SmackDown was heartbroken and treated Gingerbread’s demise like a real death, which included an expensive funeral service on the go home episode of SmackDown. It turns out that Lil Yachty was inside the costume this time, creating a visual where Gingerbread Man sat up in his open casket (like The Undertaker) to get revenge on Sami. I don’t know if that’s the end of the Gingerbread Man gimmick or if another wrestler plans to get in that costume for Backlash. You can watch the Zayn vs. Williams title rematch during Backlash’s opening hour on ESPN2 to find out.

Seth Rollins vs. Bron Breakker (ESPN 2)

This is the other match on tonight’s card that will take place on ESPN2. Breakker returned at WrestleMania 42 to spear the shit out of Rollins and cost him the match against GUNTHER, setting the stage for the long-awaited singles bout of Rollins vs. Breakker at Backlash.

The big problem for Seth is that his past actions have made it so that he has no friends in WWE, whereas Bron has The Vision’s Austin Theory, Paul Heyman, and YouTube Douchebag watching his back. The Street Profits and Joe Hendry have mixed it up with The Vision of late, but it’s not clear if Rollins can count on them to neutralize the numbers game and make it a fair fight at Backlash.

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What will you be looking for at Backlash? Let me know your thoughts on the card in the comments below, Cagesiders.