Cageside Community Star Ratings for WrestleMania Backlash 2022

After every WWE PPV, we ask you all to rank each match on the show using the star rating system made famous by Wrestling Observer’s Dave Meltzer.

The results are in from WrestleMania Backlash, this show after the biggest event of the year. Below you’ll see how our little corner of the wrestle web graded what happened in the ring in Dunkin Donuts Center on May 8 — and how our subjective grades compare to Meltzer’s.

Many have asked “why Dave?”, which to me is fairly obvious. Love, hate, or don’t care about him, the Observer Star Rating is the proverbial industry standard. No one else’s are tracked by Wikipedia and other web outlets. You can’t place online bets on what grades other pundits will give big matches.

But in order to not make this all about Meltz, we added another fan-voted rating to the mix - this one from Cagematch. That site uses a ten point scale, so we’ve halved their ratings for ease of comparison.

Here’s what that all looks like:

In terms of our scores, the two highest rated matches also finished first and second in our “Match of the Night” poll from just after the show. It’s also worth pointing out the low vote totals, which isn’t unusual for a B-PPV Premium Live Event.

Perhaps that accounts for the larger gaps between our Ratings and Meltzer’s? We’re typically within a half-star of Dave on most matches, but we exceeded that on half of WrestleMania Backlash’s card. Those were all cases where we gave more Stars than the Observer; where Meltzer was more generous, the difference was smaller.

Overall though, everyone gave the action from last Sunday in Rhode Island high marks. This was probably aided by the paucity of matches, since there were fewer duds to drag down the average, but Backlash ‘22 was our highest rated WWE show of the past year. It was the Observer’s second, and Cagematch’s fourth.

Which you can see in our rundown of scores for every WWE PLE since last year’s WrestleMania Backlash:

Do Cageside’s Community Ratings match up with your personal ones? Any final thoughts on WrestleMania Backlash?