The Post-Mania Hangover and the Tulsa Reset

Backlash is historically the proving ground. When the confetti from WrestleMania is finally swept up, reality sets in. The grand narratives are over, and we enter the grind of the summer calendar.

On Friday's May 1 edition of SmackDown at the BOK Center in Tulsa, we finally got a look at what the next few months will actually look like.

Undisputed WWE Champion Cody Rhodes walked out to the ring, finally cleared to compete after his grueling WrestleMania defense against Randy Orton. That match in Vegas took a massive physical toll. We all saw the bruises. We all saw the brutal aftermath.

The expectation in Tulsa was a standard victory lap. Rhodes would talk about fighting through the pain, establishing his legacy, and looking for his next challenger. Instead, the timeline snapped.

Fans expected a celebration. Instead, they got a ghost from the past.

Enter Ricky Saints

Ricky Saints made his main roster debut by stepping directly into the path of the top guy in the company. He interrupted Rhodes’ medical clearance announcement, setting the stage for a deeply personal clash.

As PWInsider highlighted, it has been 2150 days since these two last shared a ring. That number matters.

It represents an entire era of wrestling history happening in parallel universes before finally converging on SmackDown. Back in the summer of 2020, during an era defined by empty arenas and global uncertainty, Rhodes laid out an open challenge. Saints answered it.

They beat the hell out of each other for a television title in a match that made Saints a recognizable name overnight. That was the genesis of this rivalry. Now, under the massive spotlight of WWE’s premium live event schedule, they are being asked to recreate that magic for a global audience.

A Booking Misstep?

But let's be critical about the presentation here. Throwing Saints straight into a promo battle with Rhodes on night one feels incredibly rushed. We didn't get any vignettes. We didn't get a slow build.

He just walked out in front of the Tulsa crowd. It is a massive booking misstep that assumes every casual fan watching USA Network knows his entire history with Rhodes from years ago.

Saints is fantastic on the microphone. He has an undeniable swagger. Debuting him cold against the Undisputed Champion, however, leaves zero margin for error.

If the crowd doesn't bite immediately, the entire angle falls flat. WWE is asking fans to care about a feud based on lore that happened entirely outside of their television programming. It is a risky gamble for a Backlash main event, and it highlights a persistent problem with how the company assumes internet knowledge translates to live crowd reactions.

Saints brings a frenetic energy that WWE television often lacks. His promos aren't memorized scripts; they feel like open wounds. But translation from smaller promotions to the rigid structure of WWE television is notoriously difficult.

Many incredibly talented workers have stumbled because they couldn't adapt to hard camera placements, timing cues, and the specific cadence of a WWE promo segment. Saints has the raw charisma to bypass those hurdles, but this first month is critical. He is swimming with sharks immediately. If he stumbles, management will not hesitate to slide him down the card.

The Bloodline Never Sleeps

While the main event picture violently shifted, the rest of SmackDown felt like a powder keg waiting for a match. Jacob Fatu was caught having a heated, mysterious phone call backstage.

The Bloodline story never really stops; it just mutates into different forms of familial trauma and violence. That phone call could mean anything, but in the context of Fatu, it usually means someone is getting dropped on their head.

Fatu brings a terrifying agility to his brawling. He moves like a cruiserweight but hits like a heavyweight. Whoever was on the other end of that phone call should be worried.

The Physics of Jacob Fatu

We saw how quickly Solo Sikoa was elevated by simply being an enforcer. Fatu has a much higher ceiling in terms of in-ring performance. He is a spectacle.

When he hits a moonsault, it legitimately looks like a glitch in physics. The longer WWE waits to put him in a meaningful program, the more they risk cooling off his inherent aura. Fans want to see him dismantle people, not play phone tag in a poorly lit backstage hallway.

This backstage segment felt ominous. We are waiting for the other shoe to drop regarding the broader family dynamic.

Putting Fatu in a holding pattern with vague phone calls is fine for one week, but they need to pull the trigger on his next feud before Backlash. The Bloodline relies on momentum. Right now, they are idling in the parking lot.

The SmackDown locker room is already thin on main event babyfaces. Feeding a credible midcarder to Fatu at Backlash would be a great way to establish him as a standalone monster.

The Women's Division and Fatal Influence

Meanwhile, the women's division saw some much-needed movement. Charlotte Flair returned to action against Jacy Jayne of Fatal Influence.

Flair needed a solid win to re-establish her dominance after missing out on the major Vegas moments at Allegiant Stadium. Jayne has grown tremendously over the last year. Fatal Influence has given her a platform to showcase a more aggressive, grounded style.

Stepping into the ring with Flair is the ultimate litmus test for anyone in that locker room. Flair wrestled with a chip on her shoulder. She delivered heavy chops and forced the pace throughout the commercial break.

Fatal Influence's Ceiling

Fatal Influence as a faction has done excellent work keeping Jayne relevant, but faction warfare only takes you so far. Eventually, you have to stand on your own two feet against the standard-bearers of the division.

Jayne took some incredibly stiff shots from Flair and kept moving forward. That resilience matters to the booking committee. Flair, on the other hand, looked like she hadn't missed a step.

Her athleticism remains unparalleled, and she clearly wants to claw her way back into the title picture before SummerSlam rolls around.

It was a standard television match, but it served its purpose. The women's division desperately needs credible challengers to step up for the summer run.

Flair is a known commodity, but the division cannot survive on legacy acts alone. Jayne losing here was expected, but she showed enough fire to suggest she belongs in the upper midcard conversation. WWE needs to start building these secondary women's feuds with the same intensity they give the main event.

The Vegas Fallout

Speaking of Vegas, the company is still dealing with the bizarre fallout from the CM Punk hotel incident during WrestleMania weekend.

According to Kevin Nash's recent comments, the hotel setup in Vegas was a logistical nightmare for the talent. Putting wrestlers in massive casino resorts with overlapping public areas always leads to friction.

The 9-1-1 call involving Punk was an ugly stain on an otherwise successful weekend. Nash was right to point out the flaws in the operational setup. When you have high-strung athletes operating on zero sleep and massive adrenaline, isolating them from the general chaos of Vegas should be a priority.

Instead, they were dropped into the middle of the strip. It is a hard lesson the management team needs to learn before they ever consider returning to Nevada for a major stadium show. You cannot treat independent contractors like tourists.

Backlash Prediction

We are exactly one week away from Backlash. The card is coming together with an aggressive, chaotic energy that was completely absent this time last year.

Cody Rhodes versus Ricky Saints feels like the inevitable main event. Saints has the verbal dexterity to hang with Rhodes on the microphone, but the real question is how they mesh in the ring after almost six years apart.

They are entirely different performers now. Rhodes is a polished, stadium-level attraction. Saints is a hungry, volatile wild card looking to make a name at the expense of the champion.

Rhodes will retain. He has far too much momentum, and putting the title on Saints immediately would be a catastrophic overreaction.

Saints needs to establish his character on the main roster, take a few high-profile losses, and build equity with the casual audience before carrying that gold.

Expect a grueling, physical match that stretches past the twenty-minute mark. Rhodes will take a beating to sell his lingering WrestleMania injuries, but he will hit the Cross Rhodes to secure the pinfall.

Saints will look like a permanent main event fixture, but the Undisputed Championship isn't changing hands yet. The bell will ring, the crowd will come unglued, and we will finally get the closure on a story that started in a sweaty, empty gym down south.