Minus-Star Match Reviews: The Miz vs. Damian Priest featuring ZOMBIES – WWE WrestleMania Backlash 2021

Damian Priest and The Miz had one of the strangest matches in years at WrestleMania Backlash…but it’s nowhere near bad enough to be called worst match of the year.

These two guys had a mediocre feud and some mediocre matches that took place during a mediocre period in WWE’s recent history. The COVID lockdowns forced wrestling companies to adapt however they could and in WWE that meant experimenting with new ideas. Some of those ideas worked and some didn’t; which one was this? Read on to find out.

The story

One of the things WWE has had a checkered past with is advertising and tie-ins. Though getting outside sponsorships and partnerships brings the company a ton of money, it can come at the expense of product quality. Such was the case when WWE decided to promote a move called Army of the Dead which starred former wrestler Dave Bautista. It wasn’t enough that the film’s name was plastered all over the show; no, the company had to tie it into one of the actual matches.

In terms of WWE’s own self-contained universe, this match emerged after a tag match that saw Miz & Morrison lose to the duo of Damian Priest and musician Bad Bunny. Miz tried to take credit for Bad Bunny’s performance in that match, to which Priest responded by demanding a handicap match against both Miz and Morrison. Priest lost that match thanks to interference from Miz’s wife Maryse. Priest got some revenge on both guys one at a time, but Miz wanted a rematch on this show. He got his wish, but when Priest beat Morrison he got to choose the stipulation and picked lumberjack match. So going into this match everyone thought that the individuals surrounding the ring would be WWE wrestlers. As it turns out, the actual lumberjacks were not WWE superstars in any way, shape, or form.

As a quick aside, I must admit that I really admire The Miz; not for any of his matches or any impact he has had on the wrestling business, but for what he has accomplished as an individual. From his perspective he is living the dream: he’s married to Maryse, has a big house with two children, entered the cloistered and restricted world of professional wrestling through unconventional channels, overcame incredible challenges (dismissal and disrespect from peers, having to change in locker rooms, hazing from guys like JBL and Chris Benoit, etc.), and made millions doing what he loves. And while you’re going to be hard-pressed to find someone that will ever say the words “remember that awesome Miz match?”, the man himself accomplished his childhood dreams, got paid millions to do so, and did so in a way that kept him relatively injury-and-damage free. So when he retires he won’t end up like so many and have serious health problems. Diehard fans can say that Miz was soft, phony, theatrical, and not particularly impactful; but if you ask me he earned respect for being able to be somewhat consistent for twenty years and outlast many of the people that once wrote him off as unworthy of being in the business in the first place.

The match

This match took place on May 16, 2021. It was rated -*** by the Wrestling Observer’s Dave Meltzer and was voted as the Worst Match of the Year by his readership.

Right before intros there’s a backstage segment with Jon Morrison in which he walks into the Lumberjacks’ locker room and finds it filled with zombies. Morrison exits but he leaves the door open, which allows the zombies to escape. It’s not quite clear how smart these particular zombies are, but it’s clear that poor Morrison has to sell like he has found genuine zombies, except he forgets the golden rule of every zombie film since George A. Romero’s magnum opus Night of the Living Dead: CLOSE THE FUCKING DOOR. Moments later he tries to warn Miz of what he saw but Miz dismisses him because of course he would.

Both men have their full entrances and then suddenly zombies appear ringside. Morrison is shocked while Miz looks more confused than anything. More zombies pop up around the ring to scare Miz and Morrison and they also scare the commentators from their table.

The commentators return as Miz tries throwing Priest to ringside but Priest lands on the apron and kicks some of the zombies away. Miz misses a kick and lands on the floor. He looks afraid for a moment then returns to the ring and eats a flapjack. The commentary for this match gets annoying fast as they, too, have to sell to the audience that these are “REAL ZOMBIES” and it comes across as completely disingenuous. Priest gets knocked to the floor but fights off the zombies quite easily, only to then eat a boot from the Miz for a one-count.

Miz hits a corner clothesline and the momentum sends him to the floor. He fights off a few zombies and then goes under the ring and re-emerges on the other side. Miz charges at Priest but walks into a big lariat. Priest hits a strike combo for a two-count. he follows with a corner elbow and a diving wheel kick and gets two again. Miz blocks a powerbomb and both men’s elbows collide. Miz locks in a Figure-4 leg lock but then the zombies pull both men out as Priest tried getting a ropebreak. They have a brief surrounded by a common enemy spot and then they go off in different directions to fight off more of these allegedly undead lumberjacks.

Both men return to the ring and Priest blocks a low kick. He lands a Falcon Arrow but only gets a two-count. He teases a chokeslam but Morrison re-emerges and distracts Priest long enough for Miz to hit a Daniel Bryan running knee for a close two-count. Morrison wipes out more zombies at ringside and teases a dive off the barricade but then two zombies but him off and then drag him down to presumably eat him. Morrison allegedly being eaten by zombies is quickly forgotten as Priest hits his Hit The Lights corkscrew cutter finisher to get the three-count out nowhere.

Winner after 6:55: The Miz

Post-match, Priest exists the ring and does his pose as Miz is swarmed by zombies (who were oh so politely obeying the rules up to that point) and likewise allegedly devoured by zombies until the screen goes black.

Review

It has long been speculated that Vince McMahon and those in his inner circle once dreamed of mixing wrestling with movies. They got a taste of that style of presentation with the Boneyard match, the Firefly Funhouse match, and other on-location mixtures of wrestling and film action sequences. This was a different creature: a live in-ring wrestling match with film theatrics added to it and the result was…bland. I don’t think it was as offensive as Meltzer noted when he rated it, but it was probably expected to be trash to begin with.

Maybe that’s what his beef was from the beginning: that two otherwise acceptable wrestlers were dragged down by being forced to work with such terrible parameters and over-the-top and shameless plugging. But as a performance it really wasn’t all that bad. Miz and Priest initially sold the zombies as ordinary lumberjacks and interacted with them as though they were ordinary wrestlers. The action around the ring was completely fine, the only mitigating factor being the dreadful and over-the-top commentary accompanying it. The action was slow and focused, with both guys spending most of their time trying to throw each other out into the lumberjacks which got the stipulation over. Even if they weren’t zombies, these two made the possibility of being thrown to the lumberjacks as a big deal. What little action did take place in the ring was completely passable; not PPV/PLE quality by any means, but decent enough to make it closer to a TV match.

Really, the only bad parts of this match were the spots with Morrison and then Miz “being eaten”, which were stupid but not offensively so. It was cheesy, but it’s not like Miz was in a very specific position whereby he couldn’t risk losing credibility. Miz has proven himself to be like Teflon; he can do all kinds of strange things and his career and position will be unaffected. So he was the perfect guy for this match since he “got his just desserts in the end.” As for Priest, maybe he didn’t need to sell for Miz all that much and maybe he should’ve looked stronger and more dominant but those are minor nitpicks. He didn’t really do anything wrong here.

Final Rating: *1/2

This didn’t deserve the negative stars and the extreme reaction it got; it was simply a dumb experiment that had little adverse impact on either wrestler’s careers. It was a shameless plug, yes, but it didn’t really expose the wrestling business in any damaging way. Sometimes there’s a need for a little bit of harmless fun and even those among us here online need to lighten up and not take wrestling so seriously every waking minute.

While this isn’t my personal cup of tea I can see why some people might get a short kick out of such brainless entertainment. It wasn’t expected to be good and it wasn’t, so it’s not like anyone going into this would feel ripped off or swindled.

Thanks for reading.