Entry #194
The Miz vs. Damien Priest
Zombie Lumberjack Match
WWE WrestleMania Backlash - May 16, 2021
Army of the Dud. Okay, now that that's out of the way...
Somehow, this is our first step into the ThunderDome! Pandemic-era WWE was odd. The good news was that they were allowed to experiment; however, the bad news was that they were allowed to experiment. So we got shit like the Braun/Bray trilogy of turds (don't worry, we WILL get to those) and Alexa Bliss magic nonsense. This is probably the lowest-regarded of the lot, though. Zombie lumberjacks. That's all the explanation I should need. This was a tie-in for the film Army of the Dead, starring Dave "please try to forget I won Royal Rumble 2014" Batista. So Dave announced that some of his friends would show up for this PPV. While I don't recall him being too pally with the zombies in that movie, it's clear what's going to happen. There will be zombies. And not the ECW kind, either. Let's kill our brain cells.
Miz foregoes his full entrance so he can enjoy the John Morrison slo-mo. God, remember Johnny Drip Drip? Remember the Drip Stick? Remember their diss tracks? That made me wish for death. I miss Priest's babyface theme. Suddenly, the music changes, the screens switch to Post Apocalyptic City Backdrop #3, and over the barricade comes an army of ravenous, undead future NXT 2.0 stars! Miz and Morrison want to escape but are accosted by the reanimated corpses of Ikemen Jiro, Joe Gacy, Von Wagner, Bron Breakker, and more. They go their separate ways - Morrison hightails it away from ringside while Miz goes to the ring. The one place zombies cannot go mid-match. I must have missed that about zombie lore. Miz is apparently stupefied that Morrison didn't know it either.
"Don't adjust your screen, no, we're not relaunching ECW again" -sometimes Corey Graves is good, people. A fairly basic match begins, you know, except there are Performance Center trainees in zombie makeup grasping at the wrestlers' legs, and each man treats going to the outside like it's a potential threat to their life. Priest briefly starts a fight with the zombies, before eating a big boot from Miz for two. The commentators (which includes Adnan Virk, yes, it's that time) are treating the zombie thing completely seriously. Miz hits his corner clothesline, but slips to the outside, where he has to dodge zombies. Which he does by crawling under the ring. As if there aren't zombies on the other side. To be fair, the zombies on this side do include Carmelo Hayes, so that's something to worry about. Miz eats a lariat from Priest after coming back in.
Priest strikes away and gets a spin kick for two. He then goes to the top rope (which the zombies can't reach) for another. This lands square on Miz's knee, giving him his first ever major injury, that'll take him out for the next 3 months. Miz still powers through though, avoiding a powerbomb, catching a spin kick, and slapping on an even worse than usual Figure Four. Priest tries to go for a rope break, but a zombie catches his hand and drags both of them out. We get a sequence of Priest and Miz fighting off zombies together, including an emaciated Andre Chase. Von Wagner zombie tosses one of his cohorts aside and starts no-selling Priest until he eats a spin kick. Back in the ring, the Miz teases a high five and goes for a kick. Priest sees it coming, though, and hits the Broken Arrow for two.
Priest's setting up for South of Heaven, but Morrison comes out to distract and attack him. A running knee by Miz gets two. Morrison uses his parkour kicks to take out a bunch of zombies, and then goes for a splash off the barricade... until he's dragged down by two zombies, including a Creed Brother, and presumably has his brains eaten. Miz, clearly distressed by his friend being killed, takes Hit the Lights to hand the win to Priest.
Only AFTER the match do the zombies think to enter the ring, which they do, swarming Miz and presumably eating his brains too. Priest escapes, and shoots a nonexistent arrow at the roof of the ThunderDome to create an Army of the Dead advertisement. Says a lot about the point of this blowoff match. This was an actual feud! And they ruined it with advertising. Good thing they never did that sort of thing again, huh?
Really basic match dragged into badness by expecting us to believe actual zombies will actually kill us. It's a shame they never tried to follow up on this. Never made us sit through Actual Zombie Miz. That would have made even more people realise just how out-of-touch Vince's WWE was.