Joseph Staszewski at The New York Post said the “Zombie stunt at WrestleMania Backlash is one of WWE’s saddest moments ever.”
Staszewski said the following about the Zombie Lumberjack Match between Damian Priest and The Miz.
“WrestleMania Backlash continued a recent string of WWE pay-per-view filled with great matches and compelling stories, but many will remember this one for the terrible, cheap-plug zombies. Thankfully the actual wrestling was good enough to stop one of the company’s worst ideas from truly dragging the show into the muck…Zombie Lumber Jacks. Yes, read that again. WWE turned the lumberjacks for The Miz-Damian Priest match into zombies as basically a big ad for Dave Bautista’s new movie, “Army of the Dead,” which sponsored the show. Kudos to those two and John Morrison for trying to make the most of this absolute disaster. Priest and Miz even teamed up to fight the zombies at one point…WWE did put the zombies in context by showing a tweet from Bautista saying he couldn’t make it but “some of my friends will.” It all made for one of the worst things WWE has ever done. They even dimmed the lights and filled the ThunderDome video board with spooky house graphics.”
Priest won the match, which was a cross-promotion with the new zombie movie “Army of the Dead” starring former WWE Superstar Dave Bautista. The movie is set to premiere on Netflix in select theaters on May 21. We reported earlier on Tuesday that The Miz torn his ACL during the match and is expected to be out of action for up to nine months.