Hulk Ranks Every SummerSlam From Best To Worst
Aug 18, 2020 21:55:59 GMT -5
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Post by Hulk With A Mustache on Aug 18, 2020 21:55:59 GMT -5
1. 2002: Ladies and gentlemen: The Greatest SummerSlam of all time! Why? Well, the event was stacked with talent. 15 of the 18 wrestlers who competed at the PPV are world champs. 9 were former world champions: Kurt Angle, Ric Flair, Chris Jericho, Booker T, Chris Benoit (his brief WCW reign), The Undertaker, Shawn Michaels, Triple H, and The Rock (who was WWE Champ at the time). And, the other 6 would be world champs after the event: Rey Mysterio, Edge, Eddie Guerrero, Christian, Rob Van Dam and Brock Lesnar (who actually won the WWE Title at that PPV). Unsurprisingly, that stacked roster gave us some great matches. Rey Mysterio VS Kurt Angle is easily the best PPV opener of all time. Shawn Michaels’s 1st WWE match in 4 years was a classic as he and Triple H beat the crap out of each other. There were some underrated gems as well (Ric Flair VS Chris Jericho, Edge VS Eddie Guerrero, Chris Benoit VS Rob Van Dam for the Intercontinental Title). And, the main event was fantastic as The Rock put over Brock Lesnar eloquently in a classic bout. It’s one of the best passing the torch matches WWE has put on, further proof of The Great One’s greatness and cementing Lesnar as a superstar and starting his reign as Mr. SummerSlam. Now, there were some lowlights, like The Undertaker VS Test and this awful skit where Trish Stratus and Lillian Garcia picked on Howard Finkel; but those moments weren’t even that bad and don’t really detract from the PPV. In all, this was just a fantastically booked PPV, easily the Greatest SummerSlam and one of the best wrestling PPVs ever made.
2. 2000: In 2000, WWE was on fire. The ratings were up, money was rolling in, they got a big boost in match quality when The Radicalz defected to their side, and they had a bunch of killer PPVs. That year’s SummerSlam was definitely one of them. One could make an argument for it being the best SummerSlam ever, but I think some things hold it back: Jerry “The King” Lawler VS Tazz, the Stinkface Match, X-Pac VS Road Dogg. While those lows are low, the highs are SO f***ING HIGH! I mean, you can’t go wrong with a 2-Out-Of-3 Falls Match between Chris Jericho and Chris Benoit. And, Shane McMahon damn near stole the show for a 2nd year in a row with that scary fall during his match with Steve Blackman. However, the guys who stole the show at WrestleMania 2000 did so again. Edge & Christian, The Hardy Boyz, and The Dudley Boyz put on another great spotfest in the 1st ever TLC Match, one that blew their Ladder Match at WrestleMania out of the water. It’s no wonder they went back to the TLC well for WrestleMania X-Seven. And, there was the main event: a Triple Threat Match with The Rock, Triple H, and Kurt Angle for the WWE Title. This could have been a disaster as the Spanish announcers table gave way when Triple H tried to Pedigree Angle through it, nearly giving him a concussion. Angle had to miss much of the match, but Rock and Triple H managed to salvage things with a fantastic bout by themselves and with a concuss Angle when he came back later on. In all, it was just a fantastic PPV from a year of fantastic PPVs.
3. 1998: There’s a big reason why people aren’t so hot for WWE right now: sometimes, wrestling is just so easy to book; and they’ve seemed to have forgotten that. Case in point: SummerSlam 1998. The booking was simple: take the company’s 2 biggest names and have them wrestle for the company’s top title at a high-profile PPV. That’s what happened here as Stone Cold Steve Austin took on The Undertaker for the WWE Title at SummerSlam. And, it worked as the match was very good, with Taker and Austin beating the hell out of one another, and the PPV did its highest buyrate, at 700,000 buys (only one other non-WrestleMania PPV has done better than SummerSlam 1998: InVasion, with 775,000 buys). Of course, this isn’t a 1 match show. It started with a great opener between D’Lo Brown and Val Venis. There was also a great Ladder Match between The Rock and Triple H, a fun Hair VS Hair match between X-Pac and Jeff Jarrett, an interesting gimmick match with the Lion’s Den Match between Ken Shamrock and Owen Hart, and Mankind taking on The New Age Outlaws by himself in a No DQ Match for the Tag Team Titles. In fact, there’s hardly any duds on this PPV; even The Oddities VS Kaientai has a “so bad it’s good” feel to it. In all, this PPV is proof of the KISS rule working: Keep It Simple, Stupid.
4. 1992: This PPV is largely remembered for 2 things: it took place in London, and it had one of the greatest matches of all time. Both things are rightfully deserving recognition. Going to London gave the PPV a unique feel. This was the 1st SummerSlam that looked more like WrestleMania. And, that match, in which Bret “The Hitman” Hart took on The British Bulldog for the Intercontinental Title is a f***ing classic. It was a great bout, and it’s even better if you know that Bulldog got drunk the night before and forgot the whole match plan, forcing Bret to call the whole thing by himself. This one match is proof that Bret is definitely The Best There Is, The Best There Was, and The Best There Ever Will Be. But, there are other parts of the show that deserve recognition. The WWE Title match, with “Macho Man” Randy Savage and The Ultimate Warrior, was also really good. Not as good at their WrestleMania VII match, but it holds up. And, this one had the unique storyline with Ric Flair trying to pit them against each other in hopes of picking up the scraps later. There was also a really good tag match between The Legion Of Doom and Money, Inc., a fun heel VS heel match between Shawn Michaels and “The Model” Rick Martel, and a Nailz VS Virgil match that is so awful that it has to be seen to be believed. In all, this was just a great PPV highlighted with one of the greatest wrestling matches of all time, which is why SummerSlam 1992 got ranked so high.
5. 2013: This may be the last great SummerSlam. At least, WWE is seemingly doing their best to make that so. There hasn’t really been a truly great SummerSlam since this show. But, what makes this one so great? 2 incredible matches. First, there was The Best VS The Beast: CM Punk VS Brock Lesnar in a No Disqualification Match. These 2 guys had 2 very different styles that gelled well together. It’s a shame that this will likely be the only time these 2 fight each other because they could have had a hell of a rivalry, especially if their matches were knock-down drag out fights like this one. Then, there was the other great match on the show: John Cena VS Daniel Bryan for the WWE Title. Like in 1998, WWE had the brilliant idea to take their 2 biggest babyfaces and have them fight one another. It worked as they also gelled well together and showed off some great chemistry. This is another match that needs to happen again. Of course, the match is marred a little by Randy Orton cashing in his MITB briefcase on Bryan after he just won the title thanks to Triple H, starting The Authority. On the one hand, this led to Bryan getting jerked around and that awful The Big Show VS The Authority angle. On the other hand, it did lead to Bryan’s great win at WrestleMania XXX and helped to make him a bigger star. As for the rest of the card, there was a really good World Heavyweight Title match between Christan and Alberto Del Rio and some silliness between Kane and Bray Wyatt in a Ring Of Fire match. The other matches are filler but not awful. All in all, this was a great 2 Match Show, pretty much the SummerSlam equivalent of WrestleMania X.
6. 1997: What a difference a year makes! The 1996 SummerSlam was a boring, forgettable show with just 2 matches worth a damn. But, a year later, WWE put on a much better show. How did this happen? Well, 2 months prior to the 1996 SummerSlam, Stone Cold Steve Austin delivered a promo that would shock the world and mark the beginning of the Attitude Era’s bloom. Stone Cold started bringing in an edge to the company that caught on with fans. By the time the 1997 SummerSlam came along, WWE was embracing that edge, which made for a much better show. Stone Cold had a memorable match with Owen Hart. It was a great fight with both guys having great chemistry. Though Austin’s unfortunate injury has overshadowed the match, the match itself was good enough to be remembered on its own merits. Bret “The Hitman” Hart and The Undertaker had a great WWE Title match, with Shawn Michaels as special guest referee and the added stipulation that Bret couldn’t wrestle in America again if he lost added some drama to the match. Though, Bret and Taker didn’t need it as they just beat the hell out of each other. There was also a good Cage Match between Mankind and Hunter Hearst Helmsley to start off the show. Sure, there are some duds on the show, like Los Boricuas VS The Disciples of Apocalypse. But, it was still a great show that gave fans a taste of the Attitude Era before it was fully in swing by the next year. And, it started a great streak of good SummerSlam PPVs that lasted until 2002. So, it’s easily one of the best.
7. 1991: SummerSlam 1991 was marketed as A Match Made In Heaven and A Match Made In Hell. The former was the wedding of “Macho Man” Randy Savage and Miss Elizabeth and the latter was Hulk Hogan & The Ultimate Warrior VS Sgt. Slaughter, Col. Mustafa, & Gen. Adnan. Going by the main attractions, it’s a hard PPV to watch as the Handicap Match ain’t that great, and the wedding is hard to watch considering how tragic their stories ended. But, the undercard makes this PPV a must see. It starts off with a pretty good 6-Man Tag featuring The British Bulldog, Ricky Steamboat, and Kerry Von Erich on one team. After that, we get one of the best SummerSlam matches of all time as Bret “The Hitman” Hart and Mr. Perfect steal the show in a barnburner of an Intercontinental Title match. Also on the card is a fun little match between The Big Boss Man and The Mountie, a pretty good Tag Team Title Match between The Legion Of Doom and The Nasty Boys, and one of the most underrated matches of all time as Ted DiBiase gives Virgil the best match of his career. While the main attractions might not hold up all that well, the undercard more than makes up for it.
8. 1989: You could make a good case for this being the best WWE PPV on the 1980s. SummerSlam 1989 had a lot of good matches on hand. “Ravishing” Rick Rude gave The Ultimate Warrior his best match in an underrated classic that saw both men beat the holy hell out of one another for the Intercontinental Title. Just like the year before, this one featured some great tag matches. The Hart Foundation and The Brain Busters had a fantastic bout, which shouldn’t shock anyone. The 6-Man Tag with The Fabulous Rougeaus & “The Model” Rick Martel taking on The Rockers & Tito Santana damn near stole the show, also not surprising considering the talent involved. Dusty Rhodes and The Honky Tonk Man had a good stiff battle. The match with Greg “The Hammer” Valentine and Hercules was interesting since Valentine’s main rival, “Rugged” Ronny Garvin, was the special guest ring announcer who kept annoying Valentine. And, of course, this featured that infamous “Mean” Gene Okerlund blooper. But, what really puts this in greatness territory is the main event: Hulk Hogan & Brutus “The Barber” Beefcake VS “Macho King” Randy Savage & Zeus. Yes, this did feature the bad guy from “No Holds Barred” coming to life to get revenge on Hogan. But, the match was pretty damn good considering it featured an actor pretending to be a wrestler. The fact that 3 veterans could make this match come off as good as it was while featuring Zeus shows that SummerSlam 1989 is an all-time classic.
9. 2009: Or, as I like to call it, SummerFest. Around the time of this PPV, WWE had turned RAW into a weekly crapfest with celebrities who knew nothing of the product, like a certain Entourage agent promoting a movie that would be quickly forgotten messing up the name of the upcoming PPV, coming in to do painfully unfunny skits with various WWE Superstars (though Bob Barker and Shaq were okay). Ironically, the 1st of 6 straight SummerSlams from Hollywood was one of the better PPVs from this RAW Guest Host era. There’s a lot of good stuff on this PPV. It starts off with a great opener as Rey Mysterio and Dolph Ziggler tore the house down for the Intercontinental Title. Jeri-Show continued to bring some prestige back to the Tag Team Titles with a good match against Cryme Tyme. D-X came back for one more nostalgic run with a great tag match against Legacy. The WWE Title match between John Cena and Randy Orton was a trainwreck as the match kept getting restarted like crazy; it was a beautiful mess. And, it all ended with a great TLC Match between Jeff Hardy and CM Punk. It was a great spotfest that ended with the cool visual of The Undertaker showing up out of nowhere to attack Punk. While it does have some lowpoints (Kane VS The Great Khali), it was still a beautiful oasis among a desolate creative period in WWE.
10. 2008: Easily the most underrated SummerSlam of all time. It doesn’t have big moments like Miss Elizabeth taking off her dress or legendary matches like Bret Hart VS The British Bulldog. But, it does have some good moments and matches that made for a memorable PPV. The 2 best matches of the PPV were easily the Hell In A Cell Match between The Undertaker & Edge and a clash between John Cena & Batista. Edge and Taker’s match was a classic main event, with both men beating the hell out of each other. And, they managed to put on a violent affair after WWE went PG, which meant no blood. Despite that restriction, they put on a great match and set the template for hardcore-type matches in the PG Era. As for Cena and Batista, these 2 just had a good match due to the surprisingly great chemistry they had together. The match is marred a little by Cena injuring his neck, but it was still a good match. Then, there was the infamous moment in Shawn Michaels and his wife, Rebecca, came out for Michaels to announce his retirement, only for Chris Jericho to come out to taunt Michaels, which all led to Y2J accidentally punching Rebecca instead of HBK. Jericho and Michaels were already in the middle of one of WWE’s greatest feuds, and this just dumped gasoline onto that fire. It was a great moment, made all the better since Jericho’s punch actually hit Michaels’s wife. As for the rest of the PPV, there wasn’t anything too bad. MVP and Jeff Hardy had a pretty good match. Matt Hardy and Mark Henry’s match was short but fun. Santino Marella being carried on Beth Phoenix’s shoulders after they had won the Intercontinental and Women’s Titles respectively was a great shot. CM Punk and JBL had a good little match. Even the worst match at the PPV, Triple H VS The Great Khali, wasn’t that bad. And, if you have tolerable Khali match, then you have a great PPV.
11. 2001: Honestly, I should rank this one much lower. This was, afterall, the PPV that proved that the InVasion angle wasn’t going to go the way fans wanted it to. There were signs: the heavy focus on the McMahons, Stephanie McMahon as the owner of ECW, top WCW stars having yet to sign, Stephanie McMahon as the owner of ECW, bringing in ECW guys and switching WWE guys to the Alliance’s side, Stephanie McMahon as the owner of ECW, Stone Cold Steve Austin as the Alliance’s top guy, Stephanie McMahon as the owner of ECW, etc. But still, there was hope that this was all just a holdover until WWE could bring in more big WCW names, like Sting, Ric Flair, and Goldberg. After all, the Alliance had won at the InVasion PPV. Then, SummerSlam 2001 happened, and it became apparent that the InVasion angle was just a way for Vince McMahon to piss on WCW’s grave. Of the 10 wrestlers on the show that represented The Alliance, only 5 of them were actual invaders: Booker T, Diamond Dallas Page, Lance Storm, Chris Kanyon, and Rob Van Dam. The others, Stone Cold Steve Austin, The Dudley Boyz, Test, and Rhyno, were WWE guys before the purchase of WCW, even if 4 of those 5 had worked in WCW, ECW, or both. Then there was that match where The Brothers Of Destruction beat the shit out of DDP and Kanyon, which happened because DDP had the audacity to plan out the match before hand and give a script to The Undertaker. And, with the night ending with The Rock winning the WCW Title, it became clear which side was coming out on top. So, why in the hell would I rank this PPV so high? Honestly, the match quality at this PPV was so freaking high. There were some good matches between Edge & Lance Storm and Rhyno & Chris Jericho. One month after stealing the show at the InVasion PPV, Jeff Hardy & Rob Van Dam damn near did it again with a great Ladder Match for the Hardcore Title. Austin & Kurt Angle had a great WWE Title match, one of the best to end in a DQ. And, admittedly, The Rock & Booker T’s WCW Title match was pretty good. Basically, that’s what the InVasion angle was in a nutshell: Vince pissing everyone off because his ego was more important than making money, but everyone sucking it up because the matches were pretty damn good.
12. 2014: I know what you’re thinking: did you seriously just rank this SummerSlam so high because Brock Lesnar destroyed John Cena in the WWE Title match? Yes, yes I did. In my defense: it was glorious! After so many years of Super-Cena dominating WWE’s main event scene, it was a nice change to see Cena just get mauled for once. Plus, the match was a breath of fresh air from the usual match formula of everyone getting their moves in. On the down side, it would lead to Brock Lesnar’s dominance of the WWE main event scene; but it was one of the most unique matches in WWE history, and it’s the kind of match WWE needs to do more often. Though, the rest of the PPV was pretty damn good too. Seth Rollins and Dean Ambrose managed to make a Lumberjack Match compelling. Roman Reigns VS Randy Orton was pretty damn good. Even the matches that looked bad on paper paid off. Rusev and Jack Swagger had a good Flag Match, even though it wasn’t the traditional Capture-The-Flag Match. And, Stephanie McMahon and Brie Bella had a surprisingly good match. And, even more surprisingly, it was Stephanie who carried the match. In all, SummerSlam 2014 was just a good PPV that gave fans a lot of surprises. From the retro Mean Gene Okerlund-hosted "SummerSlam Report" that pleased the nostalgic crowd to the Lesnar/Cena melee, it was a great PPV that broke the mold of the recent formulaic, vanilla PPVs. And, it was a great send off to the LA era of SummerSlam.
13. 2022: This was shaping up to be a bad PPV. Another f***ing Brock Lesnar/Roman Reigns main event. Logan Paul and Pat McAfee wrestling again. A card that looked like an afterthought compared to the PPV that was coming after it. A JULY SummerSlam!!!!? It looked like WWE was tanking SummerSlam in favor of Clash At The Castle, WWE’s first UK PPV in a long while and being held near the 20th Anniversary of SummerSlam 1992, one of WWE’s most memorable PPVs. It seemed like another bland, boring, and safe WWE PPV on paper. Then, something incredible happened during the build of the PPV: reports came out that Vince McMahon had spent $12 million in hush money to several former employees he had apparently had affairs with. The allegations were so bad that McMahon eventually retired a week before the PPV, with Stephanie and Nick Khan taking over as CEO and Triple H put in charge of creative. Say what you will about Triple H, the man who used to bury the roster for sport, but he did put on a better show than Vince had been for a good while. With no Vince shouting in the announcers’ ears through the headsets, they got to actually announce like normal people. This was Michael Cole’s best announcing job in years. Also, Triple H undid several of Vince’s creative decisions, like turning Becky Lynch face and introducing a heel stable of Bayley, Io Shirai (now Io Sky), and Dakota Kai. The matches overall were pretty damn good, especially the Tag Team Title match and Becky Lynch VS Bianca Belair. As for the main event, it was another Roman win, more of the same. But, the match itself was excellent. It was the first great match those two had had since WrestleMania Play Button. Who knew all you needed for a great Lesnar/Reigns match was to get rid of Vince and add a tractor. Yes, a tractor. They had Brock Lesnar drive a f***ing tractor to the ring and then used it to lift the ring up!!!! I guess that’s the key to a successful PPV: more tractors.
14. 1999: 1999 was a year that WWE could do no wrong. By that, I mean, they did a lot wrong; but it didn’t really matter because they were putting on better shows than WCW and people were tuning in and paying arms and legs for their product. So, a lot of shows from that year don’t really hold up. SummerSlam 1999 is an exception. Some things don’t hold up, like the Kiss My Ass Match (that was the best they had for The Rock that year!?). But, there is a lot of good stuff from this PPV. The Tag Team Turmoil match was pretty good; you can’t go wrong by putting a bunch of guys in one match and letting them just go wild. The main event, with Stone Cold Steve Austin, Triple H, and Mankind fighting for the WWE Title, was a wild ride that entertained as well. The Tag Team Titles and Eurocontinental Titles matches were also pretty good. Though, the amazing part of this PPV was the Greenwich Street Fight. Who would have thought a match between Test and Shane McMahon would end up stealing the show? And yet, it did. It helped that they practiced the shit out of it, but that hard work paid off. And, this was before Shane had worn out his welcome. Of course, it’s not the best SummerSlam, but it was a bright spot in a so-so year.
15. 1994: Yes, this PPV was main evented by that weird Undertaker VS Underfaker match. And, yes, it was awful. But, one bad main event doesn’t derail a whole PPV. And, there was a lot of good leading up to that awful main event. This is the same PPV with the awesome Steel Cage Match with Bret “The Hitman” Hart and his brother Owen fighting for the WWE Title. It was one of WWE’s best storylines, and this match added to the drama as both men fought tooth and nail to win that title. And, they managed to make it very entertaining despite being told that any bloodshed was forbidden. Sometimes restrictions lead to some good creative thinking in matchmaking. There was also a very good big man match between Razor Ramon and Diesel for the Intercontinental Title. It’s easily one of Kevin Nash’s best matches that don’t feature Bret Hart or Shawn Michaels. And, the Women’s Title match between Alundra Blayze and Bull Nakano was pretty good despite lasting only 8 minutes. I always wished that these 2 had been allowed to go over the 10 minute mark in their matches in WWE. The other matches are filler but not terrible. In fact, the main event is really the only turd in the punch bowl for this PPV. But, it comes at the end, so you can just shut it off before it comes on. A win-win for everyone!
16. 2004: This may be the weirdest SummerSlam of all time. The Toronto crowd did not give a shit about what WWE’s plans were at the time and just went rogue. They booed babyfaces like Eugene and hometown hero Edge, cheered for Triple H of all people and Randy Orton, and did the wave during the WWE Title match. Plus, a fan climbed up onto JBL’s limo during the WWE Title match and almost fell through the rigged hole that The Undertaker was gonna chokeslam JBL through later on, which would have ruined the spot. The crowd’s antics led to Jerry “The King” Lawler to call the place “Bizarro Land,” a term WWE would use for whenever any crowd would deviate from what WWE wanted. But, that’s not the only thing that made this a weird show. Kane and Matt Hardy wrestled each other for Lita’s hand in marriage. The then-current Divas took on the Diva Search contestants in a Dodgeball match. And, it was a shoot competition. And, the Diva Search contestants won. And, one of the big grudge matches at the PPV was between Triple H and Eugene, Eric Bischoff’s mentally challenged nephew. It was a weird show, but that doesn’t make it a bad one. In fact, the weirdness added to the fun. Add in some pretty good matches between Kurt Angle & Eddie Guerrero and Chris Benoit & Randy Orton for the World Heavyweight Title, and you got a damn fine show. It might not be the best WWE PPV, but it sure is one of the most memorable ones.
17. 1995: On paper, this PPV looks awful. I mean, it features the likes of the Blu Brothers, Bertha Faye, Kama, and Isaac Yankem, DDS. But, this is a good case of not judging a book by its cover. SummerSlam 1995 does feature some good stuff. Unsurprisingly, the best match is Shawn Michaels and Razor Ramon’s sequel to their excellent WrestleMania X Ladder Match. This one is just as good, especially since they were under strict orders to not use the ladder as a weapon; The New Generation was basically a precursor to the PG Era. But, they managed to work around this, thanks to some advice from Triple H (he suggested that they could throw and slam each other onto the ladder). Everyone expected it to live up to the original, and it succeeded. The other matches were also pretty good. Hakushi and The 1-2-3 Kid had a good bout. Hunter Hearst Helmsley VS Bob Holly delivered. Skip and Barry Horowitz was a nice little surprise. The Undertaker and Kama’s Casket Match exceeded expectations. And, Bret “The Hitman” Hart showed why he’s so good by having a good match with an evil wrestling dentist. To be fair, said dentist is the same man who would become Kane; so it wasn’t that hard for The Hitman. But, like the previous year’s SummerSlam, this one had another terrible main event with Diesel, in the middle of his awful WWE Title run, taking on King Mabel. So, yeah, that one was as bad on paper as it was in execution. But, much like the 1994 SummerSlam, you can just turn this one off before the main event starts.
18. 2019: WrestleMania Statue Of Liberty made the big mistake of going on until midnight, fully exhausting anyone who dared to watch it in 1 sitting. Thankfully, WWE realized that maybe, just maybe, putting on 8 hour PPVs was a bad idea. So, they scaled things back for SummerSlam, and it paid off. With the show ending at a decent hour made for a much needed improvement over recent years. Another big plus was that the show had some good matches on the card, which was amazing considering that the card looked like crap on paper. Only 1 match looked exciting: Becky Lynch VS Natalya in a Submission Match for the RAW Women’s Title. Unsurprisingly, it delivered. Another match that was expected to be good and delivered was AJ Styles VS Ricochet for the United States Title. Of course, when you put Styles and Ricochet in a match, it’s gonna be good. As for the others: Dolph Ziggler taking on Goldberg in 2019 sounds like a bad idea, but WWE kept things short. Bray Wyatt as The Fiend taking on regular Finn Balor was also kept short and light on the Wyatt mind games. Bayley and Ember Moon had a good, little hard hitting match. Kofi Kingston and Randy Orton had a pretty good match to end in a double countout. Kevin Owens got a decent match out of Shane McMahon. Seth Rollins and Brock Lesnar had a pretty good outing. But, the best match was Charlotte Flair VS Trish Stratus. This exceeded expectations, considering that Stratus hasn’t wrestled full time since 2006. She held her own very well, and Charlotte did a lot to give her the type of long, exciting match that Stratus never really got during her 1st run in the company. In all, this was just a good SummerSlam with good matches. Though, nothing really stood out in context to SummerSlam’s longer history. But, it was a better PPV than recent SummerSlams.
19. 1988: The 1st SummerSlam was a pretty good debut. The matches that really stand out from this card are the tag team matches, which isn’t surprising considering how good the tag division was back then. The British Bulldogs and The Fabulous Rougeaus got the PPV started off well with a very good match that ended in a time limit draw. The Hart Foundation and Demolition had a great match for the Tag Team Titles. And, the main event was an enjoyable spectacle as The Mega Powers (Hulk Hogan & “Macho Man” Randy Savage) fought The Mega Bucks (“The Million Dollar Man” Ted DiBiase & Andre The Giant). Though, the wrestling on this show took a back seat to some wild moments, like The Ultimate Warrior ending The Honky Tonk Man’s 454 day reign as Intercontinental Champion in just 31 seconds, “Ravishing” Rick Rude revealing his trunks with Jake “The Snake” Roberts’s wife airbrushed on them, and Miss Elizabeth pulling off her dress to reveal her red panties that shocked the hell out of everyone, especially Andre. It was mainly a spectacle meant to give the last of the Big 4 a good debut, and the booking did that with gusto.
20. 2015: What is it with SummerSlams in years that end in 5? 1995 had King Mabel in the main event, Barry Horowitz getting his 1st PPV match, and Bret Hart taking on an evil wrestling dentist. 2005 had Kurt Angle taking on Eugene for his Gold Medals, a Ladder Match to determine who would get custody of a kid, and Shawn Michaels pulling off the most entertaining act of sabotage in wrestling history. As for 2015? Well, it was just as weird as the other 2. For one, there was the main event: The Undertaker VS Brock Lesnar. While slightly better than their WrestleMania XXX match, this one was booked so strangely. And, you know damn well what I’m talking about: that weird moment in the match when they laughed at each other. Seeing Lesnar chuckle like that was weird enough, but then The Undertaker had to go and pull off a laugh that can only be described as “NO!!!! That is NOT a laugh!” On top of that was the ending, in which the time keeper went rogue and rang the bell when Lesnar had Taker in the Kimura Lock, which caused the referee to call it off and allowed Taker to kick Lesnar in the balls and then lock him in the Hell’s Gate. It was bizarre. And, that wasn’t the only strange thing to happen here. Dolph Ziggler and Rusev were in the middle of their awful feud with Ziggler stealing Lana and Rusev shacking up with Summer Rae. TV’s Green Arrow got a match, teaming up with Neville to take on King Barrett and Stardust. WWE’s idea of a Divas Revolution was to take 9 girls and put them in one big Triple Threat tag team match. And, John Cena lost the United States Title to WWE Champion Seth Rollins thanks to Jon f***ing Stewart because the former Daily Show host didn’t want Cena to tie Ric Flair’s World Title record. It was a strange PPV, but the Cena-Rollins match was really good. And, there were some other good matches, like Dean Ambrose & Roman Reigns VS Bray Wyatt & Luke Harper and Kevin Owens VS Cesaro. Not really a bad PPV overall, but too weird to be considered a really good one.
21. 2005: Hulk Hogan VS Shawn Michaels. Two legendary wrestlers fighting for the 1st time. This had the makings of one of the most memorable matches in WWE history. And, it was… But not how WWE imagined. Thanks to Hogan saying no to losing the Michaels to set up a rematch and a later rubber match and saying yes to him winning their one and only encounter, Shawn decided to go back to being the huge prick he was back in the mid 1990s and sabotaged the match by overselling every single move Hogan threw at him. But, unlike all those other moments of unprofessionalism, this one was entertaining as hell. Sure, it was a bad match, but it was so bad that it circled around into being good again. As for the rest of the show, it was just as weird as the main event. Eddie Guerrero and Rey Mysterio had a great Ladder Match that just so happened to have custody of Mysterio’s son, Dominic (who was in kayfabe the biological son of Eddie), on the line. Once again, Eugene got a high profile match against a former world champ, this time with Kurt Angle with Angle’s Olympic gold medals on the line. And, the big grudge match between Matt Hardy and Edge, who had stolen Matt’s girl Lita from him, ended with a knockout finish after Hardy got knocked head first onto the ringpost, was busted open, and just couldn’t continue. And, the rest of the card ranged from good (The Undertaker VS Randy Orton) to okay (both world title matches). It’s not the best SummerSlam, but thanks to a wild main event, no one has forgotten it.
22. 2021: On paper, this looks like a bad SummerSlam. Bobby Lashley VS a way past his prime Goldberg for the WWE Title. John Cena showing back up to take on Roman Reigns for the Universal Title. Charlotte Flair getting another Women’s Title match. Alexa Bliss having fully usurped Bray Wyatt’s gimmick VS Eva Marie and Viper with a shitty name that I refuse to use. Drew McIntyre having gone from WWE Title main eventer to wrestling his old 3MB partner (and Worst WWE Champion) Jinder Mahal. Not that great. And, a lot did disappoint. Unsurprisingly, Charlotte got another Women’s Title reign over Nikki A.S.H. and Rhea Ripley. Lashley VS Goldberg was as bad as predicted. Alexa VS Eva was… Well, it happened! And then, there were the 2 surprises. First, instead of a rematch between Bianca Belair and Sasha Banks for the SmackDown! Women’s Title, Sasha mysteriously no-showed, Carmella was teased as the replacement, and then Becky Lynch returned to take out Carmella and beat Belair for the title in 27 seconds. Now, I didn’t really have a problem with the set up, but I would have liked to seen the match go longer. As for the other, after an admittedly good match between Reigns and Cena, Brock Lesnar returned to stare down Reigns and beat up Cena. Which… is fine, I guess. But, Lesnar should be facing Lashley, a match that hasn’t happened and fans wanna see, rather than yet another Lesnar/Reigns match, which hasn’t inspired much reaction from the fans in the past. So, not a great SummerSlam. Though, there were some things that kept it from being outright terrible. Sheamus and Damien Priest damn near stole the show. Both Tag Team Title matches told good stories. Edge and Seth Rollins had a surprisingly good match. And, while it sucked that Charlotte got yet another title reign (WWE’s padding of her numbers to get to her dad’s number is just ridiculous), the Triple Threat was pretty good. So, it wasn’t a bad PPV, but it wasn’t exactly a good one either. Just a bit boring, pretty much like all of WWE in 2021.
23. 2017: Not the most memorable SummerSlam. A lot of these recent PPVs haven’t quite lived up the the Big 4’s Glory Days. Not that there weren’t any duds at this PPV. The New Day and The Usos had a great match on the preshow. The other Tag Team Title match between The Bar and The soon-to-be reunited Shield was also pretty good. The 2 Women’s Title matches were also good. AJ Styles and Kevin Owens tore the house down again. And, it did have a good main event, with Brock Lesnar taking on Samoa Joe, Braun Strowman, and Roman Reigns for his Universal Title. It was a fun match with a weird spot where Strowman gingerly rolled the announcers’ table onto Lesnar to take him out of the match. But, this PPV did have some duds. It opened with John Cena taking on Baron “Has To Have Some Kind Of Compromising Pictures Of The McMahons” Corbin, not the most exciting of openers. Randy Orton RKO’ed Rusev in 10 seconds. Not a good Rusev Day for him. We got yet another f***ing shark cage match. Shinsuke Nakamura failed to win the WWE Title from Jinder Mahal, a jobber who somehow got the title because WWE wanted to build up an Indian audience. It didn’t work and much of 2017 saw the United States Title look more like the WWE Title. And, the match itself was awful as Nakamura struggled to pull a decent match out of Mahal. In all, it wasn’t a terrible PPV, but there were too many duds to keep it from being any good.
24. 2012: Fun fact: This was the 8th straight PPV in 2012 to not end with a World Title match. This was also the same year that CM Punk held the WWE Title for the whole year. Coincidence!? Maybe, but I don’t think so. 2012 is good evidence for why Punk is no longer with WWE. Though, to be fair to the company, they were able to bring in a big name that year: Brock Lesnar. The Beast returned to WWE after an 8 year absence, and his presence did bring in viewers. However, this SummerSlam would be the start of a trend for SummerSlam: Brock Lesnar dominating the event. He’s basically become Mr. SummerSlam at this point, and 2012 was the beginning as he main evented the PPV for the 2nd time (his 1st was in 2002); he’d get 6 more in a row from 2014 to 2019. But, was his match at the 2012 SummerSlam any good? Eh. His match with Triple H wasn’t terrible, and it had a cool finish (Triple H hitting the Pedigree but taking too long to pin, allowing Lesnar to recover, play dead, and trap him into a Kimura lock for the win). But, it didn’t really live up to the hype. As for CM Punk’s match (a WWE Title match against John Cena and The Big Show), it had potential to be a good match but had its time shorten because WWE needed to allot space for the mini Kevin Rudolf concert late in the card, which fans crapped on. The rest of the show was pretty forgettable, except for a really good Chris Jericho/Dolph Ziggler opener. Which has also become a trend for SummerSlam: mediocre PPVs with the SummerSlam name on it.
25. 2018: Another recent SummerSlam that’s not terrible but not really great either. A lot of that has to do with how boring WWE TV had been at the time. And, a lot of these matches didn’t look all that appealing because the storylines were shit. Case in point: Braun Strowman VS Kevin Owens. Finn Balor VS Baron Corbin. Ronda Rousey VS Alexa Bliss. All those were squashes that had so-so builds. Not very exciting. And, some of the matches that looked exciting were botched. The SmackDown! Women’s Title match was really good and had a cool ending with Becky Lynch attacking the shit out of Charlotte Flair for stealing the title. However, that beatdown was supposed to make Becky a heel. Instead, she came off as the biggest babyface since Stone Cold, and WWE then tried to keep her heel but failed spectacularly. Then, there was AJ Styles VS Samoa Joe for the WWE Title. Another good match, but the ending, with Styles getting DQ’ed made Joe look weak. And, this was the beginning of Joe trying and failing over and over to beat Styles. But, the biggest f***up was the main event. Again, WWE insisted on giving us Brock Lesnar VS Roman Reigns, a match people didn’t really wanna see at WrestleMania. But, this time, Braun Strowman came out to cash-in his MITB briefcase on the winner, which distracted Brock and allowed Roman to win the title. It was stupid, and apparently, it was all Brock’s idea to make everyone but Brock look stupid. The whole thing was lame. But, the PPV wasn’t a total loss. Seth Rollins and Dolph Ziggler had a great opening match, and we finally got Daniel Bryan VS The Miz one-on-one since that epic promo Miz cut on Bryan a couple of years before. So, not all bad, but not all great either.
26. 2020: Well, this was the Lamest Party Of The Summer. Or, Sum-Meh-Slam. Now, it wasn’t terrible. Asuka wrestled twice, which told a nice story, though it would have been nicer if she won both Women’s Titles. Randy Orton and Drew McIntyre’s match was pretty good. Braun Strowman’s terrible Universal Title reign finally came to an end. Dominik Mysterio had a good match. It was fine. But, to me, it didn’t feel like a big PPV. For one, when it was announced that they’d be moving from the Performance Center, I figured they’d do something really different, like hold it on a beach or maybe even a boat. Instead we got Thunderdome, an undeservingly cool name for a bunch of screens with fans from home on them. It was a nice visual change from the Performance Center PPVs, but it’s also led to some trolling. You give fans the chance to wear KKK masks and put pictures of Chris Benoit on WWE TV, then they’ll take it. Another was no pay off to 2 big storylines WWE had been building up before the show. For one, there was no Alexa Bliss involvement in the Braun Strowman/Bray Wyatt match. I figured she’d help The Fiend win. But, nope. Also, no Retribution. After all those attacks to ruin WWE’s show, you’d think they’d show up to ruin one of the Big 4 PPVs. Instead, we get the return of Roman Reigns. Yay. Plus, the big blow off to the Mandy Rose/Sonya Deville match was ruined by Mandy not being able to set up a table. In all, this was a fine PPV, but with a little more creativity in the location and some payoffs to big stories, it could have been better.
27. 1990: The 3rd SummerSlam isn’t outright terrible, but there’s not much greatness on this PPV either. What does elevate the PPV are some good matches, like a well-booked Rockers/Power & Glory match that was booked into a handicapped match to hide Shawn Michaels’s knee injury. And, there is an excellent Tag Team Title Match that sees The Hart Foundation win the titles off of Demolition Version 2 (the one with Crush). Plus, the Earthquake/Hulk Hogan match ain’t that bad. However, the rest of the card is filled with a bunch of mediocre matches that aren’t that memorable. Hell, one of them (Queen Sherri VS Sapphire) ended in a forfeit. And, it didn’t help that the main event, The Ultimate Warrior VS “Ravishing” Rick Rude in Steel Cage Match for the WWE Title, was a huge dud, especially since the two had had an excellent encounter the previous year. Another thing that didn’t help was the commentary. For the 1st time, neither Gorilla Monsoon nor Jesse Ventura were on commentary; Ventura left the company shortly before the PPV, and Monsoon was just left off the show. Instead, we got Vince McMahon, who was okay, and “Rowdy” Roddy Piper, who was weird. Piper kept flipflopping between being a face and a heel all night. It was erratic, to say the least. Now, there have been worst SummerSlams, but this was easily the 1st bad one.
28. 2011: Really, there’s nothing too terrible from this PPV. I mean, it sucked that Kelly Kelly beat Beth Phoenix. But, Daniel Bryan VS Wade Barrett was good. Sheamus and Mark Henry had a fun match with a cool spot (with a surprise cameo by Joey Ryan of all people). There was a fun 6-Man Tag opener, which isn’t surprising with John Morrison, Kofi Kingston, Rey Mysterio, R-Truth, The Miz, and Alberto Del Rio in the match. And, the 2 World Title matches were good. Christian and Randy Orton had a great World Heavyweight Title match, also not surprising as they’re 2 good workers with a No Holds Barred stipulation added in. And then, there’s the WWE Title Match between John Cena and CM Punk. It was a good match. But, it couldn’t live up to the excellent one they put on a month earlier. And, it was a little too early to bring Punk back after he left. But, those are minor contrivances. What really brings this PPV down was the ending of the match. So, Punk wins, much to the delight of the crowd. But then, Kevin Nash comes in and attacks Punk. And then, Del Rio cashes in his MITB briefcase on Punk. Just like that, the Summer Of Punk had frozen over. In one fell swoop, WWE killed one of the hottest angles they had done in a long time. And, it all led to some convoluted bullshit with Punk, Cena, and Del Rio all fighting for the title, Triple H taking over the company for a bit, and a stupid strike angle caused by everyone being afraid of The Miz and R-Truth. A good PPV was ruined and a great angle was killed by WWE for seemingly no real reason. No wonder Punk left. Plus, as good as everything was leading up to the end, it wasn’t very memorable either. Basically, this is a serviceable PPV with a terrible ending.
29. 1996: The best thing I can say about this PPV is that it had 2 good matches. The Boiler Room Brawl between The Undertaker and Mankind and the WWE Title match between Shawn Michaels and Vader were the best things about this show. Mankind was the best thing to happen to The Undertaker as he had been wrestling slow matches before Mick Foley came along, and he got to speed things up and just beat the shit out of a guy with all manners of weapons. The Boiler Room Brawl was a good example of this, and it had the awesome heel turn for Paul Bearer. And, Shawn and Vader had a great match with just one little hiccup when Vader missed his cue and Shawn broke kayfabe. That does hurt the match a little, but it’s still a good match. As for the rest of the card, yawn. Does anyone remember that Owen Hart took on Savio Vega? That Sycho Sid’s only SummerSlam match was with The British Bulldog? That The Smoking Gunns, The Godwinns, The Rockers (with Leif Cassidy), and The Bodydonnas fought each other for the Tag Team Titles? I only remember because I looked them up on Wikipedia. Though, I did remember that Stone Cold Steve Austin, 2 months after giving the world one of the greatest wrestling promos and putting himself on track to being the company’s biggest draw, ended up wrestling on the preshow. SERIOUSLY!!!!? Fun fact: he’s the only King Of The Ring from 1993 to 2002 to not appear on the SummerSlam main card the same year he won the crown. f***ing Billy Gunn and Mabel got on the main card the years they won! Hell, Mabel got a WWE Title match. But, not Stone Cold! And, this is why SummerSlam 1996 was so bad.
30. 2016: The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly of SummerSlam. The Good was John Cena VS AJ Styles. These two put on a great, exciting match, a fun back-and-forth affair that had the Brooklyn crowd eating out of the palms of their hands. Not that surprising considering it was Cena and Styles. Cena can deliver when he has to, and there are few people Styles can have a bad match with. The Bad was the 1st Universal Title match. The match between Finn Balor and Seth Rollins wasn’t really all that terrible, but there were some bad parts surrounding it. For one, the unveiling of the Universal Title bombed badly, with the all red title failing to impress the notoriously smarky New York crowd. And, that impacted the match as the crowd mercilessly ripped that title design a new one throughout the match. Also, Rollins injured Balor, who won the match and the title but had to immediately vacate it. This killed the big push Balor was supposed to get, and he hasn’t fully recovered. But, what really brings this PPV down is The Ugly: Brock Lesnar VS Randy Orton. WWE wanted to end the match with Lesnar beating Orton so bloody that the match had to be stopped. Not a bad idea in theory, but WWE wanted to do this without any blading. You’d think they’d fake it, maybe by putting so blood packs in Orton’s mouth so he could fake some internal bleeding. NOPE! Their brilliant idea was to have Lesnar bust Orton open the hard way, by just laying elbow after elbow on Orton’s head until blood gushed out. This gave Orton a concussion, and WWE was in the midst of a class action lawsuit, so they tried to cover up Orton’s condition after the match. AND, they didn’t let referee Mike Chioda, the one guy who could help Orton, know to add to the drama. Nor did anybody else backstage besides basically Triple H and Vince McMahon know about the finish, which caused Chris Jericho to nearly get into a fight with Lesnar after the PPV, which could have caused further injuries. All this to avoid blading, which would have been much safer. Honestly, the PPV as a whole wasn’t all that terrible until the Lesnar/Orton debacle. And, the fact that WWE thought busting open a man’s forehead the hard way was much safer than blading is f***ing horrendous. When people talk about WWE not caring about their wrestlers’ health, this is People’s Exhibit #1. This one act just pissed me off so much, hence why I ranked this PPV so low. Again, f*** this company with a barb wire covered dildo!!!!
31. 2006: Another mediocre PPV from a mediocre year. Honestly, I forgot a lot of what happened at this PPV and had to go back and look at the lineup on Wikipedia. And, it wasn’t all that great. Mick Foley and Ric Flair had an I Quit Match that didn’t light the world on fire. Batista got the 1st of many World Heavyweight Title matches against King Booker that year. Hulk Hogan wrestled his last WWE match in a forgettable affair with Randy Orton. The Big Show and Sabu had an okay match for the ECW Title. D-X’s reunion continued with a match against Vince & Shane that was only memorable for the McMahon’s doing a bunch of famous tag team finishers. The Eddiespoilation continued with Chavo Guerrero and Rey Mysterio’s feud. And, the best match of the night was an okay match between John Cena and Edge for the WWE Title that would be incredibly overshadowed by a much better TLC Match at the next month’s PPV. It’s not exactly a bad SummerSlam, but it didn’t really leave much of an impression either. It’s basically just a SummerSlam that happened.
32. 2003: From 1997 to 2002, SummerSlam went on a hot streak; 6 straight years in a row of good PPVs. Then came 2003, a big bucket of ice water on the Biggest Party Of The Summer. It wasn’t all bad. The WWE Title match between Kurt Angle and Brock Lesnar was really good, no surprise there. And, there was a pretty good United States Title match with Eddie Guerrero, Chris Benoit, Tajiri, and Rhyno, also not a shocker. As for the rest of the show? Meh. Shane McMahon finally had a bad match at SummerSlam, with Eric Bischoff. The Undertaker and A-Train wrestled for some reason. Kane and Rob Van Dam had a so-so match. Then, there was the Elimination Chamber match. The match itself wasn’t that bad. In fact, it was well booked. They started off with the best workers: Shawn Michaels, Chris Jericho, and Randy Orton. Those 3 tore it down, and then Kevin Nash came in, dominated, and then got triple-teamed by the other 3. Triple H came in and was knocked out to hide the fact he was injured. Then, Goldberg came in and took out the other 3. It looked like Goldberg was gonna easily take out Triple H and become the World Heavyweight Champion. But no! Triple H had to stop him with a sledgehammer and win the f***ing match because he’s the f***ing Game even though he was injured and ended up dropping the title to Goldberg the next month. If it hadn't been for that ending, this would have just been a forgettable PPV with a couple of memorable matches. That ending was so bad it dragged down the whole PPV.
33. 1993: Back in my WrestleMania list, I mentioned how WrestleMania IX made this a bad PPV due to all the Hulk Hogan shenanigans. So, you shouldn’t be so shocked that this PPV is so low. It wasn’t all bad. The Bret “The Hitman” Hart-Jerry “The King” Lawler segment was a lot of fun with Lawler feigning injury, Doink being substituted and throwing water on Bruce Hart (who had no idea that was gonna happen), Bret wrestling Doink, Lawler interfering, Lawler being forced to fight Bret, and Bret winning but not releasing the Sharpshooter and getting DQ’ed. It was all good stuff. And, some of the other matches were good, like the Tag Team Title match with The Steiners and The Heavenly Bodies and the Razor Ramon/Ted DiBiase bout. But, those were about the only highlights. I didn’t think this was possible, but amazingly, Mr. Perfect and Shawn Michaels had a disappointing match. For some strange reason, Vince McMahon thought that The Undertaker should wrestle Giant Gonzalez again. Putting them in a match with no DQ’s improved things, but it was still a terrible match. But, the real stinker was the main event. With no Hogan VS Bret for the WWE Title, Yokozuna got the title. And, Lex Luger was built up to be the next Hogan, going around the country in that damn bus. To add to the match, WWE booked it as Luger’s only shot at the title. So, it looked like Luger was gonna be the WWE Champion. Then, it happened. The match itself wasn’t awful, but the finish… Good God almighty! For some reason, Vince thought Luger should win by countout and then celebrate like he won the damn belt. So, the show ends with Luger being celebrated like the second coming of Jesus even though he just blew his one shot at the WWE Title. I was just 8-years-old when I saw that, and even as a dumb mark, I knew that was the dumbest f***ing thing I’d ever seen in a wrestling ring. It was just a crappy end to a lackluster SummerSlam.
34. 2007: To be fair, they had a good excuse. This PPV came nearly a month after the Benoit tragedy. Between that and the media scrutiny WWE was facing at the time, it felt like nobody was in much of a mood to put on The Biggest Party Of The Summer. And, it showed on the PPV. Not only did the Benoit tragedy cause the Jackass cast to pull out of their planned match with Umaga (you can decide if that was a good thing or a bad thing), but it also gave this PPV a “going through the motions” vibe. The matches looked put together at the last minute (Kane VS Finlay), a last minute fix for change of plans (Umaga VS Carlito VS Mr. Kennedy (all heels) fighting for the Intercontinental Title), same old shit (Rey Mysterio VS Chavo Guerrero, John Morrison VS CM Punk for the ECW Title), throwing a bunch of people in one match to fill time (the Battle Royal for a shot at the Women’s Title), and the feeding of ego (Triple H VS Booker T). And, the 2 biggest matches were letdowns. Batista somehow had to get a good match out of The Great Khali in their World Heavyweight Title match and in a short time since WWE had no faith in him putting on good matches in lengthy times. Plus, Khali was the champ, even though he shouldn’t have been, and retained it for some strange reason even though Batista would win it a month later. Then, there was the WWE Title match between John Cena and Randy Orton. It was the best match at that PPV, but it wasn’t all that great. And, it was the beginning of many encounters between them. This was the 1st of 10 one-on-one PPV matches and the 3rd of 22 total PPV matches these two would be in together. This PPV was so bad it affected 19 other PPVs later on. You could make the case that this is the worst SummerSlam of all time. But, WWE had a really good excuse for this PPV sucking, hence why I didn’t put it at the bottom. It’s a lousy PPV, but I understand why.
35. 2010: Ladies and gentlemen, the Worst SummerSlam Ever! Why? For one, they completely overloaded the main event, booking a 7-on-7 Elimination Tag Match. Of course, said match could have delivered since it pitted 7 WWE Superstars against the red hot Nexus, who had made a great debut by destroying everyone in their path up to this point. And, to make things better, they brought back Daniel Bryan, who got fired after the initial Nexus attack upset some sponsor and was made sacrificial lamb. Of course, they put him on the WWE’s team, even though he was the most vicious in that initial attack. But, he replaced The Great Khali; and it looked like he might turn heel on Team WWE. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen. What did happen was that Team WWE won. With John Cena getting the victory. By eliminating Justin Gabriel and Wade Barrett. After getting DDT’ed on a bare concrete floor. It was SuperCena at his worst. And, it totally killed The Nexus angle. After that, everything they did just got dumber and dumber. Looking back, it’s not surprising that Heath Slater is the only Nexus guy still wrestling for WWE. As for the rest of the card, The Big Show defeated The Straight Edge Society; so this PPV had 2 cool stables getting killed for no real reason. Sheamus fought Randy Orton for nearly 20 minutes before deciding to get himself intentionally DQ’ed by bringing in a steel chair, in a WWE Title match no less. Kane and Rey Mysterio fought for the World Heavyweight Title, yes, seriously. Dolph Ziggler and Kofi Kingston fought to a no contest in the opener. And, this PPV gave us the epic Melina VS Alicia Fox match that inspired Funkadactyl Cameron to get into wrestling and damn near cause Stone Cold’s head to explode in angry confusion. Basically, this was a one match show, with the one match not living up to the hype. Though, we should have known that was going to happen once WWE announced a post-stroke Bret Hart for the match.
2. 2000: In 2000, WWE was on fire. The ratings were up, money was rolling in, they got a big boost in match quality when The Radicalz defected to their side, and they had a bunch of killer PPVs. That year’s SummerSlam was definitely one of them. One could make an argument for it being the best SummerSlam ever, but I think some things hold it back: Jerry “The King” Lawler VS Tazz, the Stinkface Match, X-Pac VS Road Dogg. While those lows are low, the highs are SO f***ING HIGH! I mean, you can’t go wrong with a 2-Out-Of-3 Falls Match between Chris Jericho and Chris Benoit. And, Shane McMahon damn near stole the show for a 2nd year in a row with that scary fall during his match with Steve Blackman. However, the guys who stole the show at WrestleMania 2000 did so again. Edge & Christian, The Hardy Boyz, and The Dudley Boyz put on another great spotfest in the 1st ever TLC Match, one that blew their Ladder Match at WrestleMania out of the water. It’s no wonder they went back to the TLC well for WrestleMania X-Seven. And, there was the main event: a Triple Threat Match with The Rock, Triple H, and Kurt Angle for the WWE Title. This could have been a disaster as the Spanish announcers table gave way when Triple H tried to Pedigree Angle through it, nearly giving him a concussion. Angle had to miss much of the match, but Rock and Triple H managed to salvage things with a fantastic bout by themselves and with a concuss Angle when he came back later on. In all, it was just a fantastic PPV from a year of fantastic PPVs.
3. 1998: There’s a big reason why people aren’t so hot for WWE right now: sometimes, wrestling is just so easy to book; and they’ve seemed to have forgotten that. Case in point: SummerSlam 1998. The booking was simple: take the company’s 2 biggest names and have them wrestle for the company’s top title at a high-profile PPV. That’s what happened here as Stone Cold Steve Austin took on The Undertaker for the WWE Title at SummerSlam. And, it worked as the match was very good, with Taker and Austin beating the hell out of one another, and the PPV did its highest buyrate, at 700,000 buys (only one other non-WrestleMania PPV has done better than SummerSlam 1998: InVasion, with 775,000 buys). Of course, this isn’t a 1 match show. It started with a great opener between D’Lo Brown and Val Venis. There was also a great Ladder Match between The Rock and Triple H, a fun Hair VS Hair match between X-Pac and Jeff Jarrett, an interesting gimmick match with the Lion’s Den Match between Ken Shamrock and Owen Hart, and Mankind taking on The New Age Outlaws by himself in a No DQ Match for the Tag Team Titles. In fact, there’s hardly any duds on this PPV; even The Oddities VS Kaientai has a “so bad it’s good” feel to it. In all, this PPV is proof of the KISS rule working: Keep It Simple, Stupid.
4. 1992: This PPV is largely remembered for 2 things: it took place in London, and it had one of the greatest matches of all time. Both things are rightfully deserving recognition. Going to London gave the PPV a unique feel. This was the 1st SummerSlam that looked more like WrestleMania. And, that match, in which Bret “The Hitman” Hart took on The British Bulldog for the Intercontinental Title is a f***ing classic. It was a great bout, and it’s even better if you know that Bulldog got drunk the night before and forgot the whole match plan, forcing Bret to call the whole thing by himself. This one match is proof that Bret is definitely The Best There Is, The Best There Was, and The Best There Ever Will Be. But, there are other parts of the show that deserve recognition. The WWE Title match, with “Macho Man” Randy Savage and The Ultimate Warrior, was also really good. Not as good at their WrestleMania VII match, but it holds up. And, this one had the unique storyline with Ric Flair trying to pit them against each other in hopes of picking up the scraps later. There was also a really good tag match between The Legion Of Doom and Money, Inc., a fun heel VS heel match between Shawn Michaels and “The Model” Rick Martel, and a Nailz VS Virgil match that is so awful that it has to be seen to be believed. In all, this was just a great PPV highlighted with one of the greatest wrestling matches of all time, which is why SummerSlam 1992 got ranked so high.
5. 2013: This may be the last great SummerSlam. At least, WWE is seemingly doing their best to make that so. There hasn’t really been a truly great SummerSlam since this show. But, what makes this one so great? 2 incredible matches. First, there was The Best VS The Beast: CM Punk VS Brock Lesnar in a No Disqualification Match. These 2 guys had 2 very different styles that gelled well together. It’s a shame that this will likely be the only time these 2 fight each other because they could have had a hell of a rivalry, especially if their matches were knock-down drag out fights like this one. Then, there was the other great match on the show: John Cena VS Daniel Bryan for the WWE Title. Like in 1998, WWE had the brilliant idea to take their 2 biggest babyfaces and have them fight one another. It worked as they also gelled well together and showed off some great chemistry. This is another match that needs to happen again. Of course, the match is marred a little by Randy Orton cashing in his MITB briefcase on Bryan after he just won the title thanks to Triple H, starting The Authority. On the one hand, this led to Bryan getting jerked around and that awful The Big Show VS The Authority angle. On the other hand, it did lead to Bryan’s great win at WrestleMania XXX and helped to make him a bigger star. As for the rest of the card, there was a really good World Heavyweight Title match between Christan and Alberto Del Rio and some silliness between Kane and Bray Wyatt in a Ring Of Fire match. The other matches are filler but not awful. All in all, this was a great 2 Match Show, pretty much the SummerSlam equivalent of WrestleMania X.
6. 1997: What a difference a year makes! The 1996 SummerSlam was a boring, forgettable show with just 2 matches worth a damn. But, a year later, WWE put on a much better show. How did this happen? Well, 2 months prior to the 1996 SummerSlam, Stone Cold Steve Austin delivered a promo that would shock the world and mark the beginning of the Attitude Era’s bloom. Stone Cold started bringing in an edge to the company that caught on with fans. By the time the 1997 SummerSlam came along, WWE was embracing that edge, which made for a much better show. Stone Cold had a memorable match with Owen Hart. It was a great fight with both guys having great chemistry. Though Austin’s unfortunate injury has overshadowed the match, the match itself was good enough to be remembered on its own merits. Bret “The Hitman” Hart and The Undertaker had a great WWE Title match, with Shawn Michaels as special guest referee and the added stipulation that Bret couldn’t wrestle in America again if he lost added some drama to the match. Though, Bret and Taker didn’t need it as they just beat the hell out of each other. There was also a good Cage Match between Mankind and Hunter Hearst Helmsley to start off the show. Sure, there are some duds on the show, like Los Boricuas VS The Disciples of Apocalypse. But, it was still a great show that gave fans a taste of the Attitude Era before it was fully in swing by the next year. And, it started a great streak of good SummerSlam PPVs that lasted until 2002. So, it’s easily one of the best.
7. 1991: SummerSlam 1991 was marketed as A Match Made In Heaven and A Match Made In Hell. The former was the wedding of “Macho Man” Randy Savage and Miss Elizabeth and the latter was Hulk Hogan & The Ultimate Warrior VS Sgt. Slaughter, Col. Mustafa, & Gen. Adnan. Going by the main attractions, it’s a hard PPV to watch as the Handicap Match ain’t that great, and the wedding is hard to watch considering how tragic their stories ended. But, the undercard makes this PPV a must see. It starts off with a pretty good 6-Man Tag featuring The British Bulldog, Ricky Steamboat, and Kerry Von Erich on one team. After that, we get one of the best SummerSlam matches of all time as Bret “The Hitman” Hart and Mr. Perfect steal the show in a barnburner of an Intercontinental Title match. Also on the card is a fun little match between The Big Boss Man and The Mountie, a pretty good Tag Team Title Match between The Legion Of Doom and The Nasty Boys, and one of the most underrated matches of all time as Ted DiBiase gives Virgil the best match of his career. While the main attractions might not hold up all that well, the undercard more than makes up for it.
8. 1989: You could make a good case for this being the best WWE PPV on the 1980s. SummerSlam 1989 had a lot of good matches on hand. “Ravishing” Rick Rude gave The Ultimate Warrior his best match in an underrated classic that saw both men beat the holy hell out of one another for the Intercontinental Title. Just like the year before, this one featured some great tag matches. The Hart Foundation and The Brain Busters had a fantastic bout, which shouldn’t shock anyone. The 6-Man Tag with The Fabulous Rougeaus & “The Model” Rick Martel taking on The Rockers & Tito Santana damn near stole the show, also not surprising considering the talent involved. Dusty Rhodes and The Honky Tonk Man had a good stiff battle. The match with Greg “The Hammer” Valentine and Hercules was interesting since Valentine’s main rival, “Rugged” Ronny Garvin, was the special guest ring announcer who kept annoying Valentine. And, of course, this featured that infamous “Mean” Gene Okerlund blooper. But, what really puts this in greatness territory is the main event: Hulk Hogan & Brutus “The Barber” Beefcake VS “Macho King” Randy Savage & Zeus. Yes, this did feature the bad guy from “No Holds Barred” coming to life to get revenge on Hogan. But, the match was pretty damn good considering it featured an actor pretending to be a wrestler. The fact that 3 veterans could make this match come off as good as it was while featuring Zeus shows that SummerSlam 1989 is an all-time classic.
9. 2009: Or, as I like to call it, SummerFest. Around the time of this PPV, WWE had turned RAW into a weekly crapfest with celebrities who knew nothing of the product, like a certain Entourage agent promoting a movie that would be quickly forgotten messing up the name of the upcoming PPV, coming in to do painfully unfunny skits with various WWE Superstars (though Bob Barker and Shaq were okay). Ironically, the 1st of 6 straight SummerSlams from Hollywood was one of the better PPVs from this RAW Guest Host era. There’s a lot of good stuff on this PPV. It starts off with a great opener as Rey Mysterio and Dolph Ziggler tore the house down for the Intercontinental Title. Jeri-Show continued to bring some prestige back to the Tag Team Titles with a good match against Cryme Tyme. D-X came back for one more nostalgic run with a great tag match against Legacy. The WWE Title match between John Cena and Randy Orton was a trainwreck as the match kept getting restarted like crazy; it was a beautiful mess. And, it all ended with a great TLC Match between Jeff Hardy and CM Punk. It was a great spotfest that ended with the cool visual of The Undertaker showing up out of nowhere to attack Punk. While it does have some lowpoints (Kane VS The Great Khali), it was still a beautiful oasis among a desolate creative period in WWE.
10. 2008: Easily the most underrated SummerSlam of all time. It doesn’t have big moments like Miss Elizabeth taking off her dress or legendary matches like Bret Hart VS The British Bulldog. But, it does have some good moments and matches that made for a memorable PPV. The 2 best matches of the PPV were easily the Hell In A Cell Match between The Undertaker & Edge and a clash between John Cena & Batista. Edge and Taker’s match was a classic main event, with both men beating the hell out of each other. And, they managed to put on a violent affair after WWE went PG, which meant no blood. Despite that restriction, they put on a great match and set the template for hardcore-type matches in the PG Era. As for Cena and Batista, these 2 just had a good match due to the surprisingly great chemistry they had together. The match is marred a little by Cena injuring his neck, but it was still a good match. Then, there was the infamous moment in Shawn Michaels and his wife, Rebecca, came out for Michaels to announce his retirement, only for Chris Jericho to come out to taunt Michaels, which all led to Y2J accidentally punching Rebecca instead of HBK. Jericho and Michaels were already in the middle of one of WWE’s greatest feuds, and this just dumped gasoline onto that fire. It was a great moment, made all the better since Jericho’s punch actually hit Michaels’s wife. As for the rest of the PPV, there wasn’t anything too bad. MVP and Jeff Hardy had a pretty good match. Matt Hardy and Mark Henry’s match was short but fun. Santino Marella being carried on Beth Phoenix’s shoulders after they had won the Intercontinental and Women’s Titles respectively was a great shot. CM Punk and JBL had a good little match. Even the worst match at the PPV, Triple H VS The Great Khali, wasn’t that bad. And, if you have tolerable Khali match, then you have a great PPV.
11. 2001: Honestly, I should rank this one much lower. This was, afterall, the PPV that proved that the InVasion angle wasn’t going to go the way fans wanted it to. There were signs: the heavy focus on the McMahons, Stephanie McMahon as the owner of ECW, top WCW stars having yet to sign, Stephanie McMahon as the owner of ECW, bringing in ECW guys and switching WWE guys to the Alliance’s side, Stephanie McMahon as the owner of ECW, Stone Cold Steve Austin as the Alliance’s top guy, Stephanie McMahon as the owner of ECW, etc. But still, there was hope that this was all just a holdover until WWE could bring in more big WCW names, like Sting, Ric Flair, and Goldberg. After all, the Alliance had won at the InVasion PPV. Then, SummerSlam 2001 happened, and it became apparent that the InVasion angle was just a way for Vince McMahon to piss on WCW’s grave. Of the 10 wrestlers on the show that represented The Alliance, only 5 of them were actual invaders: Booker T, Diamond Dallas Page, Lance Storm, Chris Kanyon, and Rob Van Dam. The others, Stone Cold Steve Austin, The Dudley Boyz, Test, and Rhyno, were WWE guys before the purchase of WCW, even if 4 of those 5 had worked in WCW, ECW, or both. Then there was that match where The Brothers Of Destruction beat the shit out of DDP and Kanyon, which happened because DDP had the audacity to plan out the match before hand and give a script to The Undertaker. And, with the night ending with The Rock winning the WCW Title, it became clear which side was coming out on top. So, why in the hell would I rank this PPV so high? Honestly, the match quality at this PPV was so freaking high. There were some good matches between Edge & Lance Storm and Rhyno & Chris Jericho. One month after stealing the show at the InVasion PPV, Jeff Hardy & Rob Van Dam damn near did it again with a great Ladder Match for the Hardcore Title. Austin & Kurt Angle had a great WWE Title match, one of the best to end in a DQ. And, admittedly, The Rock & Booker T’s WCW Title match was pretty good. Basically, that’s what the InVasion angle was in a nutshell: Vince pissing everyone off because his ego was more important than making money, but everyone sucking it up because the matches were pretty damn good.
12. 2014: I know what you’re thinking: did you seriously just rank this SummerSlam so high because Brock Lesnar destroyed John Cena in the WWE Title match? Yes, yes I did. In my defense: it was glorious! After so many years of Super-Cena dominating WWE’s main event scene, it was a nice change to see Cena just get mauled for once. Plus, the match was a breath of fresh air from the usual match formula of everyone getting their moves in. On the down side, it would lead to Brock Lesnar’s dominance of the WWE main event scene; but it was one of the most unique matches in WWE history, and it’s the kind of match WWE needs to do more often. Though, the rest of the PPV was pretty damn good too. Seth Rollins and Dean Ambrose managed to make a Lumberjack Match compelling. Roman Reigns VS Randy Orton was pretty damn good. Even the matches that looked bad on paper paid off. Rusev and Jack Swagger had a good Flag Match, even though it wasn’t the traditional Capture-The-Flag Match. And, Stephanie McMahon and Brie Bella had a surprisingly good match. And, even more surprisingly, it was Stephanie who carried the match. In all, SummerSlam 2014 was just a good PPV that gave fans a lot of surprises. From the retro Mean Gene Okerlund-hosted "SummerSlam Report" that pleased the nostalgic crowd to the Lesnar/Cena melee, it was a great PPV that broke the mold of the recent formulaic, vanilla PPVs. And, it was a great send off to the LA era of SummerSlam.
13. 2022: This was shaping up to be a bad PPV. Another f***ing Brock Lesnar/Roman Reigns main event. Logan Paul and Pat McAfee wrestling again. A card that looked like an afterthought compared to the PPV that was coming after it. A JULY SummerSlam!!!!? It looked like WWE was tanking SummerSlam in favor of Clash At The Castle, WWE’s first UK PPV in a long while and being held near the 20th Anniversary of SummerSlam 1992, one of WWE’s most memorable PPVs. It seemed like another bland, boring, and safe WWE PPV on paper. Then, something incredible happened during the build of the PPV: reports came out that Vince McMahon had spent $12 million in hush money to several former employees he had apparently had affairs with. The allegations were so bad that McMahon eventually retired a week before the PPV, with Stephanie and Nick Khan taking over as CEO and Triple H put in charge of creative. Say what you will about Triple H, the man who used to bury the roster for sport, but he did put on a better show than Vince had been for a good while. With no Vince shouting in the announcers’ ears through the headsets, they got to actually announce like normal people. This was Michael Cole’s best announcing job in years. Also, Triple H undid several of Vince’s creative decisions, like turning Becky Lynch face and introducing a heel stable of Bayley, Io Shirai (now Io Sky), and Dakota Kai. The matches overall were pretty damn good, especially the Tag Team Title match and Becky Lynch VS Bianca Belair. As for the main event, it was another Roman win, more of the same. But, the match itself was excellent. It was the first great match those two had had since WrestleMania Play Button. Who knew all you needed for a great Lesnar/Reigns match was to get rid of Vince and add a tractor. Yes, a tractor. They had Brock Lesnar drive a f***ing tractor to the ring and then used it to lift the ring up!!!! I guess that’s the key to a successful PPV: more tractors.
14. 1999: 1999 was a year that WWE could do no wrong. By that, I mean, they did a lot wrong; but it didn’t really matter because they were putting on better shows than WCW and people were tuning in and paying arms and legs for their product. So, a lot of shows from that year don’t really hold up. SummerSlam 1999 is an exception. Some things don’t hold up, like the Kiss My Ass Match (that was the best they had for The Rock that year!?). But, there is a lot of good stuff from this PPV. The Tag Team Turmoil match was pretty good; you can’t go wrong by putting a bunch of guys in one match and letting them just go wild. The main event, with Stone Cold Steve Austin, Triple H, and Mankind fighting for the WWE Title, was a wild ride that entertained as well. The Tag Team Titles and Eurocontinental Titles matches were also pretty good. Though, the amazing part of this PPV was the Greenwich Street Fight. Who would have thought a match between Test and Shane McMahon would end up stealing the show? And yet, it did. It helped that they practiced the shit out of it, but that hard work paid off. And, this was before Shane had worn out his welcome. Of course, it’s not the best SummerSlam, but it was a bright spot in a so-so year.
15. 1994: Yes, this PPV was main evented by that weird Undertaker VS Underfaker match. And, yes, it was awful. But, one bad main event doesn’t derail a whole PPV. And, there was a lot of good leading up to that awful main event. This is the same PPV with the awesome Steel Cage Match with Bret “The Hitman” Hart and his brother Owen fighting for the WWE Title. It was one of WWE’s best storylines, and this match added to the drama as both men fought tooth and nail to win that title. And, they managed to make it very entertaining despite being told that any bloodshed was forbidden. Sometimes restrictions lead to some good creative thinking in matchmaking. There was also a very good big man match between Razor Ramon and Diesel for the Intercontinental Title. It’s easily one of Kevin Nash’s best matches that don’t feature Bret Hart or Shawn Michaels. And, the Women’s Title match between Alundra Blayze and Bull Nakano was pretty good despite lasting only 8 minutes. I always wished that these 2 had been allowed to go over the 10 minute mark in their matches in WWE. The other matches are filler but not terrible. In fact, the main event is really the only turd in the punch bowl for this PPV. But, it comes at the end, so you can just shut it off before it comes on. A win-win for everyone!
16. 2004: This may be the weirdest SummerSlam of all time. The Toronto crowd did not give a shit about what WWE’s plans were at the time and just went rogue. They booed babyfaces like Eugene and hometown hero Edge, cheered for Triple H of all people and Randy Orton, and did the wave during the WWE Title match. Plus, a fan climbed up onto JBL’s limo during the WWE Title match and almost fell through the rigged hole that The Undertaker was gonna chokeslam JBL through later on, which would have ruined the spot. The crowd’s antics led to Jerry “The King” Lawler to call the place “Bizarro Land,” a term WWE would use for whenever any crowd would deviate from what WWE wanted. But, that’s not the only thing that made this a weird show. Kane and Matt Hardy wrestled each other for Lita’s hand in marriage. The then-current Divas took on the Diva Search contestants in a Dodgeball match. And, it was a shoot competition. And, the Diva Search contestants won. And, one of the big grudge matches at the PPV was between Triple H and Eugene, Eric Bischoff’s mentally challenged nephew. It was a weird show, but that doesn’t make it a bad one. In fact, the weirdness added to the fun. Add in some pretty good matches between Kurt Angle & Eddie Guerrero and Chris Benoit & Randy Orton for the World Heavyweight Title, and you got a damn fine show. It might not be the best WWE PPV, but it sure is one of the most memorable ones.
17. 1995: On paper, this PPV looks awful. I mean, it features the likes of the Blu Brothers, Bertha Faye, Kama, and Isaac Yankem, DDS. But, this is a good case of not judging a book by its cover. SummerSlam 1995 does feature some good stuff. Unsurprisingly, the best match is Shawn Michaels and Razor Ramon’s sequel to their excellent WrestleMania X Ladder Match. This one is just as good, especially since they were under strict orders to not use the ladder as a weapon; The New Generation was basically a precursor to the PG Era. But, they managed to work around this, thanks to some advice from Triple H (he suggested that they could throw and slam each other onto the ladder). Everyone expected it to live up to the original, and it succeeded. The other matches were also pretty good. Hakushi and The 1-2-3 Kid had a good bout. Hunter Hearst Helmsley VS Bob Holly delivered. Skip and Barry Horowitz was a nice little surprise. The Undertaker and Kama’s Casket Match exceeded expectations. And, Bret “The Hitman” Hart showed why he’s so good by having a good match with an evil wrestling dentist. To be fair, said dentist is the same man who would become Kane; so it wasn’t that hard for The Hitman. But, like the previous year’s SummerSlam, this one had another terrible main event with Diesel, in the middle of his awful WWE Title run, taking on King Mabel. So, yeah, that one was as bad on paper as it was in execution. But, much like the 1994 SummerSlam, you can just turn this one off before the main event starts.
18. 2019: WrestleMania Statue Of Liberty made the big mistake of going on until midnight, fully exhausting anyone who dared to watch it in 1 sitting. Thankfully, WWE realized that maybe, just maybe, putting on 8 hour PPVs was a bad idea. So, they scaled things back for SummerSlam, and it paid off. With the show ending at a decent hour made for a much needed improvement over recent years. Another big plus was that the show had some good matches on the card, which was amazing considering that the card looked like crap on paper. Only 1 match looked exciting: Becky Lynch VS Natalya in a Submission Match for the RAW Women’s Title. Unsurprisingly, it delivered. Another match that was expected to be good and delivered was AJ Styles VS Ricochet for the United States Title. Of course, when you put Styles and Ricochet in a match, it’s gonna be good. As for the others: Dolph Ziggler taking on Goldberg in 2019 sounds like a bad idea, but WWE kept things short. Bray Wyatt as The Fiend taking on regular Finn Balor was also kept short and light on the Wyatt mind games. Bayley and Ember Moon had a good, little hard hitting match. Kofi Kingston and Randy Orton had a pretty good match to end in a double countout. Kevin Owens got a decent match out of Shane McMahon. Seth Rollins and Brock Lesnar had a pretty good outing. But, the best match was Charlotte Flair VS Trish Stratus. This exceeded expectations, considering that Stratus hasn’t wrestled full time since 2006. She held her own very well, and Charlotte did a lot to give her the type of long, exciting match that Stratus never really got during her 1st run in the company. In all, this was just a good SummerSlam with good matches. Though, nothing really stood out in context to SummerSlam’s longer history. But, it was a better PPV than recent SummerSlams.
19. 1988: The 1st SummerSlam was a pretty good debut. The matches that really stand out from this card are the tag team matches, which isn’t surprising considering how good the tag division was back then. The British Bulldogs and The Fabulous Rougeaus got the PPV started off well with a very good match that ended in a time limit draw. The Hart Foundation and Demolition had a great match for the Tag Team Titles. And, the main event was an enjoyable spectacle as The Mega Powers (Hulk Hogan & “Macho Man” Randy Savage) fought The Mega Bucks (“The Million Dollar Man” Ted DiBiase & Andre The Giant). Though, the wrestling on this show took a back seat to some wild moments, like The Ultimate Warrior ending The Honky Tonk Man’s 454 day reign as Intercontinental Champion in just 31 seconds, “Ravishing” Rick Rude revealing his trunks with Jake “The Snake” Roberts’s wife airbrushed on them, and Miss Elizabeth pulling off her dress to reveal her red panties that shocked the hell out of everyone, especially Andre. It was mainly a spectacle meant to give the last of the Big 4 a good debut, and the booking did that with gusto.
20. 2015: What is it with SummerSlams in years that end in 5? 1995 had King Mabel in the main event, Barry Horowitz getting his 1st PPV match, and Bret Hart taking on an evil wrestling dentist. 2005 had Kurt Angle taking on Eugene for his Gold Medals, a Ladder Match to determine who would get custody of a kid, and Shawn Michaels pulling off the most entertaining act of sabotage in wrestling history. As for 2015? Well, it was just as weird as the other 2. For one, there was the main event: The Undertaker VS Brock Lesnar. While slightly better than their WrestleMania XXX match, this one was booked so strangely. And, you know damn well what I’m talking about: that weird moment in the match when they laughed at each other. Seeing Lesnar chuckle like that was weird enough, but then The Undertaker had to go and pull off a laugh that can only be described as “NO!!!! That is NOT a laugh!” On top of that was the ending, in which the time keeper went rogue and rang the bell when Lesnar had Taker in the Kimura Lock, which caused the referee to call it off and allowed Taker to kick Lesnar in the balls and then lock him in the Hell’s Gate. It was bizarre. And, that wasn’t the only strange thing to happen here. Dolph Ziggler and Rusev were in the middle of their awful feud with Ziggler stealing Lana and Rusev shacking up with Summer Rae. TV’s Green Arrow got a match, teaming up with Neville to take on King Barrett and Stardust. WWE’s idea of a Divas Revolution was to take 9 girls and put them in one big Triple Threat tag team match. And, John Cena lost the United States Title to WWE Champion Seth Rollins thanks to Jon f***ing Stewart because the former Daily Show host didn’t want Cena to tie Ric Flair’s World Title record. It was a strange PPV, but the Cena-Rollins match was really good. And, there were some other good matches, like Dean Ambrose & Roman Reigns VS Bray Wyatt & Luke Harper and Kevin Owens VS Cesaro. Not really a bad PPV overall, but too weird to be considered a really good one.
21. 2005: Hulk Hogan VS Shawn Michaels. Two legendary wrestlers fighting for the 1st time. This had the makings of one of the most memorable matches in WWE history. And, it was… But not how WWE imagined. Thanks to Hogan saying no to losing the Michaels to set up a rematch and a later rubber match and saying yes to him winning their one and only encounter, Shawn decided to go back to being the huge prick he was back in the mid 1990s and sabotaged the match by overselling every single move Hogan threw at him. But, unlike all those other moments of unprofessionalism, this one was entertaining as hell. Sure, it was a bad match, but it was so bad that it circled around into being good again. As for the rest of the show, it was just as weird as the main event. Eddie Guerrero and Rey Mysterio had a great Ladder Match that just so happened to have custody of Mysterio’s son, Dominic (who was in kayfabe the biological son of Eddie), on the line. Once again, Eugene got a high profile match against a former world champ, this time with Kurt Angle with Angle’s Olympic gold medals on the line. And, the big grudge match between Matt Hardy and Edge, who had stolen Matt’s girl Lita from him, ended with a knockout finish after Hardy got knocked head first onto the ringpost, was busted open, and just couldn’t continue. And, the rest of the card ranged from good (The Undertaker VS Randy Orton) to okay (both world title matches). It’s not the best SummerSlam, but thanks to a wild main event, no one has forgotten it.
22. 2021: On paper, this looks like a bad SummerSlam. Bobby Lashley VS a way past his prime Goldberg for the WWE Title. John Cena showing back up to take on Roman Reigns for the Universal Title. Charlotte Flair getting another Women’s Title match. Alexa Bliss having fully usurped Bray Wyatt’s gimmick VS Eva Marie and Viper with a shitty name that I refuse to use. Drew McIntyre having gone from WWE Title main eventer to wrestling his old 3MB partner (and Worst WWE Champion) Jinder Mahal. Not that great. And, a lot did disappoint. Unsurprisingly, Charlotte got another Women’s Title reign over Nikki A.S.H. and Rhea Ripley. Lashley VS Goldberg was as bad as predicted. Alexa VS Eva was… Well, it happened! And then, there were the 2 surprises. First, instead of a rematch between Bianca Belair and Sasha Banks for the SmackDown! Women’s Title, Sasha mysteriously no-showed, Carmella was teased as the replacement, and then Becky Lynch returned to take out Carmella and beat Belair for the title in 27 seconds. Now, I didn’t really have a problem with the set up, but I would have liked to seen the match go longer. As for the other, after an admittedly good match between Reigns and Cena, Brock Lesnar returned to stare down Reigns and beat up Cena. Which… is fine, I guess. But, Lesnar should be facing Lashley, a match that hasn’t happened and fans wanna see, rather than yet another Lesnar/Reigns match, which hasn’t inspired much reaction from the fans in the past. So, not a great SummerSlam. Though, there were some things that kept it from being outright terrible. Sheamus and Damien Priest damn near stole the show. Both Tag Team Title matches told good stories. Edge and Seth Rollins had a surprisingly good match. And, while it sucked that Charlotte got yet another title reign (WWE’s padding of her numbers to get to her dad’s number is just ridiculous), the Triple Threat was pretty good. So, it wasn’t a bad PPV, but it wasn’t exactly a good one either. Just a bit boring, pretty much like all of WWE in 2021.
23. 2017: Not the most memorable SummerSlam. A lot of these recent PPVs haven’t quite lived up the the Big 4’s Glory Days. Not that there weren’t any duds at this PPV. The New Day and The Usos had a great match on the preshow. The other Tag Team Title match between The Bar and The soon-to-be reunited Shield was also pretty good. The 2 Women’s Title matches were also good. AJ Styles and Kevin Owens tore the house down again. And, it did have a good main event, with Brock Lesnar taking on Samoa Joe, Braun Strowman, and Roman Reigns for his Universal Title. It was a fun match with a weird spot where Strowman gingerly rolled the announcers’ table onto Lesnar to take him out of the match. But, this PPV did have some duds. It opened with John Cena taking on Baron “Has To Have Some Kind Of Compromising Pictures Of The McMahons” Corbin, not the most exciting of openers. Randy Orton RKO’ed Rusev in 10 seconds. Not a good Rusev Day for him. We got yet another f***ing shark cage match. Shinsuke Nakamura failed to win the WWE Title from Jinder Mahal, a jobber who somehow got the title because WWE wanted to build up an Indian audience. It didn’t work and much of 2017 saw the United States Title look more like the WWE Title. And, the match itself was awful as Nakamura struggled to pull a decent match out of Mahal. In all, it wasn’t a terrible PPV, but there were too many duds to keep it from being any good.
24. 2012: Fun fact: This was the 8th straight PPV in 2012 to not end with a World Title match. This was also the same year that CM Punk held the WWE Title for the whole year. Coincidence!? Maybe, but I don’t think so. 2012 is good evidence for why Punk is no longer with WWE. Though, to be fair to the company, they were able to bring in a big name that year: Brock Lesnar. The Beast returned to WWE after an 8 year absence, and his presence did bring in viewers. However, this SummerSlam would be the start of a trend for SummerSlam: Brock Lesnar dominating the event. He’s basically become Mr. SummerSlam at this point, and 2012 was the beginning as he main evented the PPV for the 2nd time (his 1st was in 2002); he’d get 6 more in a row from 2014 to 2019. But, was his match at the 2012 SummerSlam any good? Eh. His match with Triple H wasn’t terrible, and it had a cool finish (Triple H hitting the Pedigree but taking too long to pin, allowing Lesnar to recover, play dead, and trap him into a Kimura lock for the win). But, it didn’t really live up to the hype. As for CM Punk’s match (a WWE Title match against John Cena and The Big Show), it had potential to be a good match but had its time shorten because WWE needed to allot space for the mini Kevin Rudolf concert late in the card, which fans crapped on. The rest of the show was pretty forgettable, except for a really good Chris Jericho/Dolph Ziggler opener. Which has also become a trend for SummerSlam: mediocre PPVs with the SummerSlam name on it.
25. 2018: Another recent SummerSlam that’s not terrible but not really great either. A lot of that has to do with how boring WWE TV had been at the time. And, a lot of these matches didn’t look all that appealing because the storylines were shit. Case in point: Braun Strowman VS Kevin Owens. Finn Balor VS Baron Corbin. Ronda Rousey VS Alexa Bliss. All those were squashes that had so-so builds. Not very exciting. And, some of the matches that looked exciting were botched. The SmackDown! Women’s Title match was really good and had a cool ending with Becky Lynch attacking the shit out of Charlotte Flair for stealing the title. However, that beatdown was supposed to make Becky a heel. Instead, she came off as the biggest babyface since Stone Cold, and WWE then tried to keep her heel but failed spectacularly. Then, there was AJ Styles VS Samoa Joe for the WWE Title. Another good match, but the ending, with Styles getting DQ’ed made Joe look weak. And, this was the beginning of Joe trying and failing over and over to beat Styles. But, the biggest f***up was the main event. Again, WWE insisted on giving us Brock Lesnar VS Roman Reigns, a match people didn’t really wanna see at WrestleMania. But, this time, Braun Strowman came out to cash-in his MITB briefcase on the winner, which distracted Brock and allowed Roman to win the title. It was stupid, and apparently, it was all Brock’s idea to make everyone but Brock look stupid. The whole thing was lame. But, the PPV wasn’t a total loss. Seth Rollins and Dolph Ziggler had a great opening match, and we finally got Daniel Bryan VS The Miz one-on-one since that epic promo Miz cut on Bryan a couple of years before. So, not all bad, but not all great either.
26. 2020: Well, this was the Lamest Party Of The Summer. Or, Sum-Meh-Slam. Now, it wasn’t terrible. Asuka wrestled twice, which told a nice story, though it would have been nicer if she won both Women’s Titles. Randy Orton and Drew McIntyre’s match was pretty good. Braun Strowman’s terrible Universal Title reign finally came to an end. Dominik Mysterio had a good match. It was fine. But, to me, it didn’t feel like a big PPV. For one, when it was announced that they’d be moving from the Performance Center, I figured they’d do something really different, like hold it on a beach or maybe even a boat. Instead we got Thunderdome, an undeservingly cool name for a bunch of screens with fans from home on them. It was a nice visual change from the Performance Center PPVs, but it’s also led to some trolling. You give fans the chance to wear KKK masks and put pictures of Chris Benoit on WWE TV, then they’ll take it. Another was no pay off to 2 big storylines WWE had been building up before the show. For one, there was no Alexa Bliss involvement in the Braun Strowman/Bray Wyatt match. I figured she’d help The Fiend win. But, nope. Also, no Retribution. After all those attacks to ruin WWE’s show, you’d think they’d show up to ruin one of the Big 4 PPVs. Instead, we get the return of Roman Reigns. Yay. Plus, the big blow off to the Mandy Rose/Sonya Deville match was ruined by Mandy not being able to set up a table. In all, this was a fine PPV, but with a little more creativity in the location and some payoffs to big stories, it could have been better.
27. 1990: The 3rd SummerSlam isn’t outright terrible, but there’s not much greatness on this PPV either. What does elevate the PPV are some good matches, like a well-booked Rockers/Power & Glory match that was booked into a handicapped match to hide Shawn Michaels’s knee injury. And, there is an excellent Tag Team Title Match that sees The Hart Foundation win the titles off of Demolition Version 2 (the one with Crush). Plus, the Earthquake/Hulk Hogan match ain’t that bad. However, the rest of the card is filled with a bunch of mediocre matches that aren’t that memorable. Hell, one of them (Queen Sherri VS Sapphire) ended in a forfeit. And, it didn’t help that the main event, The Ultimate Warrior VS “Ravishing” Rick Rude in Steel Cage Match for the WWE Title, was a huge dud, especially since the two had had an excellent encounter the previous year. Another thing that didn’t help was the commentary. For the 1st time, neither Gorilla Monsoon nor Jesse Ventura were on commentary; Ventura left the company shortly before the PPV, and Monsoon was just left off the show. Instead, we got Vince McMahon, who was okay, and “Rowdy” Roddy Piper, who was weird. Piper kept flipflopping between being a face and a heel all night. It was erratic, to say the least. Now, there have been worst SummerSlams, but this was easily the 1st bad one.
28. 2011: Really, there’s nothing too terrible from this PPV. I mean, it sucked that Kelly Kelly beat Beth Phoenix. But, Daniel Bryan VS Wade Barrett was good. Sheamus and Mark Henry had a fun match with a cool spot (with a surprise cameo by Joey Ryan of all people). There was a fun 6-Man Tag opener, which isn’t surprising with John Morrison, Kofi Kingston, Rey Mysterio, R-Truth, The Miz, and Alberto Del Rio in the match. And, the 2 World Title matches were good. Christian and Randy Orton had a great World Heavyweight Title match, also not surprising as they’re 2 good workers with a No Holds Barred stipulation added in. And then, there’s the WWE Title Match between John Cena and CM Punk. It was a good match. But, it couldn’t live up to the excellent one they put on a month earlier. And, it was a little too early to bring Punk back after he left. But, those are minor contrivances. What really brings this PPV down was the ending of the match. So, Punk wins, much to the delight of the crowd. But then, Kevin Nash comes in and attacks Punk. And then, Del Rio cashes in his MITB briefcase on Punk. Just like that, the Summer Of Punk had frozen over. In one fell swoop, WWE killed one of the hottest angles they had done in a long time. And, it all led to some convoluted bullshit with Punk, Cena, and Del Rio all fighting for the title, Triple H taking over the company for a bit, and a stupid strike angle caused by everyone being afraid of The Miz and R-Truth. A good PPV was ruined and a great angle was killed by WWE for seemingly no real reason. No wonder Punk left. Plus, as good as everything was leading up to the end, it wasn’t very memorable either. Basically, this is a serviceable PPV with a terrible ending.
29. 1996: The best thing I can say about this PPV is that it had 2 good matches. The Boiler Room Brawl between The Undertaker and Mankind and the WWE Title match between Shawn Michaels and Vader were the best things about this show. Mankind was the best thing to happen to The Undertaker as he had been wrestling slow matches before Mick Foley came along, and he got to speed things up and just beat the shit out of a guy with all manners of weapons. The Boiler Room Brawl was a good example of this, and it had the awesome heel turn for Paul Bearer. And, Shawn and Vader had a great match with just one little hiccup when Vader missed his cue and Shawn broke kayfabe. That does hurt the match a little, but it’s still a good match. As for the rest of the card, yawn. Does anyone remember that Owen Hart took on Savio Vega? That Sycho Sid’s only SummerSlam match was with The British Bulldog? That The Smoking Gunns, The Godwinns, The Rockers (with Leif Cassidy), and The Bodydonnas fought each other for the Tag Team Titles? I only remember because I looked them up on Wikipedia. Though, I did remember that Stone Cold Steve Austin, 2 months after giving the world one of the greatest wrestling promos and putting himself on track to being the company’s biggest draw, ended up wrestling on the preshow. SERIOUSLY!!!!? Fun fact: he’s the only King Of The Ring from 1993 to 2002 to not appear on the SummerSlam main card the same year he won the crown. f***ing Billy Gunn and Mabel got on the main card the years they won! Hell, Mabel got a WWE Title match. But, not Stone Cold! And, this is why SummerSlam 1996 was so bad.
30. 2016: The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly of SummerSlam. The Good was John Cena VS AJ Styles. These two put on a great, exciting match, a fun back-and-forth affair that had the Brooklyn crowd eating out of the palms of their hands. Not that surprising considering it was Cena and Styles. Cena can deliver when he has to, and there are few people Styles can have a bad match with. The Bad was the 1st Universal Title match. The match between Finn Balor and Seth Rollins wasn’t really all that terrible, but there were some bad parts surrounding it. For one, the unveiling of the Universal Title bombed badly, with the all red title failing to impress the notoriously smarky New York crowd. And, that impacted the match as the crowd mercilessly ripped that title design a new one throughout the match. Also, Rollins injured Balor, who won the match and the title but had to immediately vacate it. This killed the big push Balor was supposed to get, and he hasn’t fully recovered. But, what really brings this PPV down is The Ugly: Brock Lesnar VS Randy Orton. WWE wanted to end the match with Lesnar beating Orton so bloody that the match had to be stopped. Not a bad idea in theory, but WWE wanted to do this without any blading. You’d think they’d fake it, maybe by putting so blood packs in Orton’s mouth so he could fake some internal bleeding. NOPE! Their brilliant idea was to have Lesnar bust Orton open the hard way, by just laying elbow after elbow on Orton’s head until blood gushed out. This gave Orton a concussion, and WWE was in the midst of a class action lawsuit, so they tried to cover up Orton’s condition after the match. AND, they didn’t let referee Mike Chioda, the one guy who could help Orton, know to add to the drama. Nor did anybody else backstage besides basically Triple H and Vince McMahon know about the finish, which caused Chris Jericho to nearly get into a fight with Lesnar after the PPV, which could have caused further injuries. All this to avoid blading, which would have been much safer. Honestly, the PPV as a whole wasn’t all that terrible until the Lesnar/Orton debacle. And, the fact that WWE thought busting open a man’s forehead the hard way was much safer than blading is f***ing horrendous. When people talk about WWE not caring about their wrestlers’ health, this is People’s Exhibit #1. This one act just pissed me off so much, hence why I ranked this PPV so low. Again, f*** this company with a barb wire covered dildo!!!!
31. 2006: Another mediocre PPV from a mediocre year. Honestly, I forgot a lot of what happened at this PPV and had to go back and look at the lineup on Wikipedia. And, it wasn’t all that great. Mick Foley and Ric Flair had an I Quit Match that didn’t light the world on fire. Batista got the 1st of many World Heavyweight Title matches against King Booker that year. Hulk Hogan wrestled his last WWE match in a forgettable affair with Randy Orton. The Big Show and Sabu had an okay match for the ECW Title. D-X’s reunion continued with a match against Vince & Shane that was only memorable for the McMahon’s doing a bunch of famous tag team finishers. The Eddiespoilation continued with Chavo Guerrero and Rey Mysterio’s feud. And, the best match of the night was an okay match between John Cena and Edge for the WWE Title that would be incredibly overshadowed by a much better TLC Match at the next month’s PPV. It’s not exactly a bad SummerSlam, but it didn’t really leave much of an impression either. It’s basically just a SummerSlam that happened.
32. 2003: From 1997 to 2002, SummerSlam went on a hot streak; 6 straight years in a row of good PPVs. Then came 2003, a big bucket of ice water on the Biggest Party Of The Summer. It wasn’t all bad. The WWE Title match between Kurt Angle and Brock Lesnar was really good, no surprise there. And, there was a pretty good United States Title match with Eddie Guerrero, Chris Benoit, Tajiri, and Rhyno, also not a shocker. As for the rest of the show? Meh. Shane McMahon finally had a bad match at SummerSlam, with Eric Bischoff. The Undertaker and A-Train wrestled for some reason. Kane and Rob Van Dam had a so-so match. Then, there was the Elimination Chamber match. The match itself wasn’t that bad. In fact, it was well booked. They started off with the best workers: Shawn Michaels, Chris Jericho, and Randy Orton. Those 3 tore it down, and then Kevin Nash came in, dominated, and then got triple-teamed by the other 3. Triple H came in and was knocked out to hide the fact he was injured. Then, Goldberg came in and took out the other 3. It looked like Goldberg was gonna easily take out Triple H and become the World Heavyweight Champion. But no! Triple H had to stop him with a sledgehammer and win the f***ing match because he’s the f***ing Game even though he was injured and ended up dropping the title to Goldberg the next month. If it hadn't been for that ending, this would have just been a forgettable PPV with a couple of memorable matches. That ending was so bad it dragged down the whole PPV.
33. 1993: Back in my WrestleMania list, I mentioned how WrestleMania IX made this a bad PPV due to all the Hulk Hogan shenanigans. So, you shouldn’t be so shocked that this PPV is so low. It wasn’t all bad. The Bret “The Hitman” Hart-Jerry “The King” Lawler segment was a lot of fun with Lawler feigning injury, Doink being substituted and throwing water on Bruce Hart (who had no idea that was gonna happen), Bret wrestling Doink, Lawler interfering, Lawler being forced to fight Bret, and Bret winning but not releasing the Sharpshooter and getting DQ’ed. It was all good stuff. And, some of the other matches were good, like the Tag Team Title match with The Steiners and The Heavenly Bodies and the Razor Ramon/Ted DiBiase bout. But, those were about the only highlights. I didn’t think this was possible, but amazingly, Mr. Perfect and Shawn Michaels had a disappointing match. For some strange reason, Vince McMahon thought that The Undertaker should wrestle Giant Gonzalez again. Putting them in a match with no DQ’s improved things, but it was still a terrible match. But, the real stinker was the main event. With no Hogan VS Bret for the WWE Title, Yokozuna got the title. And, Lex Luger was built up to be the next Hogan, going around the country in that damn bus. To add to the match, WWE booked it as Luger’s only shot at the title. So, it looked like Luger was gonna be the WWE Champion. Then, it happened. The match itself wasn’t awful, but the finish… Good God almighty! For some reason, Vince thought Luger should win by countout and then celebrate like he won the damn belt. So, the show ends with Luger being celebrated like the second coming of Jesus even though he just blew his one shot at the WWE Title. I was just 8-years-old when I saw that, and even as a dumb mark, I knew that was the dumbest f***ing thing I’d ever seen in a wrestling ring. It was just a crappy end to a lackluster SummerSlam.
34. 2007: To be fair, they had a good excuse. This PPV came nearly a month after the Benoit tragedy. Between that and the media scrutiny WWE was facing at the time, it felt like nobody was in much of a mood to put on The Biggest Party Of The Summer. And, it showed on the PPV. Not only did the Benoit tragedy cause the Jackass cast to pull out of their planned match with Umaga (you can decide if that was a good thing or a bad thing), but it also gave this PPV a “going through the motions” vibe. The matches looked put together at the last minute (Kane VS Finlay), a last minute fix for change of plans (Umaga VS Carlito VS Mr. Kennedy (all heels) fighting for the Intercontinental Title), same old shit (Rey Mysterio VS Chavo Guerrero, John Morrison VS CM Punk for the ECW Title), throwing a bunch of people in one match to fill time (the Battle Royal for a shot at the Women’s Title), and the feeding of ego (Triple H VS Booker T). And, the 2 biggest matches were letdowns. Batista somehow had to get a good match out of The Great Khali in their World Heavyweight Title match and in a short time since WWE had no faith in him putting on good matches in lengthy times. Plus, Khali was the champ, even though he shouldn’t have been, and retained it for some strange reason even though Batista would win it a month later. Then, there was the WWE Title match between John Cena and Randy Orton. It was the best match at that PPV, but it wasn’t all that great. And, it was the beginning of many encounters between them. This was the 1st of 10 one-on-one PPV matches and the 3rd of 22 total PPV matches these two would be in together. This PPV was so bad it affected 19 other PPVs later on. You could make the case that this is the worst SummerSlam of all time. But, WWE had a really good excuse for this PPV sucking, hence why I didn’t put it at the bottom. It’s a lousy PPV, but I understand why.
35. 2010: Ladies and gentlemen, the Worst SummerSlam Ever! Why? For one, they completely overloaded the main event, booking a 7-on-7 Elimination Tag Match. Of course, said match could have delivered since it pitted 7 WWE Superstars against the red hot Nexus, who had made a great debut by destroying everyone in their path up to this point. And, to make things better, they brought back Daniel Bryan, who got fired after the initial Nexus attack upset some sponsor and was made sacrificial lamb. Of course, they put him on the WWE’s team, even though he was the most vicious in that initial attack. But, he replaced The Great Khali; and it looked like he might turn heel on Team WWE. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen. What did happen was that Team WWE won. With John Cena getting the victory. By eliminating Justin Gabriel and Wade Barrett. After getting DDT’ed on a bare concrete floor. It was SuperCena at his worst. And, it totally killed The Nexus angle. After that, everything they did just got dumber and dumber. Looking back, it’s not surprising that Heath Slater is the only Nexus guy still wrestling for WWE. As for the rest of the card, The Big Show defeated The Straight Edge Society; so this PPV had 2 cool stables getting killed for no real reason. Sheamus fought Randy Orton for nearly 20 minutes before deciding to get himself intentionally DQ’ed by bringing in a steel chair, in a WWE Title match no less. Kane and Rey Mysterio fought for the World Heavyweight Title, yes, seriously. Dolph Ziggler and Kofi Kingston fought to a no contest in the opener. And, this PPV gave us the epic Melina VS Alicia Fox match that inspired Funkadactyl Cameron to get into wrestling and damn near cause Stone Cold’s head to explode in angry confusion. Basically, this was a one match show, with the one match not living up to the hype. Though, we should have known that was going to happen once WWE announced a post-stroke Bret Hart for the match.
