On Sunday night, WWE had the 29th annual Summerslam from Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York. Unlike NXT Takeover which was done in the same venue the night before and could be described as glorious, Summerslam was not glorious at all and in some cases, crapped the bed mightily as the many of the matches had bizarre endings that made no sense and some of the matches were boring. What I find laughable is how in the hell can WWE produce a phenomenal event in NXT on Saturday night and then produce Summerslam in the same building the next night and fall flat on its face.
Let us first look at the two-hour kickoff show. For starters, it was way to long and felt to be dragging on a bit. Also, you had three matches on the kickoff; to put that in perspective for a bit, NXT Takeover which was the night before had six matches on the card. The Kickoff show had half the amount of matches on an entire NXT card. One of the Kickoff matches had Sami Zayn team up with Nevile to go up against the Dudley Boyz. There was no build for this match, and there was no storyline for this match.
Also, I find it a bit retarded that Sami Zayn was on the kickoff show after having a match of the year candidate with Kevin Owens less than a month ago. Also, it is known that these guys won’t be in a match because there is no feud. You also had Sheamus and team babyface win their matches on the Kickoff show.
I thought the entire Kickoff show was pointless for these reasons. Starters, the tag match for Smackdown was a cluster-pile of crap. What made that match enjoyable was American Alphas who are being pushed big time. In the Sheamus/Cesaro match, they had nice moments but again what are they fighting for. I am aware that both men want to win the series, but what is the “prize” for winning this series.
Now to the card itself, there were several times in the matches that I thought whoever booked the matches was drinking or something. For starters, let us talk about the Tag title match between the New Day and the Club. The New Day have held the titles for 365 days, and there are many people who are saying that they don’t need the belts anymore. I thought that would have been an opportune time for the WWE to change holders of the belt. The IC title match and the United States title matches were bad. I understand WWE is going to be stretching this feud with Roman Reigns and Rusev, but the IC title match between Apollo Crews and the Miz was awful. The other title match you had that was bad was Dean Ambrose vs. Dolph Ziggler for the WWE Championship. I expected that Ambrose was going to take the match, but many WWE fans know these two won’t be in a long feud. They may have one more match at the next pay per view, but that is about it.
The only positive thing from that match was what Maryse was wearing. In regards to the Enzo/Big Cass vs. Jeri-KO match, I found it surprisingly odd you would have Jericho and Owens win. Now to the main event match between Randy Orton and Brock Lesnar. For starters that was not a match, it was a massacre. Brock Lesnar dominated Randy Orton, and it ended a TKO. I find it pretty funny that WWE did all that build up, and the result was that. Basically, they decided to end the match after Orton was bleeding all over the ring.
While 85% of the show pretty much sucked, they had some decent matches. Lets talk about the Universal title match between Finn Balor and Seth Rollins. But before I talk about their match, I would like to talk about the fruit rollup belt they had for Universal title. If you did not get a chance to see it, here is a picture of it:
It looks like they took the Woman’s title and Vince colored it in red. But the match itself was pretty decent overall. Another match of the night was the woman’s title match between Charlotte and Sasha Banks. Since there NXT days, these women have put on great matches. I see them feuding for a bit longer though as they have money written all over them. Finally, I felt the match of the night was John Cena and AJ Styles who tore the house down.
This match had many false finishes and great spots; I expected AJ Styles to go over as they are pushing him into a feud with Dean Ambrose soon.
Overall, except for the Cena, Charlotte, and Balor matches, I felt the rest of the card was bad. I felt the bookings for a lot of the matches made no sense, and it left a sour taste in my mouth. It is also safe to say that NXT Takeover did ten times better than Summerslam did.