Sorry for the week delay on this show, kids… but you know how it is with these WWE PPVs that go fifteen hours… and then on top of that, you double it up. Anyhoo, it’s Summerslam 2025 – at the beginning of August so we can clash in Paris or something at the end of August… or is it Saudi Arabia? I’m not quite sure. All I know is that, unless one of these other “premium” shows boasts a card that’s worth my time, this will probably be my last WWE PPV musings for the year until next year’s Royal Rumble.
Yeah, sorry that I didn’t watch the Money In The Bank event from last month and that I would rather watch a bunch of crappy old WCW PPVs than a generally mid-level modern WWE PLE offering. Even moreso, I’m sorry that I’m not in the least bit interested in this John Cena retirement tour that went off the deep end when Dwayne interjected and then decided that his planet needed him or something. (No, Dwayne didn’t show up on this show… but someone else did; we’ll get to that.)
And yes, I did recycle the Buy One Get One Free banner of Ramblemania 41 for this year’s Summerslam as soon as I heard the announcement that they were going to make it a two-night event months ago. The fact that CM Punk would end up main eventing one of those nights was more of a happy coincidence.
NIGHT ONE
Roman Reigns and Jey Uso defeated Bron Breakker and Bronson Reed in a surprisingly perfectly acceptable tag team match. Sure, there were a couple crazy bits on the outside, but this wasn’t as crazy as most Roman Reigns matches were in recent years. Still, not a bad way to kick off Night One, I suppose.
Charlotte Flair and Alexa Bliss defeated Women’s Tag Champions Raquel Rodriguez and Roxanne Perez to win the titles in another perfectly acceptable tag match. This Flair/Bliss Allies Of Convenience We’re Not Friends things is almost starting to grow on me and the people seem into it, so why not push it? Besides, it adds fuel to that eventual Roxanne vs Liv feud when the latter comes back.
Sami Zayn defeated Karrion Kross in… a perfectly acceptable wrestling match. I don’t know; you’d figure a guy like Kross with his character and some intense promo work would come across as a bigger or perhaps more intimidating threat to Sami Zayn, but it’s just a perfectly fine match. Nothing special, really… I don’t know. A guy that people like should be in a match that feels more… hefty, you know?
WWE Women’s Champion Tiffany Straton defeated Jade Cargill to retain the title in a match that exists, which is probably the closest you get to have something resembling a poor showing. Something didn’t click here and honesty, we’ve reached a point where one has to wonder if they’re going to do anything with Jade at all or if she’s just another body that they added to the roster. That’s the problem with making the jump from AEW, where she was given a long undefeated streak and felt like a genuine honest-to-go superstar… while in WWE, she’s just another gal on the roster… and none the better, either. Oh well…
Drew McIntyre and Logan Paul defeated Randy Orton and whathisface there… Jelly Bean? Jelly Roll? Jelly Plan? Look, I’ll be honest. I skipped this one because I have no interest in watching anything involving Logan Paul… I’ve heard the match was fine and Jelly Roll did well in there. I’ll just take your word for it and move on.
A public service announcement from HHH, who joined a White House committee of sports figures or something. This is as close to political talk as you’re going to get on this post, so I’ll just move on and wish everyone the best, including the retard voted into the Oval Office.
CM Punk defeated World Champion GUNTHER to win the title… and then Seth Rollins appears – faking a knee injury he had at a prior PLE show that I didn’t watch – beats up Punk with the briefcase, cashes in his title shot, and wins the title with a Curb Stomp. I wish I could say that I was fooled and that this was a well worked plan that fooled all the marks on social media… but this is literally the first WWE show I’ve seen since… what, Wrestlemania or something? And as soon as Punk won the title, my first thought was “Cue Seth.” And sure enough… good effort, though. And honestly, way to get Seth his belt back after having all these stragglers hold on to it. Maybe now it’ll come with a personality change or something.
With all that talk about the cash-in, you’d think that the scheduled main event was an afterthought or something… and it kinda is. For what it’s worth, I thought the match was largely fine. GUNTHER is a machine until he got cut; then he became a man who could be hurt. And then the match went… meh. Don’t get me wrong; despite my past misgivings over his past attitudes that I once thought was cool until he applied it to a growing company that isn’t TNA, I’m happy to see Punk get his moment to shine. I feel like the past couple years of good behavior has earned him time in the sun, but no time for that, King! We’ve got a cash-in to commit in what Michael Cole laughingly calls a “ruse of the century” or something as if this is something big master plan that got everyone fool… except it didn’t. There’s no Montreal Screwjob conspiracy to be had here; the minute someone said Seth was injured and Punk was involved in the title picture, you knew he was going to cash in sooner or later and use the injury as a patsy. And since I don’t follow the Twitter noise… that makes me smarter than the average smart mark who bought into that nonsense.
So, clearly, this was a one-match show for me. The main event was the only really good match on here and while the rest of the show wasn’t bad, outside of one title change, nothing of note really happened in the undercard that you can’t skip. If this were a one-nighter, it’d be one of the lesser regarded Summerslams… but we still have Night Two to foster.
NIGHT TWO
Eh…
The Wyatt Sicks (or whatever they’re calling themselves) retain their tag titles over the other Smackdown tag teams in a TLC match that had way too many fucking people and thus it was hard to follow or get into unless you just want to see cool moves and spots. After the whole thing was done, this match became something of a blur, which is not something you want TLC matches to be. As far as the Wyatt Sicks are concerned – given my past misgivings over the Bray Wyatt narrative that can be summerized with “THE FIEND SUCKED” – I have not seen enough of the group recently to have a proper opinion, but from what I’ve seen… they exist. They’re some sort of tribute act and they’re largely inoffensive. Whatever; take it or leave it, I suppose.
Women’s Intercontinental Champion Becky Lynch (now with new music that I’m not sure is better or worse than her old one, which was pretty bad to begin win) defeated Lyra Valkyrie to retain the title in a thing that happened… and that’s being generous because even the crowd didn’t give two fucks about this match… and it kept going for over 20+ minutes. Learn to read the room, ladies. If the crowd ain’t buying it, keep it short. I hate to bring back the “designated piss break” moniker for a match, especially since we’re way past the Divas eras, but this match feels like that kind of throwback. Just bad.
US Champion Solo Sikoa defeated Jacob Fatu in a steel cage match to retain the title, where the finish involved Fatu getting handcuffed, breaking out, beats up Solo to keep him from escaping, only to get a door smashed in his face so that Solo could escape and retain. What a stupid ending and the match, again, was one of those things that happened. I don’t know what they see in this Solo guy because he’s a charisma black hole while whatever they had with Jacob Fatu (who had the aura of a superstar at Wrestlemania when he was a bit player) is slowly dying away due to whatever stupid booking they’re doing. Again… bad.
Intercontinental Champion Dominick Mysterio defeated AJ Styles in the Eddie Guerrero Tribute Match where we do all the classic Eddie bits before Dirty Dom eventually retains his title. Eh, whatever. The match was fine if you like Eddie tribute matches, but this was a TV match that someone got on PPV/PLE/POS to fill time… and considering all the other garbage that they slap on these shows to “fill time…”
Cody Rhodes defeated WWE Champion John Cena (who apparently turned back face on Smackdown and now has his colorful entrance again) in a street fight to win back the title… that John Cena graciously presents him… and then Brock Lesnar comes back to a roaring ovation and beats up John Cena to end the show. Well, that was certainly a choice – a brave one if one were to follow all the legal happenings involving Brock at the moment. We’ll have to see how this pans out, but speaking PURELY from an entertainment standpoint, is anyone really excited to see Brock Lesnar back in action again? All he does is pop in, suplex city, F5, and then leaves. And now he doesn’t even have an advocate to cut all his promos while he’s at his farm. I guess you’ll all see how that goes because none of you have the balls to ditch RAW or anything over something like bringing back someone with some (alleged) baggage.
Oh, right. The match, which also felt like an afterthought… again, it was alright. Admittedly a better match than their Mania encounter since Cena was actually trying this time around and the street fight stip helped a little bit… but I don’t know. You’d figured they’d try for an all-time classic and instead you got something that would be forgotten about a day or so later… but never mind that, King. Here comes Bork Lazer to make us forget about the match not even a minute or two later.
To this show’s credit, I didn’t completely hate it and the shows were largely easy watches once you skipped past all the commercials and shit, but I honestly don’t know why I wasted my time with this show. Night One was just a thing that happened while Night Two ended up being a thing that I wish didn’t happen. I don’t know… if they really wanted to sell people on the concept of a 2-night Summerslam, you’d think that they would have done a better job of booking strong cards and they didn’t. And this time, they don’t even have prevailing circumstances to blame for the lackluster cards.
I don’t know… I’ve seen worse WWE shows, but considering this is supposed to be the HHH era where everything is supposedly way better than before, this might be one of the worst WWE shows I’ve seen in recent memory… and that’s still better than whatever shit Vince was throwing out in his last few years in control. Oh well, better luck next year, I suppose.
dtm666 