PWP Nation’s Bruce Hart previews WWE SummerSlam coming up this Sunday on the WWE Network.
Greetings.
This weekend the “Big Apple” and the WWE will play host to the biggest wrestling show of the season SummerSlam and the card is stacked from top to bottom. The dual main event will see Seth Rollins take on Finn Balor for the new WWE Universal Championship and in another “world title” match, recently crowned WWE Champion Dean Ambrose will be defending his title against Dolph Ziggler.
An Intercontinental Title bout will see the Miz take on up and coming Apollo Crews and, in yet another title match, this time, for the United States Championship Rusev and Roman Reigns will clash. As if there weren’t already enough title matches on the card, Sasha Banks will defend her women’s title against Charlotte and in a tag title match, the New Day will be defending their straps against Luke Gallows and Karl Anderson.
In addition to all of those title bouts, John Cena will be taking on the phenomenal AJ Styles, in what has the potential to be one of the most entertaining matches on the card, while Brock Lesnar returns to the WWE to take on the “Viper” Randy Orton, in what also has the makings of an awesome encounter. There are apparently a few other matches as well, including a show-down between Cesaro and Sheamus, another Divas tag match and I’m not sure what the hell else.
All things considered, there’s no question that SummerSlam has the makings of a great show, but, in many ways, I find the whole thing tends to reflect more what’s wrong with the WWE these days than it does to extol its virtues.
Case in point, for several decades, the WWE – just like Major League Baseball, the NFL, NBA and NHL had only one penultimate championship, which originated back in 1963 when Bruno Sammartino won it from Buddy Rogers. Over the years, it was proudly worn with distinction by an impressive list of iconic champions, including Bob Backlund, Hulk Hogan, Randy Savage, Ultimate Warrior, my brother Bret Hart, Shawn Michaels, Steve Austin, The Rock and The Undertaker and was rightfully perceived to have been our sport’s ultimate honor, the “holy grail” of professional wrestling.
For some inexplicable reason though, in 2002, the WWE decided that one world title wasn’t enough, so, in addition to the well established WWE title, it created the somewhat redundant WWE World Heavyweight Title as well – which would be about like NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, today, decreeing that, for no explicable reason, the NFL was, in addition to the Super Bowl, going to be also having an Ultimate Bowl, which would be contested by the same group of teams that vie for the Super Bowl.
For a decade or so, the WWE endeavored to flog the two belts and then in 2013, made out as if it had come up with this brilliant “new” concept of just having one unified title – the WWE World Heavyweight Championship, which was initially won by Randy Orton.
That seemed to satisfy the situation for a few years, but the more things change the more they seem to remain the same in the WWE, and a few months ago, the WWE, once again, came up with this even more revolutionary idea of having not one but two world champions – the preexisting WWE World Heavyweight Championship and, now (drum roll please) the WWE Universal Championship.
Not to be facetious, but I’m anticipating that, in about a year or so, the creative wizards in Titan Tower will suddenly announce that they’ve come up with this cutting edge concept of (drum roll, again) unifying the WWE World Heavyweight Championship and the WWE Universal Championship into just one title belt and, as Cher used to sing, “the beat goes on.”
In addition to the aforementioned two world title matches, the WWE will, as I mentioned before, also have all the other title matches, not to mention, of course, the Cena-Styles and Orton-Lesnar encounters, as well.
Far be it from me to be casting aspersions upon or questioning the impeccable judgment of those orchestrating the schematics for this gig, but it seems like needless overkill – about like bringing a sandwich to a smorgasbord (as my dad used to say) to be wasting two potential blockbuster matches, like John and AJ and Randy and Brock – each of which could have easily been main events on any pay per view on their own, as throw-in matches on a card that already figured to be an orgy of excess.
Making matters worse, as far as I’m concerned, is that, from a former booker’s perspective, when you have so many main event type matches like this on a card, with so many superstars and fragile egos, it’s sometimes tough to “unload” everything with straight finishes and a minimum of bullshit contingencies.
Having said all of that, I’m still hoping, nonetheless, that Summer Slam proves to be a great show and that you, the fans, get your money’s worth.
Enjoy! On that guardedly optimistic note, I’ll call this a wrap for now, but will look forward to catching up with you next week for postmortems on SummerSlam.
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