SummerSlam In A Nutshell: Big Party Or Big Bust?

Folks, SummerSlam is finally here. This is what WWE calls the “Biggest Party of the Summer”. So will we have a big party or a big bust? There’s a couple of Hall of Famers making returns to the ring in Goldberg and Trish Stratus. The major belts are on the line. The Fiend makes his debut. It could be a long evening for fans, but will it be a good one? Let’s crack open this Nutshell and find out!

Best Match of the night:

The opening match of the main card, giving us Becky Lynch versus Natalya, was a really good match.

Ricochet and AJ Styles wasn’t bad either.

Lesnar and Rollins had plenty of big moments for the duration, and sent the fans home happy.

Of the three, the opening bout was the best.

Worst match of the night:

I don’t want to single out a particular match as bad. Rather, I will point out that we had a number of matches on the card that were under five minutes…and the show was over before 10:30PM EST. Now, perhaps WWE was being mindful of the criticism for having ‘Mania run so incredibly long? But it seemed like the Biggest Party of the Summer should have ran past 11 and given us more.

Crowd Chants of the Night:

Man, the crowd was hot last night and are even hotter tonight. I’ll get some chants in, but I am sure I won’t catch them all

That was awesome

Kevin Owens

You can’t wrestle

Kofi Kingston

Yowie Wowie

Randy Orton/Kofi’s stupid (I think?)

Suplex City

Burn it down

Star of the Night

Ready for a surprise? Not the first time I’ve done this, but how about that Toronto crowd?  The fans were super hot last night for TakeOver, and they did not let up during SummerSlam.

I said this to my colleague between matches, but if this show had been in another city, with perhaps more difficult fans, the show could have come off a lot worse.

Spot of the Night:

Sure, there might have been some pretty good ones, but the best of the evening? Hall of  Famer Edge, drilling Elias with a spear.

Raise your hand if you figured you’d never see that move again from Edge, considering the state of his neck.

Honorable mention to Seth Rollins for the splash from the top of the post through the announce table.

Jobber of the Night:

Well, we do have a few options here.

First, Elias. He took a surprise spear from Edge. Later, he took a plethora of chair shots from Kevin Owens.

Second, Dolph Ziggler. Creative allowed him to get some brief offense in, but his match with Goldberg was a squash.

Third, more an honorable mention, Finn Balor. Because everyone knew there was no way Bray, or The Fiend, was going to lose his return match.

Holy Sh** Moment of the Night:

Rowan beat the snot out of Buddy Murphy on the pre-show. Snitches get stitches, after all.

That was a crazy entrance for Bray Wyatt, severed head lamp and all.

I did not expect to see a spear again from Edge. Nor did I actually think we’d see Bret Hart in WWE again any time soon. But, instead, we had both tonight.

Botch of the night:

Nothing jumping out at me

Noteworthy Moment:

Edge made a return

Goldberg got his redemption

Bret Hart is back

The Fiend has a bizarre entrance, and exit.

Is it just me, or did the Toronto audience turn on Kofi? Sure seemed that he was getting boos at the end of his post-match assault on Orton.

And only one title changed hands the entire night

Overall lowlights:

No tag title match for the men on either brand

No Reigns, no Joe. I get having a better build up for an eventual match down the road, but that tag match should have happened at SummerSlam.

Only one title change.

Overall, just didn’t feel like a big show.

Overall highlights:

The crowd was crazy

Very into Goldberg and Trish

Rollins and Lesnar was better than expected.

Nattie and Becky stole the show

After the final bell:

Overall, a good show if this were a regular PPV. Considering it’s supposed to be one of the hallowed Big 4, this was not as good as it should have been. Decent? Sure. Great? Not really.