SummerSlam In A Nutshell: Heat Wave In ThunderDome

It’s time for WWE’s “Biggest Party Of The Summer”, and by extension, our SummerSlam in a Nutshell. For this one, we may have a heat wave in ThunderDome.

We have a number of championship matches to look forward to. Almost every belt is on the line, after all.

Asuka finds herself challenging both Bayley and Sasha Banks in two matches this time around.

Drew McIntyre defends his WWE Championship against Randy Orton. The Fiend chases the Universal Championship as well.

In other words, there is a lot going on for SummerSlam, so we may have a heat wave in ThunderDome.

Or we may not. Not trying to be negative, but the reality is WWE is trying to find it’s mojo.

That is one major reason WWE moved from the Performance Center to the new ThunderDome experience, after all.

The red and blue brands have a big task in front of them. NXT gave us a great show on Saturday…what will Sunday bring?

Will we get a heat wave in ThunderDome?

Let’s crack open this Nutshell and find out!

Best Match of the night:

Dominik and Seth Rollins was pretty good. I’d give an unpopular take and say Pat McAfee had a better debut this weekend though…

The winner, however? I have to say the best match of the evening was Drew McIntyre and Randy Orton.

Big points for no outside involvement, even though I personally was expecting it. It was certainly a nice clean ending, if a bit stunning that it was via backslide.

Worst match of the night:

This is a tough one.

Honestly, as far as matches go, Braun Strowman and The Fiend kind of wasn’t as good as it could have been.

Like, I think folks were expecting this one to have outside involvement. At least some Alexa Bliss.

Instead we got none of that, and the match wasn’t all that thrilling (in my opinion).

However, the post-match festivities likely made up for that…and gave us that cliffhanger we had been hearing about.

Star of the Night

Going to say I think this was a big night for Drew McIntyre. Plenty of folks were prepared for and possibly expecting another Orton title reign.

Instead, Drew’s reign lives on, and that we got a clean win, that’s big.

Spot of the Night:

Many to choose from.

The spot off the apron where Asuka was basically taking a sunset flip power bomb from Sasha Banks looked fierce.

Several notable ones in Dominik and Seth’s match too.

Roman Reigns delivering spears again? Nice to see, and very unexpected.

Upset of the Night:

I feel like having Mandy Rose beat Sonya Deville, that was a bit of a surprise. I am very interested to see where that goes, because I do not expect we’ve seen the last of her.

Holy Sh** Moment of the Night:

Absolutely has to be the surprise return of Roman Reigns.

Considering we are still in the midst of the pandemic-the very one that caused Reigns to miss WrestleMania-that makes his return even more shocking.

It will be very interesting to see what happens next with this. Presumably, we’ve got a Reigns match on tap for Payback just six days from the time I write this.

Botch of the night:

There were a couple.

Mandy had some issues setting up her table during her match, which was both a botch and funny.

LOL Moment of the night:

We do have a couple.

That issue Mandy had with the table was both a botch and funny.

Mandy’s caterpillar was terrible too.

Noteworthy Moment:

One concern, or I guess risk, of having the virtual audience is…some things are harder to control.

Like, I swear I saw Baby Yoda and Darth Vader at times during SummerSlam. But that is ok.

What WWE probably did not enjoy? There was at least one instance of a “Fire Velveteen Dream” sign.

Asuka did leave with her RAW title again, so there is that.

Also, following the end of night carnage, there would have been a great chance for Otis, no?

Overall lowlights:

We had one big moment to end the show, but I think we were wanting and expecting more.

Is that a lowlight? Maybe it does not need to be, but I think we could have gotten another twist or two.

Put it another way, and while the signs said SummerSlam, outside of the Reigns return, things didn’t necessarily have that big show feel.

Overall highlights:

Now, while I just said it lacked a big show feel for much of it, there were good things too.

Dominik Mysterio did lose, but he and Seth Rollins delivered the goods.

The tag title match was shorter than it could have been, but it was also very good.

Drew McIntyre and Randy Orton delivered the best match of the night.

Roman Reigns delivered the moment of the night.

After the final bell:

Well, it’s on to Payback, and there is certainly plenty left to be addressed.

We’ve got tension between Bayley and Sasha. One is still holding two belts, the other is not.

They have to defend the tag belts at Payback, against…???

Roman Reigns is back, but where to they go from here?

Also worth noting, WWE ran a vignette for Keith Lee showing up at RAW later on Monday. That certainly explains why he dropped the NXT Title at TakeOver, after a relatively short reign.