Previously at Summerslam…
The Fiend made his debut & sent Finn Balor running scared to NXT, Seth Rollins conquered The Beast, & what the hell… Why was Dolph Ziggler facing Goldberg!? Who did this? Be ashamed.
Several championships were on the line tonight with a few grudge matches sprinkled in between. How did Summerslam: You’ll Never See It Coming play out? Let’s go ahead & take a look at what we all probably saw coming.
BOTCH: Least Valuable Preshow
The United States Championship Match was completely inoffensive but also utterly forgettable. You could honestly play the previous match for the title between MVP & Apollo Crews side by side & if not for the change in venues, there’d be no way you could tell them apart. Not to mention it’s been weird this whole time that Lashley has turned into an unstoppable badass who’s running through everybody in sight since ditching Lana, but MVP is the one getting the shots for the title. MVP has been great since returning to WWE, but should just stick to his managerial role in the future. The in-ring stuff has been marginal at best. Keep being the mouthpiece/recruiter for The Hurt Business & let Lashley be the focal point. All & all it’s good to see Crews get another win, but this match was very much on the preshow for a reason.
BOTCH: I’ve Cien It All Before
Like the preshow match, The Street Profits against Andrade & Angel Garza for The Raw Tag Team Championships was perfectly fine, but indistinguishable from their previous encounters. The actual wrestling is pretty solid & it doesn’t overstay it’s welcome, but it’s the same story of the heels not being on the same page that ultimately does them in they’ve given us the last month. You could’ve thrown the match on the second hour of RAW & it would have fit right in. There’s nothing glaringly bad happening, but we’ll probably all forget about it within a week or two. They should just pull the trigger on the Andrade/Garza breakup they’ve been teasing for what feels like forever already.
I’m throwing it into Botch territory for two reasons. Firstly, this:
Why is he doing a Twisted Bliss? I know it’s supposed to be a 180 Frog Splash, but watching live my immediate thought was he just did Alexa’s move. I’ll concede I’m nitpicking here, but Montez, you have arguably the best looking Frog Splash ever. It for sure is not broken, so no need to fix it.
My actual serious complaint is with the finish, which isn’t horrible or anything & makes sense how it played out, but is one of my bigger pet peeves in WWE. If you missed it, Zelina Vega gets on the ring apron to distract the referee as heel managers do, leading to Ford accidentally knocking her to the floor when he hits the ropes. Andrade goes to check on her as apparently it causes critical damage to her hit points, leaving Garza alone to get double teamed & take the loss. I cannot stand when valets who are active members of the wrestling roster are all of sudden dainty flowers when they’re in manager mode. We just saw Zelina go face to navel with Bianca Belair. Sure, she got her lunch handed to her, but if she can take getting tossed around by her, why does somebody bumping into her send her into a coma? It can work when they use it as a ploy to distract the babyface team, but that’s not what we got here. I’m not going to fault Andrade for being concerned, but at the same time the titles are on the line & your manager flies around constantly hitting guys with hurricanranas. I think she’ll be alright.
Like I said, overall everything is fine, but nothing stands out. I feel like The RAW Tag Division has been on life support all of 2020. I’d like to see some other team crash the scene & give it a shot in the arm. Here’s hoping Fish & O’Reilly are a part of Retribution & just kill The Street Profits soon.
POP: Coup Deville
Sadly, we’ve reached the end of the line for Sonya Deville. I thought she showed a ton during the build up to this match & certainly deserved to be in the spotlight of Summerslam. Mandy held her end leading up too, but this was mainly The Sonya Deville Show. The match itself is nothing to write home about. They never really utilized the No DQ stipulation & Mandy wrestled like an eight year old you play online towards the end of the match just spamming one move. I didn’t really love Otis & Mandy dancing on Deville’s grave right away either, but I guess in story that tracks. That’s not the point, though. Mandy & Sonya could have gone out there & both figuratively & literally shit the bed, I would have given it a Pop regardless given all they’ve had to endure this past week alone.
I wish outside factors didn’t get involved & we could be sitting here talking about a potential showdown with Bayley for Sonya, but unfortunately real life sucks sometimes & she’s decided to take a breather from WWE. Sonya Deville has a lot of upside & hopefully this is just a brief hiatus & not a definitive goodbye from wrestling. If it is, I’m sure she’ll do just as well in whatever she decides to partake in as she was doing on WWE TV these past few months. Regardless of what she goes on to next, hopefully she can put this ugliness behind her & thrive going forward.
That’s also assuming this entire thing isn’t a work…
BOTCH: Mandy’s Cant-erpillar
…the wrong person won, huh?
BOTCH: ? & The Mysterios
Shout out to anyone born before 1970 who gets that reference.
Before we get to the match, a quick Pop goes to Seth Rollins for being a wonderful asshole mimicking Rey Mysterio’s outfit from Halloween Havoc 1997:
I might be in the minority, but this was the dud of the night for me. For a bunch of reasons. I think my biggest gripe is that they called it a Street Fight & it was anything but that. Their bout was just a regular No DQ Match. “But Birdman, what’s the diff??” Ok, sure, on paper the two matches are more or less the same as far as the rules are concerned, but when I think “Street Fight”, I’m picturing two guys with taped up fists wearing jeans & just straight up brawling all over the arena. The idea is the feud has gotten so personal, the two competitors just want to destroy each other. It’s a fight. They’re certainly not doing lock ups & deep arm drags for ten-ish minutes before finally getting to the violence like they did in this match. I’m pretty sure neither of them ever even left the ring. Cool Ring Fight, guys.
Speaking of time, did you know this was the longest match of the night? The Fiend & Braun went a whole ten minutes shorter for comparison. And boy did it not need to be that. This could’ve been knocked out in a cool fifteen, maybe even less if we’re being honest. I kind of felt bad for Dominik. It’s the kid’s (man’s?) debut match & you’re asking him to go over twenty minutes & incorporate all this gravitas that I don’t think he was ready for. You could’ve subbed in Rey & I still don’t think it would’ve hit like they were intending it to. They also kept panning to Dominik’s mother, Angie (“Rey’s wife” according to the announce team. He’s not in the match, fellas) & her expressions read more like she forgot her phone in the car than her son getting bludgeoned to death by kendo sticks.
As for Dominik, I thought he held his own pretty well & certainly showed promise. The beauty of the Street Fight stipulation is you can hide a lot of inadequacies for a new wrestler since it allows others to get involved & carry the load for them, like Rey & Murphy did. Had they given Dom a regular match with half the time, I think he would’ve shined a little more. That gear has got to go, however. His little hoodie kept popping over his head & it looked really dumb. If I was his opponent, any time he tried to run away, I’d grab him by that thing & yank him down. All things considered though, I do think he’s got a bright future. Who would’ve thought the better wrestling debut would’ve been from the ex-NFL punter & not the son of the greatest cruiserweight of all time? You never saw it coming.
POP: The Impress Of Tomorrow
I don’t think it’s a stretch to say the Asuka/Bayley/Sasha story has been one of the best ones all year in WWE. Possibly in all of wrestling. These three put on the top two matches of the night pretty handily, in my opinion. I’d probably edge the better one to Asuka vs. Sasha, but that’s only because of the nod to the Bayley match in the finish, otherwise they’re neck & neck. In a vacuum both affairs were great, combine them with the story they’ve been telling & they’re kicked up to outstanding.
The real question of the evening was which of the two was going to drop their belt to Asuka. I don’t think anybody realistically thought Asuka would sweep or lose both matches. I was wrong in thinking it’d be Bayley, just because they kept pointing out how long her reign as champ has been (a surefire sign your days are numbered), she was going first against the fresher version of Asuka, & the revenge factor for sending Kairi Sane to the big pirate ship in the sky. What I stupidly didn’t factor in was the fact that Sasha Banks’ overall rating drops to like a twenty in title defenses & that Bayley has actually been the real heel & bad friend this entire time. Alexa Bliss tried to warn us this time last year & we all scoffed. How right she was.
And do you like callbacks? Because, buddy, we’ve got some callbacks in stock for you. The first & most immediate one is the finish of both of the title matches. At the end of each contest, Asuka has her opponent up against the ropes & goes for a hip attack. Both matches see Sasha or Bayley on the ring apron to try to run interference, but very different outcomes occur. In the Bayley match, Sasha appears to shove Bayley out of the way (it’s hard to be certain since of course there’s a jump cut. Go all the way away, Kevin Dunn) & takes the hit for her, allowing Bayley to snatch Asuka from the ropes into a small package & the win. Take that, Corey Graves! In the Sasha match, Bayley completely bails on taking the bullet for Sasha, so when Banks tries to take advantage, Asuka is ready for her & counters her into The Asuka Lock. New Raw Women’s Champion.
The second callback happens right after Bayley refuses to take one for the team & right before Sasha taps out. If you remember back to where it all began when Sasha actually won the title, Bayley took out Kairi Sane backstage in order to lure Asuka into a count out loss. Kairi screamed for her friend to come save her & she did. Here, Sasha screams for her friend to come save her & she doesn’t. Story. Telling.
As for Asuka, she’s been lights out all year & probably the in-ring MVP of 2020 in WWE. Just killer match after killer match. She looks to be headed to deal with Shayna over on RAW & is most likely done with Sasha & Bayley going forward. I’m also unhappy to report that this is looking like the end of the line for The Golden Ones. They’re off to defend their Women’s Tag Team Championships against anybody’s guess & I assume they’ll drop them, setting up the inevitable showdown between Banks & Bayley.
Ding dong! Hello? Thanks for the memories.
POP: The Chosen Won
Surprise of the evening goes to a Randy Orton main event match actually living up to the build that preceded it. That’s easily been Orton’s biggest flaw pretty much his entire WWE career. He sucks you in with good to great promos, involves a bunch of other characters that he takes out one by one to look like an evil mastermind, but then he goes & puts on a twenty plus minute plodding, boring, snoozefest of a match that leaves you questioning how the hell they could screw up the payoff so badly. Thankfully, The WWE Championship Match with Drew McIntyre delivered big time.
If not for what followed it, this match would have been the hoss battle of the night we all would’ve pointed out. That being said, the two still had a great, hard hitting match that I really liked a lot. Drew gets probably his most signature win as WWE Champion & Randy Orton somehow continues his streak of shockingly being one the best things in WWE in 2020 (who the hell saw THAT coming?).
I also really dug the finish, which sees McIntyre just countering an RKO into a simple backslide & pinning him. Orton’s so concerned with his head getting taken clean off by a Claymore, he leaves himself open for a day one wrestling move. Snap wins like that can be great, WWE just overuses the ever loving hell out of them for distraction finishes, so they’ve all but lost their meaning. Flashing pinning somebody is also a nice way of getting to the “Yeah, you beat them, but not definitively” talking point, that I assume Orton will use on RAW to try to get himself a rematch. If that match is anything like this one, feel free to sign me all the way up for it.
POP: Kaiju Big Battel
HOSS FIGHT Y’ALL
I’m all for good storytelling, fleshed out characters & cathartic finishes, but if I’m being 100% truthful, I’ll just as equally take two three-hundred pound monsters turned up to eleven trading bombs with each other all over the arena. Fortunately, this match had all those first things for added bonus, but holy shit, this was a lot of fun. Easily the best encounter between these two & even though we all pretty much knew we’d get this match in the end & the outcome, I still enjoyed it thoroughly. I’d say it was the best Fiend match by a wide margin as well. They didn’t overdo the no-selling like with Rollins, showed he could have a solid back & forth without making his opponent look useless like with Balor & Miz, & most importantly, he wasn’t pinned by Goldberg in under a minute.
The Fiend rightfully has his title back that he never should have lost in the first place. I’m a little annoyed that Alexa Bliss was nowhere to be found given how we got here, but that’s minor since the desired outcome happened. Probably busy kicking Montez Ford’s ass for theft. Going forward, I’m hoping Monster Strowman (StroMonster? Monstroso?) stays a thing & we get him being a serious force like he was back when he was angrily flipping over every other car in sight. That guy has way more upside as a heel anyway.
More importantly, I hope The Fiend now lords over Smackdown as Universal Champion for the foreseeable future.
POP: Reignstribution
Son of a…
Summerslam finally lives up to it’s subtitle with something we all definitely never saw coming. I had figured the end of the show would have thrown in one of two obvious things, if not both, the way the build was heading. Given their attacks were getting more bold & their numbers growing exponentially, Retribution debuting in earnest felt like a layup. On top of that, the way Alexa Bliss was woven into the Braun & Wyatt feud, her showing up to tip the scales one way or the other also felt like an inevitability. I’m a little disappointed neither happened, especially the Alexa portion since I’m not really sure how it can factor in now that The Fiend has already won & what happened post match. As far as the other thing, unveiling “Retribution” at “Payback” seems so obvious in hindsight that it was most likely the plan the entire time.
What did happen however, was the return of The Murderdog Monster Roman Reigns. As we all know, dogs don’t like thunder, so Roman shows up big mad that somebody put a whole dome of it in his yard. Reigns has been gone for quite a while now due to concerns with himself & his family regarding the pandemic, so it’s nice to have him back. He has been missed lately & returns to a stacked Smackdown roster where we should be able to get a ton of big matches out it. Not to mention, the guy looks great. Well, minus one thing…
Given that he ran through both The Fiend & Strowman, I have hopes he’s going to be positioned more as a chaotic neutral than a white meat babyface that’s constantly jammed down our throats. At the very least, Reigns has a ton of history with both of these guys, so it sets up pretty easily for Roman facing either guy or both at Payback… next week. It’d be nice to flesh things out a little more, WWE. Right now, not a lot of things that happened tonight aren’t really necessitating such a quick ppv turnaround. I guess we’ll see Monday & Friday how quickly they can peak our interests with such little build time. I don’t think rematches across the board are going to cut it, so hopefully they can get a little creative with it.
And that’s your slam for the summer. I’d say overall it was a really good show. The women & top of the card title matches really shined. Even the stuff I didn’t like had a lot of good, it just didn’t hack it when compared to the other matches. Did you like Summerslam? Agree with the review? Think I’m a big, dumb idiot? Feel free to drop a comment below or let us know over on the Discord! See you next time as WWE hastily tries to build to Payback with two whole shows to give us reason to tune it. Maybe Retribution will be there! *Shrugs*
