The Undertaker, The New Day, And Stephen Amell - My Thoughts On Last Night's SummerSlam

I’d like to believe Brock Lesnar is being poetic in this gif, as he is Vince McMahon and the rest of us are the Undertaker. Because not more than 10 seconds after this, Lesnar lost the match by passing out. Just a dumb ending to an otherwise pretty good match, and solid, but not great, PPV. I came in expecting a 4 hour snoozefest, and it certainly wasn’t that. There were some great moments, and some lame ones too. Overall I give the show a B-. I’ll put this here, at the beginning, the biggest problem with last night’s show:

It was just so formulaic. It’s too robotic. When the biggest shocker of the night is when celebrity host Jon Stewart interferes in a match, that’s an issue. WWE is so scared to do any sort of big swerve. Yes, I’ll give them credit for Rollins cashing in and winning the title at Mania. That was a huge shock and perfectly done. But what really has been shocking since then? Owens winning a match vs Cena? He went on to lose the next 2 matches vs him. WWE seems complacent with having 1 or 2 big shockers per year now…per YEAR. That’s just not enough. The fans are getting disinterested. Give us a shocking heel turn. Stop putting Big Show in IC title matches. Stop…stop with whatever Sheamus is. Give Orton some sort of interesting story line. Actually, let me get off topic again here: Can we have story lines AT ALL? No character has any story. It’s crazy how big of a backstory the Undertaker has. Nobody has backstories anymore. They are all just guys. Anyway, on to SummerSlam:

Let’s start with the best thing about SummerSlam, or WWE in general right now, The New Day. See what happened here was the WWE gave 3 black guys a racist gimmick, as is tradition. And against all odds, they turned it into something incredible. They basically said Fuck You and your racist ass writers, we’re going to be the most entertaining thing in the WWE. This is where WWE usually fucks it up though- when someone is over, they LOVE to beat you over the head with it until it’s not cool anymore. But I have faith in the New Day that they are good enough and smart enough to not allow WWE to water them down or make them stale.

Leading up to SummerSlam, I didn’t realize this Stephen Amell guy was a big deal. I would have probably hyped that up a bit more, an actor getting in the ring for actual match. As far as actors go, he was the best I’ve ever seen. He wrestled a full match, went top rope and cross-bodied to the outside, and didn’t look bad at all. Lucky for him wrestling is fake though.

What else, what else? Reigns looked good when he wasn’t sleeping on the floor outside the ring. I hate that he relies on the Superman Punch so much though. It’s so boring. Do a move dude. Do something besides punch people. I really don’t get why they don’t let him open up his move-set. He needs to do more. He’s not that bad in the ring, he’s just so limited.

Owens vs Cesaro. Good match, but not all that great. I really though Cesaro was going to steal the show, but he had a better match on Raw last week than he had last night. I don’t think him and Owens have that great of chemistry together. Owens won the match, like I predicted. They just can’t have a top heel continually lose. He needed the win, and Cesaro can take the loss because of how over he is. Cesaro will win the rematch without a doubt. What we need is a long Cesaro vs Orton feud. Two great wrestlers who will put each other over. Orton needs to be full heel for it and it’ll be great.

The Divas match. So funny how the previous night on NXT we had a top 5 match of the year between Bayley and Sasha Banks. A match with a 2 year backstory, and some of the best in-ring storytelling I’ve ever seen.

Then at SummerSlam we had 9 women in the ring, no story, no heels or babyfaces, no nothing. Just 9 chicks told to go do some moves. That’s not how a match should work. More is not better. The NXT chicks (Sasha, Charlotte, Paige, Becky Lynch, etc) know exactly what they’re doing. Let them shine. Let them put on 5 star matches at SummerSlam. There’s no need to have these 9 person tag match botch fests. In due time Charlotte and Sasha will headline a PPV, so I’m not overly concerned about last night, but we need a lot less of that nonsense.

The Rollins-Cena match was just Rollins putting on a clinic. Cena was slow and botchy, Rollins was flying and rolling and looked incredible. He’s at the top of the mountain right now and only getting better. And Cena has to stop with the springboard stunner. He’s never hit it. Never once cleanly hit it. And his top rope leg drop too. He just grazes his opponent and they have to oversell it. After months of great matches, Cena was not sharp at all last night.

And then of course, the main event. Lesnar vs Undertaker. Have to give Taker a lot of credit- he looked good. He got in shape, and put on a good match. And props to Lesnar for selling the fact he could possibly lose to a 90 year old man really well. The ending though was awful.

So Taker taps and they ring the bell, but then the ref is like “I ain’t call for no bell” so the match continues and Taker makes Lesnar pass out. I get it, we all get it. They don’t want Lesnar to lose clean to Taker, and they wanted to restore credibility to Taker. Having him lose to Lesnar again would kind of squash him too far. But guess what? That’s what happens when you build Lesnar up to be this unbeatable beast. Don’t have him face Undertaker and cancel out the last year and a half of Lesnar destroying everything in his path. And I definitely, definitelyyyyy don’t want Lesnar vs Taker at Mania. Lesnar is a once in a lifetime talent, let’s not waste him on old-ass Undertaker on the big stage anymore.

At least we got this moment, which has taken meme-internet by storm:

All in all, not the worst PPV, but not the best either. A little too vanilla for my liking. Especially the night after NXT where they blew the roof off the place. If you haven’t watched Sasha Banks vs Bayley yet, do yourself that pleasure. It’s incredible what the women of NXT are capable of. And how the overall product is better down there. It’s amazing that the developmental product sold out Barclay’s Center and put on a better show than SummerSlam. I cannot wait til HHH is running WWE just like he runs NXT. There’s so much talent up in WWE that is going to waste. Imagine if WWE used patience, story-telling, allowed originality and creativity from their wrestlers, and really took time to think about results long-term. NXT crafts a great television show week after week. Raw goes on for 3 hours, with 80% of it being senseless. It’ll change eventually, and when it does, it’s going to be incredible.