SummerSlam 2023 was largely another excellent show from WWE, but it suffered from a problem I first discovered watching the Monday Night Wars in the 1990s.
You had two major national promotions, WWF and WCW, that both ran pay-per-views once per month. WCW had a far deeper roster of talent, but its crutch—which helped lead to its demise—was relying on the same aging superstars in the main event, month after month, year after year. WWF had a thinner roster, but it had a great main event scene with excellent workers and personalities like “Stone Cold” Steve Austin, The Rock, Mick Foley, the Undertaker, Shawn Michaels, Bret Hart and numerous others. As a result, WWF would run totally lackluster PPVs, but would have awesome main events. WCW would run shows with great undercards, but have horrible main events. So what happened was, even though in totality the WCW shows were better, the last thing you remembered from WCW was a horrible main event and the last thing you remembered from WWF was an awesome main event. So, ultimately, the WWF shows were remembered far more fondly.
SummerSlam 2023 was, for probably 85% of the show, excellent. Great matches on the undercard, good stories, hard-hitting, the whole shebang. But then the main event took the show from being a hearty thumbs up to merely a solid thumbs in the middle.
Here is the deal. The Bloodline story line is on fire. It’s the hottest WWE story line literally in decades. WWE just had a fiscal quarter that generated almost as much money as the company made in an entire year in 2001, which was the peak of the WWF business-wise during the Monday Night Wars. While the rest of TV is collapsing, Raw and SmackDown and even NXT are up year-over-year. Likely, we will look back with the benefit of hindsight and say this was a boom period for the company. And it’s about to sign a TV deal which will raise it to even greater financial heights. If you study all aspects of business, from merchandise to TV ratings and quarter hours, it’s all because of The Bloodline.
But not everything is a home run.
The main event was Roman Reigns vs. Jey Uso. The first issue was that the match went into the ring over three hours and 30 minutes into the show. The video packages and entrances took an eternity. And then the match itself lasted 36 minutes. Now, you will say, wait! Roman Reigns vs. Samy Zayn in Montreal was exactly like this and it was great! So was Roman Reigns vs. Cody! And Roman and Solo vs. the Usos!
That is correct. But there is a difference.
Many fans thought Sami Zayn was going to beat Roman in his hometown of Montreal. Virtually every fan thought Cody was going to beat Roman at WrestleMania. And most fans knew the obvious finish to the tag match was Jey pinning Roman to set up SummerSlam.
Nobody thought Jey Uso was beating Roman to win the title on Saturday.
Therefore, what made those other matches work did not apply here. You could do a long, dramatic match beating down the babyfaces in those other matches because fans believed, in the end, those babyfaces were going to win. They got into the dramatic beatdowns, they got into the big comebacks, they got into the nearfalls and kickouts and twists and turns. But in this match, while it did a great job building up Jey and he did pin Reigns in the build-up, nobody believed he was going to win at SummerSlam because it would not have made any sense in the story for him to do so. Therefore, beating on a guy that fans thought was going to lose for 20 straight minutes almost four hours into a show led to a quiet crowd (and it did not help that lead commentator Michael Cole was alerting us at home that Jey was getting killed in there and not doing anything). The fans did get into it to a degree when Solo Sikoa came out to help Roman, but even then, with a legitimate 50,000 in the building, it didn’t even come close to the heat generated for the finishes of the Zayn, Cody and tag matches because, again, nobody thought Jey could win. And he didn’t. His brother Jimmy turned on him and Roman speared him through a table and pinned him.
In the end, this was not “cinema.” It was exhausting. And WWE had largely avoided exhausting PPVs for months now, but I guess because this was a “big four” event, it felt the show had to go long. The funny thing is, going long has never proven to be a benefit for a WWE show, yet the company still goes back to it here and there. And we’re reminded, again, why three to three-and-a-half hours is usually the best call for wrestling PPVs.
Is this a disaster? Of course not. It was one miss in a long string of huge hits for the audience. Paul Heyman in the post-fight press conference said they still had a long way to go, and we still have the obvious feuds, Roman vs. Solo, Jey vs. Jimmy, Roman and Jimmy vs. Solo and Jey, and ultimately Cody fighting his way back, “finishing the story,” and finally beating Roman for the title. WWE’s recent track record suggests we’ve got a lot of great storytelling to come. But this was a bump in the road.
The rest of the card included Logan Paul beating Ricochet when one of Logan’s buddies passed him brass knuckles so he could get the cheap KO win in a match that was supposed to be all about athleticism and going viral. Logan, who as far as being a natural at pro-wrestling is in the top 1% in history, needed a win and it was an easy underhanded heel way to get him one in a great opener.
Cody beat Brock Lesnar in the best match of the night after surviving the beating of a lifetime, never quitting and finally hitting three Cross Rhodes for the clean pin. It was Brock’s best and most dominant performance in years, and a strong decisive win for Cody. Afterwards, in what Paul Lavesque claimed was not a planned part of the show, Brock shook hands with Cody, hugged him and endorsed him, to send him on his way back to the main event position.
Crowd favorite LA Knight finally got his big win, throwing out Sheamus to win a generic battle royal and beginning what is expected to be a strong push for him going forward.
Shayna Baszler beat Ronda Rousey in what very well could be Ronda’s final WWE match ever. She’s done, and while you can never say never in wrestling as the story goes, there are no plans for a return. In her final match she put over her best friend who basically got her into pro wrestling. They had a dream of doing a giant match at SummerSlam, but it kind of turned into a nightmare as the rules WWE came up with for their “MMA match” were not MMA rules, but rather a weird WWE version of MMA rules. So while they worked hard, the pro wrestling fans were bored because it wasn’t pro wrestling, and the MMA fans hated it because it was billed as MMA but was a stupid pro wrestling version of MMA. Ronda put her over clean via submission, something no other woman has ever done to her in WWE, and rode off into the sunset.
Gunther beat Drew McIntyre to retain the intercontinental title. While it was a great match it was nowhere near the match they had at WrestleMania (a triple-threat that also included Sheamus), mostly because they only had 13 minutes, and by the time they finally got the crowd hooked it was time for the finish. Gunther’s next milestone is beating the Honky Tonk Man’s 454-day title reign record to become the story-line greatest intercontinental champion of all time. Is nothing sacred?
Seth Rollins beat Finn Bálor to retain the world heavyweight championship. Bálor’s friend Damian Priest has the Money in the Bank briefcase, which he can use to cash in for a world title shot at any time, so I thought the best possible finish was Finn becoming the champion so he’d have the ever-looming specter of his friend cashing in on him. But the bookers didn’t do that, and to be fair, what they did was the best possible finish. Bálor is so obsessed with getting revenge on Seth for injuring him seven years ago and ending his universal title reign before it even got going that he is blinded with rage and can’t see what is right in front of him. Priest tried to help him win but Bálor didn’t want the help, and then when he couldn’t finish off Seth he demanded Priest help him after all. But in doing so, he got stomped onto the briefcase and pinned. So Finn is still overcome with rage, Priest still has his briefcase guaranteeing him a match against the guy Seth can’t beat, and while Priest tried to help, you can see an explosion is coming.
And finally, in the semi-main, Bianca Belair beat Asuka to win the women’s title, but then lost it immediately when Iyo Sky cashed in her Money in the Bank briefcase. The three-way women’s match with Bianca, Asuka and Charlotte was just largely a collection of spots early and felt way too long that deep into the show. But when Bianca finally sold a knee injury, the fans got into the story of her valiantly fighting through the pain to not only return to the match, but get the surprise tile win with a cradle. And, of course, the “injury” was the perfect set-up for Sky to do her cash-in, which got a gigantic reaction from the fans. It was rough going early, but in the end it all worked out great.
Ultimately, if you compare this post-Vince McMahon version of WWE to the WWE we saw from about 2018 to ’20, this show was an incredible home run. However, in the last year the quality of the programming has improved dramatically with Vince largely being out of the picture but still having some input. Because of that, a show that ended the way this one did can come off as somewhat of a downer. The big difference is that this was the norm several years ago, and now it’s an aberration, and fans can certainly live with that.
