The lapsed WWE fan’s information to SummerSlam
Greg WyshynskiESPN
As a service to followers who’ve a normal curiosity within the WWE however may not have watched a match since WrestleMania, we’re completely happy to supply this FAQ as a information to SummerSlam 2019, scheduled for Sunday at Scotiabank Place in Toronto.
Q. The place is the bar set for this SummerSlam?
We remorse to tell you that The Bar just isn’t on this card. Or any card, actually, since Cesaro took an enormous swing into singles matches.
Q. No, like, how does it evaluate to the most effective SummerSlam of all time?
As our personal Sean Coyle famous, the best SummerSlam of all of them was in 2002, which was a fully stacked card with unbelievable storylines (Triple H vs. Shawn Michaels, for one) and nice in-ring work. You may be aware so much has modified since then: In 2002, Brock Lesnar was making an attempt to win a title in the primary occasion; 17 years later, Brock Lesnar is making an attempt to not lose a title in the primary occasion. See, it’s very totally different.
Q. C’mon, do not be so cynical. It isn’t just like the WWE is counting on issues from 17 years in the past to get warmth for SummerSlam, proper?
Goldberg is wrestling Dolph Ziggler.
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Q. Say what?
Sure, 52-year-old Invoice Goldberg, final seen struggling to raise The Undertaker after a concussion in a Tremendous ShowDown match in Saudi Arabia in June, was the shock opponent introduced for Ziggler after The Miz — seemingly his unique foe for SummerSlam — tricked him into signing a Goldberg match contract to shut out Monday Night time Uncooked this week. There was a bit of letdown at first when the intelligent ruse did not end in Ziggler battling Shawn Michaels, who was within the ring for the contract signing. However the crowd popped when Goldberg’s music hit. And since he is wrestling among the finest in-ring sellers this facet of HBK, perhaps the match truly can be satisfactory.
Q. Every other nostalgia acts on the cardboard?
WWE Corridor of Famer Trish Stratus wrestles for the fourth time since 2011 after getting referred to as out by Charlotte Aptitude — in a match that appears to exist solely so the partisan crowd at Scotiabank Area in Toronto has a Canadian Perspective Period icon to cheer on.
Q. What are the opposite girls’s matches on the cardboard?
Bayley drops, errrrrr, defends the SmackDown girls’s title in opposition to Ember Moon, who has an superior ending transfer in The Eclipse and is in search of her first title on the primary roster. In the meantime, Uncooked girls’s champion Becky Lynch faces one other Canadian darling, Hart household descendant Natalya, in a match wherein the winner can be decided solely by submission. Which is a heck of a curveball stipulation for 2 wrestlers who [checks notes] primarily win by way of submission.
Q. Any extra Canadians on the cardboard?
Kevin Owens, the delight of Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu in Quebec, continues his seemingly infinite feud with Shane McMahon. This time, Owens is the anti-hero appearing because the voice of the lots, and the stipulation is that if Owens loses this match, he’ll be compelled to stop the WWE.
Q. And if Shane loses?
Then Owens can have defeated a 49-year-old non-wrestler. Once more. (However significantly, this could be an incredible alternative to have Owens lose, “stop” the WWE after which honor the late Dusty Rhodes’ “Midnight Rider” gimmick by donning a masks and returning as a wrestler who may be very a lot clearly Kevin Owens to proceed the feud. All you’d want is a reputation. We hear “El Generico” is offered.)
It is just about unattainable for performers on the degree of Ricochet and AJ Types to have a nasty match, making their assembly at SummerSlam one of many most-watch moments of the present. WWE
Q. Is there any match that can be, like, the exact opposite of getting to observe an immediately winded Shane McMahon work once more?
Let me introduce you to AJ Types vs. Ricochet for america championship. Their match at Excessive Guidelines was a stable but not show-stopping affair, but it surely provided the potential for what Types and the previous NXT phenom may accomplish collectively within the ring. As was the case in that first match, we will count on copious interference from The O.C., the horribly renamed (do not name them Bullet) Membership faction Types has renewed with Karl Anderson and Luke Gallows.
(Sorry, it is not likely The O.C. with out the presence of Summer season Roberts and a minimum of one member of the Cohen household.)
Count on an athletic spot-fest earlier than the inevitable “O.C.” chicanery, which is able to most likely be counterbalanced by a run-in from The New Day (sans Kofi), with whom Ricochet teamed in opposition to these Not-Bullet Clubbers (NBC?) on Uncooked and who’re entrance and heart on the digital promoting for the present however do not have a match. You do the mathematics.
Q. So what’s Kofi Kingston as much as?
The WWE champion since WrestleMania, Kofi has a match with Randy Orton, who’s being offered as yet one more behind-the-scenes anchor who stored Kingston from ever successful the title beforehand. In full disclosure, I’ve by no means been the largest Orton fan. Perhaps it is a contact of Diamond Dallas Web page derangement syndrome, in that I actually do not care about something within the match outdoors of when and the way the ending transfer can be utilized. However I’ll say that I respect Orton’s performance 17 years (there’s that quantity once more) after his WWE debut.
He is a reputable contender on a roster that does not have almost sufficient of them — a wrestler that not solely has the chops to beat a Kofi Kingston however the model forex to credibly maintain on to the belt for a run after that. Which makes this match rather more intriguing than it in any other case could be throughout Kofi’s run.
Q. Are there another belts on the road?
Outdoors of the Common championship, which we’ll get to in a second, there is a cruiserweight championship match, which probably will land on the pre-show, and doubtlessly the 24/7 title.
Q. The 24-what-now?
You really are a lapsed fan. The WWE 24/7 championship debuted in Might. Consider it just like the previous Hardcore Championship however with out two folks beating one another over the pinnacle with baking sheets. It is a title that may be gained by anybody, anyplace, at any time. At first, it was broadly ridiculed as a silly gimmick with an unpleasant belt. Shortly, it was embraced as the best supply of comedy within the WWE this facet of Paul Heyman.
To date, the belt has been held by Titus O’Neil, Robert Roode, Elias, Jinder Mahal, Drake Maverick, Heath Slater, Cedric Alexander, EC3, Pat Patterson and Gerald Brisco (!), Kelly Kelly, Candice Michelle, Alundra Blayze and “The Million Greenback Man” Ted DiBiase. This week, Mike Kanellis gained the title for the second time by pinning his pregnant spouse, Maria, throughout a go to to their physician, after which misplaced the title to R-Fact (who gained it for the 11th time), who dressed up as a lady and distracted Kanellis by giving delivery to a doll. (Wrestling!)
To date, the title hasn’t been captured on a WWE PPV. However if you happen to can win it in an OB-GYN workplace, the place cannot you win it?
Bray Wyatt’s latest incarnation as “The Fiend” is the stuff of nightmares. How that character interprets within the ring can be put to the check at SummerSlam in opposition to Finn Balor, in Wyatt’s first match in nearly eight months. WWE
Q. Clearly that is the weirdest factor taking place within the WWE.
Clearly somebody hasn’t heard of the deranged kids’s tv host who moonlights as a dreadlocked hell-beast sporting a “Killer Klowns From Outer House” masks.
Q. Clearly we’ve not.
“The Fiend” is the most recent incarnation of Bray Wyatt, whom you would possibly bear in mind from such earlier hits as “backwoods cult chief who projected pictures of maggots on the ring apron throughout a WrestleMania match.” It is a part of a reasonably profitable reboot of his character; Bray turned the cardigan-clad host of “Firefly Enjoyable Home,” which solutions the query: “What if Mr. Rogers had been directed by Dario Argento?” His alter ego, “The Fiend,” is the aforementioned dreadlocked hell-beast who wears a reasonably spooky masks. The Fiend has been showing on WWE TV reveals and attacking everybody from Mick Foley to Kurt Angle to Finn Balor, the final of whom is his SummerSlam opponent. Regardless of how this sounds, belief us that it could be the most effective factor the WWE has finished on tv this 12 months.
Q. We’ll have ‘Fiend Wyatt’ vs. ‘Demon Balor,’ aren’t we?
C’mon. That is SummerSlam. That is a WrestleMania second.
Q. Talking of WrestleMania, we’ve Lesnar vs. Rollins once more at SummerSlam?
Lesnar cashed in his Cash In The Financial institution briefcase at Excessive Guidelines and gained the title again from Rollins, establishing a construct to this rematch that has featured Rollins getting completely demolished by Lesnar on tv on a number of events in an try to essentially, actually, actually forged him because the underdog after he beat Brock cleanly for the Common title at WrestleMania. They could even go as far as to present him a limp! It isn’t sufficient that the WWE has made Rollins’ IRL relationship with Becky Lynch a factor on WWE TV; now they need to borrow aesthetics from her WrestleMania construct?
Q. Circling again to our unique query, is that this card going to clear the 2002 SummerSlam bar?
Actually, on paper, it is a firecracker of a present. Matches with potential. Some nostalgic jolts. Not a ton of gimmick matches. And there could possibly be extra to return, what with Alexa Bliss and Nikki Cross having a girls’s tag crew title protection on the desk in opposition to former champs (however ceaselessly champs in our hearts) The IIconics. After which there’s the Roman Reigns thriller.
Q. Yeah, what’s his deal?
OK, so Reigns was attacked by a forklift knocking over stacks of kit backstage on Smackdown (and too unhealthy it isn’t 1989, as Vince McMahon would have debuted NXT standout Keith Lee in a yellow singlet because the villainous Forklift to push the angle ahead). Then, as Samoa Joe was stalking Reigns within the parking zone Monday on Uncooked, the automobile Reigns was driving was hit by one other automobile. So we’re left to marvel who is seemingly making an attempt to kill Roman Reigns that is not already on this card. Drew McIntyre? Daniel Bryan? Another person?
Q. Or is it potential that, like Web followers, wheeled automobiles have determined they’re additionally uninterested in Roman Reigns?
Something is feasible. Did you already overlook we noticed a title being gained when a pregnant girl was pinned in an OB-GYN workplace, after which gained once more when a person dressed as a pregnant girl distracted the champion by giving delivery to a plastic child? (Once more: Wrestling!) Take pleasure in SummerSlam, everybody!