I’m still trying to wrap my head around how to judge Summerslam. It certainly wasn’t a bad show. Some of it was pretty good. But is “pretty good” good enough for what is supposed to be the second biggest show of the year? No, no I don’t think it is.
“Pretty good” isn’t good enough to overcome the ridiculous ending. “Pretty good” isn’t good enough to not be eclipsed by the vastly superior NXT show the night before. “Pretty good” isn’t good enough to make up for a laughable attempt at a Diva’s Revolution. No, the more I think about it, “pretty good” was not good enough for Summerslam.
A lot of my dissatisfaction for the entire show comes from the ending to the main event. It made everyone look bad. It made Undertaker look bad by tapping out. It made Brock Lesnar look bad for passing out. It made the referee look bad by being out of position. It made the timekeeper look bad for not knowing how to do his job (hmm, maybe I should change my blog to Rogue Timekeeper?). It made the announcers look bad because they had no idea what was going on. It made the WWE look bad for having such a stupid ending at their second biggest show of the year with tons of press who normally doesn’t follow wrestling. And it made all that press look bad for reporting on something as stupid as professional wrestling.
Ahem, anyways, the main event was much better then I thought it would be, even with that ending. I am amazed though that I did a whole preview about Worst Case Scenarios, and yet they somehow managed to deliver one that was worse. The Rollins/Cena match was in the same boat. An excellent match, spoiled slightly by the stupid ending.
There was no way the title match was ending clean, that was obvious from the start of the story. And while the ending wasn’t as bad as I feared, it still wasn’t good. It turns out two things were accomplished by Cena’s summer long trek through the WWE midcard. He sorta-not-really put over Rollins, and got to make headlines with Jon Stewert. Was that worth showing up the entire roster? No, it probably was not.
Next up is… Sting, apparently. One old-timer fades out of the picture, and another takes his place. However, there’s no doubt Rollins can get a good match out of the Stinger, so it should be at least interesting to watch.
I guess there were other matches too, but there’s not much to say that hasn’t already been said. The New Day is awesome, the Diva’s are still a clusterfuck, and the rest of the matches were what was expected. Special mention should go to Stephen Amell though, who did an excellent job in his match. Normally the celebrities don’t do too much, but Amell played Ricky Morton for Neville and took some pretty solid bumps. Well done Arrow, well done.
Ring The Bell 