Jon Stewart interfered in the Seth Rollins-John Cena WWE title match at SummerSlam, which is news itself. Then consider that the former Daily Show host made his presence felt in WWE by hitting Cena in the abdomen with a steel chair, thus aiding Rollins, his TV rival since before WrestleMania 31.
Yeah, that just happened.
Then in the main event, Undertaker clearly tapped out to a Brock Lesnar kimura, but when the timekeeper rang the ball ahead of the ref, who was distracted trying to count a pinfall attempt by ‘Taker on Lesnar, whose shoulders were down on the mat during the attempted submission, the confusion allowed Undertaker to hit Lesnar with a low blow, and eventually score his own submission win with the Hell’s Gate.
So that just happened.
Undertaker left the Barclays Center as a heel, Lesnar a monster face.
Rollins now holds both the WWE and U.S. titles, and has Jon Stewart in his corner. Cena, at the moment without a title, is apparently now locked in with Rollins for the next few months.
We know how months-long feuds with Cena end: with Cena getting the win to ride off into the sunset, but does that mean Cena is being booked for another run with the WWE title heading into WrestleMania 32 season early next year?
That’s a question coming out of SummerSlam. The other storyline, involving Undertaker and Lesnar, likely bobs up and back down a few times between now and WM 32. Neither is a full-time wrestler, so WWE creative will figure out some way to write each from storylines in the next few days, to revive the feud for the rubber match at WrestleMania.
The rest of the SummerSlam show was solid, if not spectacular. The highlight down the card was the Kevin Owens-Cesaro match, which got a good push, going on right before the main event, with Owens getting the clean fall to finish out a superstar weekend for KO, who main-evented the NXT Takeover Brooklyn show a night before, losing an NXT title ladder match to Finn Balor.
The Divas got ample ring time for their three-way tag-team match, which came across making each of the nine participants look strong. The male tag division had another four-way match that again felt forced; creative needs to learn how to build interest in tag teams, which are right now being used as filler more than anything else.
I’d love to be able to report on the Randy Orton-Sheamus opener, but my WWE Network signal kept cutting in and out all night, and I missed the ending to that match, and I’m too lazy (actually, miffed) to search the Internet to see who won.
I also missed several stretches of the Dean Ambrose/Roman Reigns vs. Bray Wyatt/Luke Harper match, not that I minded. Harper is an afterthought the way he’s being booked (I say creative needs to listen to JBL, who has taken to ad-libbing on Raw about how Harper reminds him of Bruiser Brody), but the other three are wasted in a tag-team feud that is going nowhere.
Reigns and Wyatt, in particular, are stars WWE should be building around, as is Cesaro, as is Kevin Owens, who would make a great heel WWE champ with his workrate and mic work.
I like where things are going with Cena-Rollins and ‘Taker-Lesnar, but it would be nice to see the perimeter of top superstars expanded a bit.
SummerSlam proved that the roster is deep in terms of talent.
– Review by Chris Graham
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