Summerslam Night 1: Cinema in Symmetry

Emanating from the Met Life Stadium in New Jersey, WWE over the weekend hosted Summerslam, outside of Wrestlemania, probably their biggest PLE of the yearly calendar. This year more than ever as for the first time ever (and set to continue next year) Summerslam, just like Wrestlemania took place across 2 nights with 6 matches on each card (an increase from the usual 5).

Opening night 1, we saw Jey Uso team up with Roman Reigns to take on Bron Breakker & Bronson Reed. Even in the absence of Seth Rollins, the Bron’s have been wreaking havoc on Monday Nights, and an assault on Jey on the July 14th episode of Raw was what brought Reigns back to defend his cousin after being gone for months following him being taken out the Raw after Wrestlemania by Bron Breakker revealing he’d aligned with Seth. Both teams were giving everything they had to score the victory, ultimately the match was decided when Bron Breakker went to spear Jey Uso, but Roman shoved him out of the way to take the bullet himself, enabling Jey to take advantage of the moment to quickly incapacitate Breakker long enough to hit a Spear/Uso Splash on Bronson Reed to score the victory. 

Roman & Jey of course have had a complicated relationship over the last few years, and while Roman Reigns still hasn’t technically apologised for any of the torment he put Jey through during the initial Bloodline reign of terror, taking the proverbial bullet (though a spear from Bron Breakker admittedly isn’t that far off) is as close to a physical representation of “sorry” as you can get. And given Jey crowned Roman with his Ula Fala during the celebrations, it’s clearly good enough for him and they can now ‘Yeet’ happily ever after.

Next, we saw the ‘Allies of Convenience’ Alexa Bliss & Charlotte once again challenge for the Women’s Tag Team Championships taking on Roxanne Perez & Raquel Rodriguez. They of course were part of the four way tag match at Evolution in July, but failed to capture the titles then. The pairing of Alexa/Charlotte has seemed frosty at times, but despite this & Alexa accidentally hitting Charlotte in the middle of the match. They were ultimately successful this time around, defeating Perez/Rodriguez & ripping the Women’s Tag Titles away from The Judgement Day. But despite this, for many the most shocking thing about this match was people actually cheering for Charlotte considering she’s often criticised by fans both online/in person for so often being the centre of attention. So Charlotte finally being loved again is a nice change of scenery, especially after getting such a candid view of Charlotte struggling with her injury that led to her missing Wrestlemania 40 during WWE: Unreal on Netflix (which side note: A really interesting/good view at the inside workings of WWE).

Sami Zayn then took on Karrion Kross in their third & final match, Kross for months has been gunning for Sami, adamant that he is a liar & not the unbreakable good guy he portrays himself as. Both men agreed prior to this match that should Sami lose, he would be forced to admit that Kross was right about him, but if Kross lost he instead would have to admit he was wrong about Sami Zayn. Near the end of the match, Scarlett offered the same metal pipe Kross has used to attack Sami multiple times, goading him to use it against Kross (which would prove Kross was right). After an evident inner conflict, ultimately Sami was able to prove his conviction, throwing down the pipe & defeating Kross once and for all proving Kross was wrong about him. And with this loss, many are now wondering if this was Kross’ final match in WWE as rumours have it his current contract expires this month and a loss, in theory allows an opportunity for Kross to vanish into the void of free agency, though Kross has equally seen a groundswell of support ever since Wrestlemania so it remains to be seen if this is truly the end.

In the Smackdown Women’s Championship match, Tiffany Stratton defended her title against Queen of the Ring winner Jade Cargill. Despite the match only being around 7 minutes long both women put on a great show. Cargill especially impressed with maybe her best singles match in her career (definitely her best in WWE). However this wasn’t enough and Stratton surprisingly overcame ‘The Storm’ and defeated Cargill with no controversy/rule bending of any kind, which is the first time this has happened in Cargill’s WWE tenure (she has lost other matches, but has never been pinned ‘clean’)

Penultimately, the team of Logan Paul & Drew McIntyre took on Randy Orton and Celebrity Musician Jelly Roll. Following Travis Scott’s controversial involvement in Wrestlemania 41, many were hesitant if not fully critical about the thought of Jelly Roll getting a Summerslam match over various other popular full time talent, and also that Drew McIntyre & Randy Orton were part of this match instead of doing something else. But Jelly Roll, unlike Travis Scott, clearly cared heavily about his moment and put everything into having a good performance, training at WWE’s Performance Centre for weeks leading up to the match, to the point where he managed to drop below 300 pounds in weight for the first time since he was in Middle School (Year 7-9 in comparison). 

And Jelly Roll I feel in this match, will have successfully proved many people wrong putting on a great showing for someone who’d never done this before, pulling off some impressive moves & taking an amazing table spot being put through the announce table by Logan Paul (who filmed his POV with his Meta Sunglasses, look up the clip if you can). Despite this he refused to stay down/give up, breaking away from the medical staff escorting him up the ramp & getting back into the match. However the damage was done & Jelly Roll was ultimately taken out by a Claymore from McIntyre and a Frog Splash from Logan Paul kept him down for a surprising victory for Logan/Drew. Not only because usually celebrities win any matches they take part in, but also that Jelly Roll was the one who was pinned.

And in the main event, we saw CM Punk challenge Gunther for the World Heavyweight Championship, looking to finally capture his first World Title not only since his WWE return in 2023, but also since 2013 when he lost the WWE Championship back then to The Rock. Gunther was on top for a majority of the match brutalising Punk with every maneuver in his vast arsenal, but nothing he did was enough to keep Punk down and Punk refused to give up & lose again after his loss to John Cena at Night of Champions. However, as is proving to be a pattern with Gunther, he got a bit too cocky/confident near the end of the match taking some time to goad the crowd, and this brief reprieve allowed Punk to trip Gunther off of the announce table & heavily bust Gunther open. And those few moments of taunting again cost Gunther everything as Punk was able to score the pinfall victory after hitting the GTS two times and finally capture another World Title in WWE as a perfect fairytale ending to Night 1 of SummerSlam… or so we thought.

Punk’s celebration was quickly cut off by an all too familiar “Burn it Down” as Seth Rollins appeared at the top of the ramp in crutches alongside Paul Heyman to remind Punk that despite his injury at Saturday Night’s Main Event, he still had the Money in the Bank briefcase until next June and warning Punk to enjoy the moment while he can before turning to leave. And then in one swift movement, throwing the crutches aside/removing his knee brace and charging the ring with his briefcase to cash in, revealing the whole injury to have been faked. Punk tried to fight back, but the brawl with Gunther had taken too much out of him and, after only 5 minutes and 9 seconds Seth Rollins was the new World Heavyweight Champion and fulfilled his promise from a long time ago that as long as he had breath in his body, Punk would never be World Champion. In 2015 it was the “Heist of the Century” when Seth Rollins cashed in during the Wrestlemania 31 Main Event to swipe the Championship, and 10 years later we got the sequel, dubbed my Michael Cole as the “Ruse of the Century”, and the show actually ended with Seth Rollins and his faction stood tall having secured “the Power” with Seth as World Champion. And assumedly, Drew McIntyre, already happy that he & Logan had won their match, was likely thrilled seeing Punk get humiliated in an almost identical way that he’d been humiliated at Wrestlemania 40 directly because of CM Punk. And also, that Punk’s title reign was even shorter than his own reign of 5 minutes & 46 seconds.

Apart from maybe Kross vs Zayn, Night 1 of Summerslam was well received by fans, but most were already salivating at the thought of Night 2 as the cards were admittedly fairly lop-sided as Night 2 had a majority of the stipulation matches and almost as soon as the show ended Triple H on the post-show mentioned that we hadn’t seen anything yet, even further building up Night 2 to be even bigger than Night 1 with the TLC Smackdown Tag Title match many to this day criticise WWE for leaving off of Wrestlemania, a stacked Triple Threat match for the Women’s World Championship & the rematch between John Cena and Cody Rhodes, this time a street fight so the bar was set high from the get go for Night 2 to deliver. And my next article will go into whether they were able to deliver on the build up.