It’s almost time for the biggest party of the summer! But here’s the thing about parties.
Sometimes they’re amazing, the music is good, the people are funny, the drinks are flowing
and it spills into an exciting night where the air is thick with possibilities. But sometimes,
no one comes to your party, and you’re just left eating crisps off a power rangers theme
paper plate as your mum tells you that all of the invites got lost in the post and you
can’t bring yourself to tell her that no mum I handed them out at school and she says Adam
maybe they’ll still come but you cry into the crisps and it just makes the crisps wet and
then the clown you’ve hired fucks your dad and that becomes a whole thing. Point is,
SummerSlam is sometimes really great, and sometimes it isn’t. Let’s talk about the times
that it isn’t I’m Adam hailing from partsFUNknown and here are our 10 Worst SummerSlams of All Time
CHECK OUT LAST WEEK’S VIDEO WHERE WE COVERED 10 GREATEST SUMMERSLAMS
10. 2021
Last year’s SummerSlam was bad and no amount of incredibly predictable Old
Match John vs Unable to Die-bal Chief will convince me otherwise. To be fair,
there is one absolutely stonking match on this card, Edge vs Seth Rollins in the first of their
trilogy of bangers. Everything else was either fine (Usos/Mysterios, Damien Priest/Sheamus,
the underwhelming main event), bad (Drew and Jinder, Bliss and Eva Marie - jesus
remember that) or else a baffling booking decision (Becky returning to squash Bianca,
Bobby vs Goldberg’s leg and son, Charlotte ending Nikki ASH’s title run on her first
PPV defence). Even the return of rooting tooting Brock Lesnar couldn’t elevate a
PPV that never managed to capture the magic of the previous month’s excellent Money In
The Bank. It’s far from the worst summerslam, but it might just be one of the more annoying.
9. 2012
Again, 2012 wasn’t necessarily a bad show, but man even after rewatching it I struggle to remember
a single damn thing from it other than, the first match was good, the wwe title didn’t
main event yet again because CM Punk can’t catch a damn break and that Brock and Trips went about
double the length that they should have done, or at least it felt that way. It was just a generally
heatless event, pun definitely intended, and for an event marketed as the perfect storm,
nothing momentous actually happened. All the champions retained their belts, including
World Heavyweight Sheamus, doing his irish john cena schtick, aka the worst ever incarnation of
Sheamus. It just felt like an episode of Raw for the majority of the runtime. Kofi Kingston and
R-Truth vs the Primetime Players, Miz vs Mysterio going 9 minutes, Daniel Bryan vs Kane. The triple
threat WWE match was decently but leaned crazy heavy on the INVINCIBLE BIG SHOW, even though
he hasn’t been that for years by this point. A light drizzle instead of the promised hurricane.
8. 2004
Ah yes, the summerslam we don’t talk about, because it was main evented by Chris Benoit. WWE
in 2004 was an awkward year. Most of the top stars of the attitude era left the company between 2002
and 3, but the brand split was still in effect, rendering most of that year’s PPVs lightweight
and, for want of a more graceful phrase, SHIT. However, on paper, SummerSlam 2004 should have
been the dog’s bollocks. Angle vs Guerrero, Benoit vs Young and Invigorated Randy Orton,
Cena vs Booker T, Edge vs Jericho vs Batista, Kane vs Matt for the right to
marry Lita there’s some theoretically sports entertaining stuff here. The weirdest part is
that all the matches are CRAZY short. Opening tag, 8 minutes, Kane Hardy 6 minutes, Cena Booker 6
minutes, Edge Jericho Batista 8 minutes. What were they saving all that time for? Glad you asked,
17 minutes of JBL and Taker having a bad match that ended in a DQ, Divas Dodgeball,
gotta have that, and Triple H wrestling Eugene for 14 FUCKING MINUTES, FUCK OFF. And speaking of
fucking off, that’s precisely what the toronto crowd told Eugene to do, because yeah, fuck it.
Angle/Guerrero and Orton/Benoit were decent but everything else was either brief, bad or both.
7. 2007
Ah the SummerSlam when it was possibly one of the worst times in history to be a wrestling fan. In
storyline, the vince’s illegitimate son angle was in full swing, and though hasn’t quite hit
it’s lowest point PUN INTENDED WAHAY, bastard son skits are ALL OVER THIS SHOW. John Cena was
still in unstoppable homelander mode and in real life, the benoit stuff had just happened which
cast a horrible pall over wrestling as a whole. With WWE in full scramble mode, it kinda makes
sense that 2007’s ended up being one of the least memorable summerslams of all time. Some high high,
some khaliesque lows, and the rest was weekly TV filler. Triple H vs King Booker is not a high
profile summerslam match. Batista having one of the worst matches at a major ppv with khali
is not a high profile summerslam match, Kane vs Finley is not a - you get the idea. There’s some
good stuff here, Rey vs Chavo had some heat to it, Austin got to drink some beer I guess,
people like that, and the main event was actually pretty great, although it’s now
lost in a sea of 84 other Cena/Orton matches. A fairly unremarkable and often outright dull show.
6. 2006
Oh man this show blows a fat one. This whole year blows a fat one really. I think it’s my least
favourite calendar year in WWE, mostly because oh man I really hated the DX vs the McMahons
feud and here it’s in overdrive, including run-ins by legit TEN different men? Hey remember that one
time they dropped human shit on vince though? Lol. Elsewhere this is like a one match card,
the Edge/Cena main event is legit very good, but everything else is fairly dump. Batista
vs King Booker ending in a lame DQ, Hogan not being able to go anymore, and still not being
able to put over young talent at SummerSlam (it is his thing I guess), the Flair/Foley bumfight
being pretty uncomfortable to watch the entire time, ending in a weird heel being noble spot
that the fans hated, Sabu and Big Show having a match that exemplified both men’s bad habits,
Sabu being a big botch machine and big show being an ent. The whole Rey/Chavo
match (yes they did it two years in a row) still feeling uncomfortably close to Eddie’s passing,
but hey, the main event was good! Edge retained! Who the hell saw that coming?
5. 1990
A lot of fans credit WrestleMania 6 as being the end of the Hulkamania WWF boom period and judging
by the summerslam immediately after, ooh they are not wrong. There’s a BUNCH of tired-ass crap
on this show, a few baffling dropped balls, and the first in a series of underwhelming Ultimate
Warrior main events that served to definite his lacklustre turn as face of the company. His 10
minute cage match against rude felt more like a house show match than the first hurrah of the new
hogan, who himself was busy lower down the card, handily no selling Earthquake’s finish which had
previously achieved a level of infamy similar to Orton’s punt. The Texas Tornado beat Mr Perfect
for the IC title in 5 minutes, which sucks for big Curt but the fans didn’t mind it, Jake Roberts and
Bad News Brown had a 4 minute DQ finish, Duggan and Volkoff defeated the Ortient express and
it was very dreadful. The tag title 2 out of 3 falls match was good, even if it did involve a
significant amount of Crush, but by far and away the most baffling and hateful decision is running
a dream match, Randy Savage vs Dusty Rhodes, icons of their respective companies, and have it end
in two minutes via a shot from a loaded fucking purse. Good job everyone. So begins the bad times.
4. 1993
And we are DEEP IN THE BAD TIMES NOW. The first major show after Hulk Hogan properly left the WWE
airquotes “for good” to make airquotes “content” like Thunder In Paradise and … nothing else. The
original plan was for Hogan to work through SummerSlam and drop the belt to Bret Hart,
thereby marking the official new era in professional wrestling, and it would have
been a HELL of a milestone. What we got instead was one of the most unintentionally hilarious
endings to a summerslam ever. Lex Luger, aka the beefiest blondies guy that Vince could find,
who might as well have been named Lulk Logan, winning the world title match against yokozuna
by countout because vince lost faith in him, but then everyone celebrating like he’d won the belt
with full on balloons and a babyface parade. Dreadful. Elsewhere on the card, instead of
winning the world title, Bret Hart is beating two clowns, first doink, and then jerry lawler, and
then just for an extra turd in the punchbowl, Hart kicks too much ass and ends up losing to lawler
instead by DQ. Oh and there’s another Taker/Giant Gonzalez match. Truly the darkest timeline.
I guess the heavenly bodies vs the steiner brothers was good? Scrabbling for pennies here.
3. 1997
Man it’s really hard to go back and rewatch this show. Some of it is good,
like the Mankind/Helmsley cage match, the bit of sports entertainment at the end of the main
event is great, some of it, like the interminable gang warfare bollocks, or LOD vs the godwinns,
or Goldust vs a very clearly injured and in pain Brian Pillman is outright dreadful, but hanging
over the whole thing like a doom cloud is the horrific injury to steve austin’s neck, where a
botched piledriver compresses the rattlesnake’s neck, briefly paralysing him and eventually
shortening his career by many years. What’s even more heartbreaking is that it was on track to be
match of the night, but it ended in one of the worst possible ways a wrestling match could end.
1997 was a key year for WWE, the gateway between the hokey cartoon era of the early to mid nineties
and the attitude grunge of the latter few years of the decade. But aside from some top notch
storytelling between Hart and Michaels, still the twin faces of the company, this a rough night for
the Big Dub, largely poor wrestling, heatless midcard action, and an accident that almost
stopped the show, and the attitude era as a whole, in its tracks. Man, what would have happened in
wrestling history if that piledriver had ended austin’s career? Something to think about.
2. 2010
Man you could flip the top two worst summerslams ever and I don’t think anyone would disagree.
Because spoiler, the top one is 1995 and, while it is an absolute cart of human spit, it does still
have the ladder match. Both 2010 and 95 summerslam are one match shows, but maybe all that’s keeping
2010 at the number 2 spot is that it’s ONE MATCH is better, because nothing can top Melina vs
Alicia Fox it’s CAMERON’S FAVOURITE MATCH, no I’m being cheeky there, we love Melina at PFK.
Honestly though SummerSlam 2010 sucks so much. By loading the main event with so much talent, the
rest of the card is paper thin. Big Show beating all three Straight Edge Society guys, no thanks,
Orton/Sheamus ending in a DQ, no thanks, Ziggler kingston ending in a no contest, NO THANKS,
and then the ending of the main event. Honestly, a really good match, hot return from Daniel Bryan,
everyone was into the Nexus storyline, if WWE had handled the ending of the match better,
people would be a LOT more forgiving to this summerslam, but as it is, WWE dropped the
dog and the dog broke. Instead of cementing the Nexus as a dominant faction with a win,
and properly shaking up the WWE hierarchy, Cena emerged victorious for team wwe,
after taking a DDT on the concrete floor no less, and the group were never hot again.
1. 1995
The ladder match is brilliant. Everything else [deep breath] SUCCCCCCCCKKKKKSSSSS. It’s got the
worst main event, not just of summerslam, not just of wwe shows, but potentially the worst
main event of life itself. WWE’s objectively worst wwe champion vs the worst WWE challenger
ever, two slow-moving behemoths bumping into each other for 10 minutes. It’s genuinely like
watching two mudslides wrestling each other and I hate it so much. Not only is it boring,
but Mabel almost got his ass fired, by dropping his ass right onto Diesel’s back unprotected and
injuring the guy. But even without the worst main event ever, there’s so much other dreck
on the show. Bret Hart vs the fucking dentist, the cowboys vs the fucking hillbilly nazis,
the blu brothers, why yes those are SS tattoos on their arms, Bertha Faye vs Alundra Blayze was
fairly bad, Undertaker vs Kama was an awful casket match. Skip vs Horowitz was a bit cheerful,
and Hakushi vs 123 Kid was a good tv match, but those are two things that would be pretty much
fine on weekly tv, but short of the ladder rematch between HBK and Razor, there is nothing here
that belongs on a SummerSlam. The worst show of WWE’s worst year, and no matter
how many times WWE book Brock vs Roman, at least it’ll never be fucking Mabel vs fucking Diesel.
And that’s our list