Spoilers WWE's second biggest pay-per-view of the calendar year is SummerSlam and it has been since the event began back in 1988. After WrestleMania, SummerSlam is the next big event of WWE's year. This is how they should have hyped this year's event, not, as they insisted on reminding us every two minutes, that it was WWE's version of the Summer Games. That's rubbish. There have been Olympic Games in 1988, 1992, 1996 and 2000 and WWE/WWF has never attempted to cash in. I was disappointed that they had to rely on this to hype the PPV.
That said, the 2004 SummerSlam event took place in Toronto, Canada in the Air Canada centre (referred to several times in the course of the night by Jerry Lawler and Tazz as "bizarro world", due to the intelligent fans' response to certain matches or situations.) An animated live crowd always bolsters a live PPV. Look what Brock/Goldberg would've been like without the fan heat. Anyway, on with the matches.
Match 1- The Dudleyz (Bubba, D-Von and Spike) vs Rey Mysterio, Paul London and Billy Kidman. This was the obvious choice for the opener and was an enjoyable and exciting match. Kidman and London are an excellent pair and it's great to finally have them as a fixture on Smackdown. Great also is the heel turn of Spike Dudley. He's a natural and is doing very well in his new role as leader of the Dudleys. This was a fine match with some great action- pity the crowd wasn't really into it. The Dudleys won with a 3D on Kidman.
Match 2- Kane vs Matt Hardy, v1.0. A much better encounter than their previous one at Vengeance, but that's not saying a lot. This feud is absolutely ludicrous and benefits no-one involved in it. This is the 2004 Al Wilson or Katie Vick. This is sensationalist Vince Russo-esque soap-opera booking and, as I said in my review of Vengeance, it stinks of Stephanie McMahon's involvement. The completely implausible stipulation was that Lita would marry the winner. Whatever. Decent enough match, it has to be said, with Matt getting a bit more offence this time round. Kane won with a Chokeslam from the second rope, which Matt sold very well. Please kill this feud.
Match 3- John Cena vs Booker T (1st in a Best of 5 Series for the US Title.) WWE really dropped the ball on this by making this the first in the series thus it had no suspense whatsoever and means little. There was nothing in this match to set it apart from previous encounters between these two. It was decent enough. Cena got a win out of nowhere with his FU. I hope they have a few different types of matches in the series- watching these two have 5 identical matches doesn't do it for me.
Match 4- Edge vs Chris Jericho vs Batista (Triple Threat for the WWE Intercontinental Title). The big surprise of the night was the reaction of the Toronto fans towards Edge (who is FROM Toronto.) Edge definitely got the most heel heat in this match- even more than Batista! The fans were completely behind Jericho. This was a typical WWE triple threat match with one guy "recovering" on the outside while the other two fight in the ring. (I would advise anyone who wants to see an actual three-way match to track down AJ Styles vs Paul London vs Low Ki from one of Ring of Honour's 2002 shows- excellent stuff.) Anyway, this was quite good, but not as good as the Edge/Jericho match from the previous Raw show. Edge picked up the win anti-climatically with the Spear, adding further to Jericho's PPV loss record. (He did the job here.)Hopefully Edge will turn heel soon as his bland face character is way past stale.
Match 5- Kurt Angle vs Eddy Guerrero. Better than their WrestleMania match, in my opinion. A very enjoyable, psychological match with Angle using the Ankle Lock to wear down Guerrero throughout. The build-up to this match wasn't wonderful, but it was really enjoyable and it was good to see Kurt get a clean PPV win with the Ankle Lock.
Match 6- Triple H vs Eugene. The Canadians didn't take kindly to Eugene and booed him heavily during the course of the match! The match itself was quite poor. I hear Dinsmore is quite a good wrestler but this Eugene character is gonna kill any chance for him to get to show that. I don't agree with him using the finishing moves of other wrestlers- he needs to develop his own style. Triple H should've got a better opponent for this event. I suppose this is fate screwing him over for last year's appalling Elimination Chamber match! Flair and Regal got involved at the end (with Flair loudly cursing into the camera- very funny!) and HHH got the win with the Pedigree. This was rather typical of a feud that was more storyline-based than built around the promise of a potentially good match. (Interesting to see what HHH thinks of this feud: he wasn't wearing his white PPV boots!)
Match 7- John Bradshaw Layfield vs The Undertaker. (WWE Title match.) Better than I expected (keeping in mind I expected this to be utter crap, that's not much of a compliment.) The fans made this match interesting. During a boring resthold sequence, a Mexican wave was started; something I've never seen in my many years watching WWE! The fans also called for the Spanish table to be used, but nothing happened there. Taker got disqualified for hitting JBL with the belt then bloodied him and chokeslammed him through the roof of his limo! The animated crowd sang # Hey-ey-ey good-bye # as JBL was loaded onto the stretcher with Tazz lamenting their lack of compassion. With the amount of "worked" injuries WWE has subjected us to over the years, could you blame the fans for their skepticism?
Diva Dodgeball. Worse than the Kane/Matt/Lita angle on Raw is their mind-numbingly excruciating "Pop Idol" cash-in attempt the Diva Search, where a bunch of girls who can't act or wrestle have been put on our screens for the last X weeks in some of the worst television I have ever seen. In a series of 10 (yes, 10!) painfully unfunny segments, the "Divas" attempted to seduce former WWE "great" Kamala and sell us an ice cream cone. Dreadful stuff. What's the most shocking is that WWE are willing to give the winner a $250,000 contract- more than what the actual female wrestlers are earning. I'd love to know what exactly they're smoking up in Stamford! Anyway, some "genius" thought it would be a good idea to pit the female wrestlers (Trish, Molly, Gail, Jazz, Victoria, Stacy and Nidia) against the Diva Search girls (don't even ask me to remember their names) in a game of dodgeball (an obvious cash-in from the Ben Stiller movie). While I thought the idea was lame, the actual execution of it was a poorly-shot and miserably-timed affair, lasting maybe one minute or so in length. This crap discredits the Women's division entirely. Abysmal.
Match 8- Randy Orton vs Chris Benoit (World Heavyweight Title.) Now onto something good. This was a really enjoyable main event and was definitely one of Orton's best matches yet. Some great action here and an exciting finish as Orton nails Benoit with a beautiful RKO (full marks to Benoit for the selling) and pins him to become the youngest World Champ in history, thus making Lesnar's push redundant and erasing him from the history books! Time will tell as to whether this was too much too soon for the third generation star (he only dropped the IC Title last month) but I believe he should be given his chance in the main event spot as Orton's character has improved hugely this year. Fair play to Benoit for wrestling an excellent match as always. Pity his Title reign has to end.
Without a doubt this year's SS was better than last year's (which in my opinion was absolute poison apart from Angle vs Lesnar). WWE can be reasonably proud of this event and while there's still room for improvement, as the second most important PPV of the year this was a respectable showing.
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