The biggest party of the summer has wrapped up, so it’s time to look back on WWE SummerSlam 2018 and toss out some praise and some criticism.
Per usual, at the end of this post, you’ll see my regular Smack Talk Pay-Per-Viewpoint post-show podcast, which reviews the event in more detail, but for those who want a more condensed version of my thoughts, I present to you my “quicker than a hiccup” reaction to the different parts of the evening:
[Pre-Show] Mixed Tag Team Match: Glad to see the married couple get to tag together. It’s a shame more people weren’t in the crowd. Glad Aiden English didn’t cause the loss again. No real complaints. Lana still has a lot to improve on.
[Pre-Show] Cruiserweight Championship Match: I liked it, but I was a bit disappointed, as I wanted it to be much better and I just feel like this isn’t going to win people over to watch 205 Live like I was hoping it would be.
[Pre-Show] Raw Tag Team Championship Match: The B-Team can be funny, but I hate how poorly The Revival have been utilized since coming up to the main roster and this will kill them even more. We’re nearing the breaking point where the Raw tag division has been too jokey for too long and The Revival are going to become the new Ascension where nobody will get invested in them unless WWE stops jobbing them out. This might have been the death knell for them, sadly.
Intercontinental Championship Match: FANTASTIC match. Probably my favorite of the night. This was a phenomenal way to start off the show, not just for the quality in-ring action, but with the title change, too. Major thumbs up.
SmackDown Tag Team Championship Match: Great match that was much better than I expected, but, unfortunately, had a stupid ending to it. If you can’t think of anything better to do than to stretch things out with the laziest means possible that you do every single week on TV, you’re not getting great marks in my book. Think of something better than stalling like this.
Kevin Owens vs. Braun Strowman: Did not expect this to be a squash, but I like any time they put Strowman over, so that’s great, even if it’s at the expense of one of my other favorites.
SmackDown Women’s Championship Triple Threat Match: Very, very good match, with yet another questionable ending. Did they really not think this out, that they positioned Becky Lynch to be the sympathetic one and that her turning heel wouldn’t go over well and would just make Charlotte Flair look bad? Or is this the reaction they wanted? Weird. I hope this leads to good things, instead of the type of booking where they insist that Becky is a heel now even if the crowd doesn’t want to accept it. Don’t be stubborn. Go with what the audience is dictating.
WWE Championship Match: Another good match with another questionable ending. If AJ Styles hadn’t already had so many matches on pay-per-view this year end with a no-contest or DQ, and if we didn’t see a DQ ending already, it wouldn’t have bugged me, but the repetitive nature of this makes me question if SmackDown’s creative team isn’t really all that creative. Loved Joe’s promos. Very excited to see these two fight in the Hell in a Cell cage, where, hopefully, Joe will take the title.
Elias Musical Segment: At least Bobby Lashley didn’t sing.
The Miz vs. Daniel Bryan: Loved it, start to finish, not quite understanding why some people didn’t like it, and I absolutely loved the way the ending went down. One of my favorite parts of the night, for sure.
Finn Balor vs. Baron Corbin: Putting face paint on Finn Balor doesn’t give him any more personality. I don’t understand why that’s so popular. It’s the equivalent, in my mind, to flipping out and chanting “this is awesome” because John Cena sports a new t-shirt. I didn’t care about this feud, the squash was kind of pointless, this doesn’t make me any more interested in what they’ve got going on, and I remain adamant that I want Baron Corbin to fire Finn Balor from Monday Night Raw so he can go over to SmackDown and help out with the severe lack of babyfaces over on that brand.
United States Championship Match: Boring. Jeff Hardy shouldn’t be wrestling if he’s this injured. Give the guy a break. Shinsuke Nakamura had nothing going on for this feud, so I don’t get why this was even a thing. Also, Randy Orton comes out and does nothing at all? That doesn’t make me want to boo him, it makes me think that you just wasted my time and that I would have been better off using this as a bathroom break instead of paying attention.
Raw Women’s Championship Match: Ronda Rousey continues to impress me, but her makeup his atrocious and they need to stop with that. Loved that she twisted Alexa Bliss around like that and made use of her flexibility. Totally on board with her winning the title, but that Bella Twins hug at the end is not making me want to see Rousey vs. Nikki at Evolution. That’s horrible booking. Go back to the drawing board on that one, cause you’re not selling me on a “mutual respect” feud between those two. Very interested in what they have in store for Rousey at WrestleMania.
Universal Championship Match: Smart to bring Strowman out to make sure the crowd doesn’t leave or fully crap on this whole thing, but the fact that you didn’t go with him as the champion proves you’re stubborn and when Roman Reigns gets booed tomorrow on Raw and every week going forward, you have nobody to blame but yourselves. This is too little, too late. I wanted Reigns to win the title from Brock Lesnar at WrestleMania 31. Then, I would have been cool with it happening at SummerSlam last year. Then, you dragged it out too long. I like Reigns, but I couldn’t care less about him being the champion and fervently dislike the idea behind it. It’s just the lesser of two evils compared to keeping the title on Brock. At least Reigns won, but this isn’t a consolation prize, because it’s not a good thing, it’s just one less negative. We’re still in the red—literally, when it comes to that belt. Put the title on Strowman. DO NOT do some kind of stupid thing tomorrow on Raw where Owens interferes when Strowman tries to cash in and screws him out of it in order to set up a Triple Threat between Reigns/Strowman/Owens or, even worse, just Reigns/Owens at Hell in a Cell. Glad to see Lesnar lose, but this still isn’t good enough to make up for everything that got us to this point, so no, you don’t get a thumbs up, you just don’t get another thumbs down.
Let me know what you thought of this structure and I might continue this going forward with future pay-per-view reactions, as opposed to the “general overview” idea.
For more opinions on the show as a whole, check out the latest edition of the Smark Out Moment wrestling podcast SMACK TALK as the panel reviews SummerSlam with our immediate reactions following the event before the dust has fully settled.
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