Notable Superstars Missing from the Card
Note: This is not a full list of everyone on the roster who is not scheduled for the show. It excludes some people who wouldn’t have normally been expected to appear on the show for some fashion, such as some jobbers, injured talent, etc. That means Elias (for saying he’s dead now), Becky Lynch and Lacey Evans for still being on pregnancy leave, Angel Garza for just wrestling Main Event these days and so on.
Jeff Hardy / Karrion Kross / Keith Lee = The booking between these three lately has been all sorts of bipolar. Kross loses to Hardy on his debut, then beats Lee, then loses to Lee, then beats Hardy twice. I wouldn’t have thought any of this would manifest onto the SummerSlam card, but it’s a shame these three aren’t doing more substantial things to be in a better position.
The Miz and John Morrison = Trying to milk the remainder of the Damian Priest feud from the past 6 months or so isn’t getting on the card as he’s fighting Sheamus. Basically, The Miz and JoMo are there every week on Raw doing something, but none of it is pay-per-view necessary.
Kofi Kingston and Xavier Woods = Creative has nothing, I guess. That’s always a shame, especially for guys of this caliber.
Mace and T-Bar / Mansoor and Mustafa Ali = This feud is just a series of tag team and singles matches with no real meat on the hook. It’s perfectly fine to play out on television and not on the pay-per-view.
Ricochet = WWE seems only willing to sustain a Ricochet push for a few weeks at a time before circling back to “go away for a while.” It baffles me how little they want to utilize him for even exhibition matches on Raw just to showcase his in-ring talent.
The Street Profits / Alpha Academy / Dirty Dawgs = As great as these guys are, nobody needed to see SmackDown’s 5 tag teams in yet another match. They’re just cycling through every combination of these three, The Usos and Dominik and Rey Mysterio. None of it would have mattered, so it’s fine to be off the card.
Apollo Crews and Commander Azeez / Shinsuke Nakamura and Rick Boogs = Simply put, WWE spreads things out these days. The Intercontinental Championship match that could have taken place here happened on SmackDown instead.
Baron Corbin / Kevin Owens / Big E / Finn Balor = Balor put his name in the hat for a universal title match and Corbin screwed him out of it, but there wasn’t enough follow-up. Then, Corbin moved on to Owens while Balor went MIA. Lastly, Corbin stole Big E’s Money in the Bank briefcase, so the story with Owens may be done. Everyone’s bouncing around and not landing anywhere and none of this makes sense for SummerSlam.
Cesaro = Where’s he been?
Others in the Women’s Division = Asuka’s taken a back seat. Dana Brooke is MIA with rumors that have yet to be confirmed that she’s pregnant. Nia Jax and Shayna Baszler are kind of still together and/or teasing feuding, with seemingly no real direction they want to go in quite yet. Carmella and Zelina Vega are cronies filling in the blank. Toni Storm’s been put on the back burner, it seems. Naomi’s been MIA for weeks, along with Liv Morgan being on the sidelines. Then, Natalya’s injured, which seems to have halted her Women’s Tag Team Championship defense alongside Tamina against Nox and Shotzi.
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