This pay-per-view…ugh…well..let’s just get into it.
Unified Tag Team Championship: Chris Jericho & Big Show defeat Cody Rhodes & Ted DiBiase
–The ppv starts off with a promo. Bad idea. Aren’t Raw, Smackdown, ECW, and Superstars the shows that are supposed to set up the angles for the ppv so you don’t have to see that on the show that you’re paying for? What a way to kick off the excitement – by having Jericho deliver another one of his monotone promos talking about (and showing us) the same thing we’ve seen and heard before. Then, the big mystery becomes a huge let down. I don’t normally rip on Big Show, but he hasn’t been exciting for a while now. When you build an angle around mystery, your fans are going to expect something different – something fun and interesting. Why play the safe card again and just put another one of your typical main event guys in the spot? Then there’s the issue of this being a heel vs heel match, so the fans start the entire ppv off by having nobody to cheer for. A monotone promo, a groan of a "surprise", and a match with inactivity from the audience? What ever happened to the curtain jerker being an exciting match that gets people pumped up? Big Show’s new outfit looked a bit odd, too. The match was nothing worth paying for, as it wouldn’t even have been a "first-hour main event" on Raw.
CM Punk Promo
–CM Punk as a heel is far more entertaining than CM Punk as a face was a few months ago. He was growing stale and this turn is making him someone to really pay attention to. Nice promo. Not really necessary on a ppv, though. The point of a ppv isn’t to be paying to see more of the stuff you’d see on TV to build the storylines, its supposed to be paying to see the wrestling that comes as a result of said storylines.
ECW Championship: Christian defeats Tommy Dreamer
–I haven’t liked any of the matches they’ve had together, mostly because of Tommy Dreamer, as I don’t find him to be very entertaining. This was no exception. A very bland match with a very bland outcome. It appears as though they decided Tommy wasn’t a big enough star for Summerslam, hence Christian getting the title back. I’m really hoping that this doesn’t lead to Christian/Kozlov as I don’t ever want to see that again, either.
SummerSlam Commercial
–Hey guys, remember to buy our next ppv! We’ll make sure its chock full of rewinds, recaps, and repetitive promos. And don’t worry, you’ll get your 8 minute tragedy in the Kane and Khali match, cause that’s what everyone is itching for.
Jericho & Big Show Segment
–Its all about business and not friendship, Big Show’s big, evil cackle laugh, etcetera. You don’t need a transcript of something so simple.
United States Championship: Kofi Kingston defeats MVP, The Miz, Carlito, Jack Swagger, and Primo Colon
–The Miz received a nice reaction coming out. Shame they won’t do anything about that until Miz moves to Smackdown where wrestlers actually have a chance to be something. This was a real breath of fresh air. The haphazard nature combined with the fact that each of these guys is talented ended up becoming what I’d consider the match of the night. I can’t remember if I’ve ever seen a double superplex/powerbomb combination before, so that was great.
Randy Orton Promo
–Same old, same old. Absolutely worthless for this. Did we not see all of this stuff go down on Raw, then rewinds for it on every ECW, Smackdown, and Superstars, and then did we not also see a recap at the beginning of the ppv, and aren’t we going to be seeing another when the match is about to happen? What did he say here that he hasn’t said every single day he gets on the mic? Oh, there is one thing, but its a terrible job on the writer’s part. Randy Orton tells the fans that someday, they’ll give him a standing ovation like they do with Triple H, and someday they will cheer him like they do John Cena (about 50% cheers if you’re fair lol), but the kicker is that he says "until then, I’ll remain your WWE champion". Apparently when the fans start cheering Orton, he’ll lose the title lol.
Women’s Championship: Michelle McCool defeats Melina
–This was about as decent as it could get. The best part of the match, by far, was Michelle’s baseball slide into Melina while she was doing the split. If this weren’t scripted, naturally you would take advantage of something like that if you were intelligent and a dirty fighter like Michelle is supposed to be. I was surprised to see Michelle retain without using her finisher, and that’s a good thing. Sometimes it feels good if someone just wins without their finisher, you know? I’ll be very happy if I never have to hear Melina screech again, though.
Another Recap
–Because according to the WWE, we all have short term memory loss! Either that, or they’re arrogant enough to think there are lots of people that are buying their pay-per-views that aren’t already fans that watch Raw, Smackdown, and ECW.
