2012 WWE SummerSlam Review — @MikeKillam
WWE had a lot of potential going into the 25 Annual SummerSlam Pay-Per-View. Their card looked solid, the feuds – for the most part- were all booked well. The only missing puzzle piece was the execution, and now that it’s in the books, let’s see how they did…
Chris Jericho def. Dolph Ziggler
Jericho forced Ziggler to submit to the Liontamer at 13:05.
Right off the bat, let’s address the complaint on the tip of most people’s tongues. It’s easy to say that Dolph Ziggler “should” have won this match. It’s just as easy to delegate a veteran like Chris Jericho to putting over younger talents at this stage of his career. After all, what does a guy “on his way out” really need with a win over an up-and-coming main event attraction like Dolph Ziggler?
Hindsight is 20/20, as they say. There have been a lot of rumors circulating that Jericho plans on leaving the WWE again; I know, I reported on quite a few of them. We simply won’t know until they happen. And with the recent face turn – it wasn’t really a “turn” so much as an abrupt character shift – I would put money on Chris sticking around a little while longer. And if that’s the case, I can see why WWE would want to give Jericho a win at one of their biggest events of the year. It’s hard to get over a guy with as many loses as Y2J has garnered since returning; as a heel that’s not as big of a deal. If we have a few more months (or perhaps longer) out of the “Sexy Best”, this win actually makes a lot of sense.
Losing to Shawn Michaels at WrestleMania 19 didn’t seem to hurt Jericho’s career all that much. It helped that he got the last, but generally in a really great wrestling match you end up with two winners. That’s exactly what I think happened at SummerSlam – Jericho and Ziggler put on a fantastic wrestling match, the better man won the contest, and we’ll move on to Monday Night Raw tonight. Simply being involved in memorable feuds is better for Dolph’s career than a win/loss record anyways. He’ll show up on Raw tonight, angry as a bat out of hell, and we’ll still be ready as ever to receive him as our future World Champion.
Rating: 4.5/5
