WWE Summerslam 2022

My personal mission statement when I started this blog was, largely, that it was born out of frustration with much of wrestling criticism currently available on the internet - while I understand the market for recaps of weekly television, and the impetus in serving that market being to turn content around quickly, it means there’s a dearth of actual insight. A bland, move-for-move play-by-play account of individual wrestling matches isn’t what I’m interested in providing - it reflects nothing of the enjoyment of actually watching a wrestling show, and carries no worth to anyone who’s already watched the show; what, having just watched Summerslam, would I achieve from reading a blow-by-blow account of it that makes no attempt to engage with story, emotion, or any of the intangibles that might have added value? It’s akin to writing an album review by nothing the length of every track, and noting the number of key changes, but providing no wider context or accounting for the experience of listening to said album.

This is all a roundabout way to get to addressing, as I did before my rambling thoughts on Triplemania, what these PPV “recaps” really are - a stream of consciousness take on a wrestling show, usually written the day after I actually finished watching the thing, with no recourse to rewatching or revisiting the show in any way. As there’s nothing in the way of research or prep involved, these are posted directly to the blog with no early access on Patreon.

Anyway, onward to Summerslam. The first WWE content I’ve watched since Backlash, a show I found so utterly lacking in merit that I finally cut the cord on the WWE Network and could probably quite happily have never bothered watching one of their shows again; such a downward trajectory from a surprisingly great Wrestlemania to a blandly perfunctory, business-as-usual “premium live event”, that returned us to the WWE status quo of holding the audience in mild contempt. However, the combination of one of WWE’s Big Four events being quite pleasingly scheduled on a Saturday night, the intrigue of the first post-Vince McMahon live event, and the fact that I spent most of my morning being violently ill, and as a result ended up sleeping from 4pm til 11pm and therefore was perfectly placed to be wide awake at 1.00am and raring to watch even the most pedestrian of professional wrestling shows, meant that I gave it a go.

Naturally, the intrigue of a WWE post-Vince McMahon underpinned the show, and it was tempting to constantly look for evidence of a new epoch. Personally, I’m of the opinion that it’s unlikely we’ll see major, top level changes to WWE’s booking until Wrestlemania, and the corporate, arch-capitalist flaws that underpin the worst of WWE won’t change simply because the previous man in charge has been replaced - not only that, but replaced by people who worked under him for years, by members of his own immediate family, one of whom has literally never worked anywhere else.

That said, there were elements that, while little more than window dressing, indicated a product relatively free from some of the more obvious and overbearing Vince McMahon diktats and peccadilloes - commentary was pleasingly lacking in buzzwords, with Michael Cole as likely to say “WWE fans” as “The WWE Universe”, referees referred to by name, and members of the pre-show panel freely saying the once-forbidden words “wrestling”, and “wrestlers”. Even a brief conversation between Michael Cole and Corey Graves, bridging between two in-ring segments, was pleasingly chaotic when it became clear that Michael Cole was stumbling for the right word, presumably free from the voice of a nearly-80 year old pervert screaming in his ear. Drew McIntyre’s promo, while typically milquetoast WWE babyface fare, felt organic and relatively unscripted, interacting with the audience in ways that are rarely seen in WWE’s TV-first, live audience distant second presentation.

These are all frankly pathetic reasons to get excited about a wrestling show, and shows how low the bar has been set after decades of McMahonisms, that - as any lazy "worked shoot” promo of the last twenty years could show you - simply saying the word “wrestling” on a mainstream wrestling show is somehow cause for celebration, but it’s a movement in the right direction, and at the very least, having the most frequently heard voices on the show actually speaking like human beings serves to make the show feel more organic and enjoyable.

To the matches - first, Bianca Belair vs. Becky Lynch; while not as strong as Belair’s genuinely superb Wrestlemania match with Sasha Banks, had a similarly compelling big match structure, which is a situation in which both women excel. What Belair brings to the table is a frankly staggering array of talents that lend themselves to spots and sequences that would be near impossible for any other wrestler - whether in terms of sheer strength, or the opportunities afforded by her ponytail, which mean the match can be structured in ways that are unique to the wrestlers involved. You couldn’t swap any other wrestler into Bianca Belair’s spot and pull off the same match, which makes all of her big matches must-see. Between that uniqueness, strength, prodigious talent and charisma, Belair is one of the few people in WWE who seem capable of excelling in spite of the flaws of WWE’s booking - having survived the ignominy of last year’s embarrassing and counter-productive quick defeat to Becky Lynch - and who deserves to be a bigger, brighter star than the current WWE apparatus is capable of making her. This match was a great, entertaining WWE Big Match, marred by an apparent injury to Becky’s shoulder that slowed the pace and made some later spots a bit dicey to watch. With Clash At The Castle on the horizon, I had expected a Becky Lynch win, and was pleasantly surprised to see Belair go over clean.

Of course, it’s the post-match that has people talking, given the return of Bayley after an absence of something like a year - and multiple years since she last appeared before a proper live audience - followed by the surprise return of Dakota Kai, and a main roster debut for Io Shirai, confusingly redubbed Io Sky despite her original name still appearing on her Titantron video. While I understand the rationale of renaming a wrestler for trademark reasons, it’s always frustrating to see a wrestler renamed after years under contract, with no associated change in gimmick or presentation - it feels like a misstep to rename a wrestler in such a way that the commentators are robbed of the very simple opportunity to tell the audience, of a wrestler debuting on the main roster, “if you subscribe to Peacock, you can see more of this superstar by watching NXT 2.0/NXT UK”. The renaming is also one of those strange “because wrestling” tropes that there’s no longer any attempt to explain within the boundaries of kayfabe - no explanation will be made as to why a professional athlete, years into their career, would arbitrarily decide to go by an entirely different name.

The set-up of Bayley/Io/Kai as an emergent heel stable was a little clunkily executed, though Bayley’s excellent talking ability and presence carried it to something bigger - the surprises coming so thick and fast, that I was half-expecting a returning Sasha Banks and Naomi to arrive and even the odds, rather than a babyface turn for Becky Lynch standing by Bianca Belair. This segment had the fingerprints of Triple H all over it, with NXT talent presented as immediate stars to be reckoned with when arriving on the main roster, but was also reminiscent of the early days of WWE’s self-styled Women’s Revolution, where key NXT talent were called up to the main roster and arbitrarily thrown into three-woman stables, with little thought given to individual character or motivation. It’s obviously a huge positive to have more talented female wrestlers available to the division, but unless that division is granted a concurrent increase in television time, and attention given to booking, it’s little more than sticking plaster. The whole segment felt reminiscent of the old NXT trope of revealing the latest new signing by showing them seated in the audience; the instant recognition of “hey, it’s that wrestler you know!” serving as a shortcut for naturally and coherently introducing a new character into the proceedings - it’s the sort of easy fix crowd pleasing that typified Triple H’s booking of NXT, and which will likely run through the early “incredibly low bar to pass” phases of Triple H’s booking of RAW and Smackdown, but will naturally, inevitably burn out.

Logan Paul vs. The Miz was a match I didn’t particularly care for, so won’t dwell on for too long. Logan Paul is hopelessly miscast as a babyface, and short of an admittedly very impressive Frog Splash from the top rope to the announce table, the shock value of his ability to work a wrestling match has diminished since his Wrestlemania debut - already knowing what he’s capable of, his second match required either a more substantial story, or a more dynamic opponent, to carry him to something special. The Miz provides neither of those things, nor does the largely implausible, and difficult to buy into, pairing of Miz and Tomasso Ciampa. My particular “because wrestling” nitpicking for this match relates to the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it run it by AJ Styles, now apparently reduced from marquee star to forgettable bit player in someone else’s story. Ciampa, ejected from ringside but refusing to leave, was fought off by AJ Styles, who came through the crowd after his music played. Within kayfabe, what’s the technical process involved there? It’s always somewhat absurd when a wrestler making a supposedly impromptu run-in has their music and entrance video primed and ready to go, though one could make the argument that production crew backstage, on seeing the wrestler making their way to the entrance, is sufficiently on top of things to cue up their music just in time - but how, exactly, has that process worked when AJ Styles is interfering through the audience? Does he have a co-conspirator in the production truck ready to cue up AJ’s entrance music at precisely the right moment, and if so, what was the cue? If this sounds like petty nitpicking, it’s only because we have become so accustomed to this WWE trope, of prioritising easy, Pavlovian responses over internal logic. That’s not to say that the run-in couldn’t or shouldn’t have involved entrance music, merely that it only takes a moment’s thought to address it; you can easily picture Jesse Ventura on commentary openly questioning how AJ pulled it off, who was working with him, and so on - what currently sits a rather lazy bit of writing, could instead have been a storytelling point.

Bobby Lashley vs. Theory was predictable - even Speaking Out issues aside, I fail to see anything of the star power in Theory that WWE seem adamant is actually there. He lacks presence at anything like a main event level, his offence is unsuited to generating heat, and is very mid-00s indie wrestling in the way he expends a lot of movement for minimal gain; the dive through the middle rope, into a forward roll, into a dropkick, being a particularly egregious repeat offender. Lashley, by contrast, has unbelievable presence and star power, and an incredible look for someone rapidly approaching 50. It’s a sad truism of wrestling that wrestlers rarely get everything in line all at once - the greater grasp of ring psychology and storytelling tends to accompany an aging decline in either physique or in-ring ability, either because wrestlers turn to a greater use of shortcuts and storytelling as injuries, aches and pains add up, or because it can take years to fully grasp the mechanics of how best to construct a wrestling match. In Lashley’s case, he’s somehow defied Father Time by maintaining the physique and strength of his twenties well into his forties, by which point he’s become increasingly adept at timing, connection to the audience, and every possible intangible. Lashley’s win was inevitable, foreshadowing a cash-in attempt by Austin Theory in the main event, by the old WWE tactic of having a Money In The Bank briefcase holder lose earlier in the night to keep them out of mind for the rest of the show, but given that commentators and hype packages spent so much of this show discussing the prospect of Theory cashing in, I never really believed that he would anyway. Misdirection central.

Judgement Day vs. The Mysterios was a perfunctory tag team match with an utterly inane ending, marred both by Dominik Mysterio being, frankly, not a very good wrestler, and Rey Mysterio sadly slipping on the ropes and struggling to connect on the match-ending Splash. The set-up for that ending was a masterpiece of diminishing returns, with Edge returning to WWE for the umpteenth time, as it now feels like he’s spent more time “returning” since coming out of retirement than he has actually wrestling, and doing so in a needlessly convoluted way - once again, his “surprise” return involved his entrance music being readily cued but, worse still, an elaborate entrance set-up and pyro primed and ready. One would think that at least one member of Judgement Day, if not either of the men wrestling, at the very least Rhea Ripley at ringside, might have noticed the construction of a fancy stage set-up during their match, and might have raised some questions. One would also think that either they, or Michael Cole, who spent much of Edge’s return bellowing about what a surprise it was, might have been watching the PPV pre-show, during which a hype video for Edge made it abundantly clear that he was returning tonight. Again, we’re in the realms of “because wrestling”, and of easy fix Pavlovian booking.

Pat McAfee vs. Baron Corbin was the worst of McAfee’s official matches so far, bar perhaps his pseudo-match with Vince McMahon. Largely lacking in drama, and - similar to Logan Paul’s match earlier - without McAfee being able to surprise audiences with how competent a wrestler he is, the match needed more substance, and considerably more smoke and mirrors to disguise the fact that McAfee is a largely all-sizzle performer who requires a fundamentally sound and dynamic opponent to hold up their end of the equation, to a far greater extent than Happy Corbin, a wrestler only ever as good as his opponent and not someone capable of elevating a match to something greater than the sum of its parts. Given the dynamic on commentary, Corbin arguing with Michael Cole and Corey Graves bringing up his own long-time friendship with Corbin, I fully expected a Tazz/Jerry Lawler/JR 2000 situation, with Cole playing the part of Jim Ross getting involved in the match, conceivably leading to an eventual match between McAfee and Graves, who is reportedly now cleared to compete. When we get to the inter-brand shenanigans of Survivor Series, it would add to the sense of brand vs. brand to have those two branded colour commentators face off, and the first phases of that story could have been set up here.The most impressive moments for McAfee here came in his ability to recover from mistakes - I hate the language of “botches” in wrestling, and feel a mistake is only an issue if someone gets hurt; even if it disrupts the flow of a match, a wrestling match is supposed to be a fight, and fights are rarely smooth, not every blow lands snug. Sabu is one of my all-time favourite wrestlers, and in part it’s because his dives and acrobatics are as likely to go disastrously wrong as land perfectly, and they add a sense of danger and unpredictably to the story - he’s never more impressive than when realising he’s not positioned quite right, and adjusting his balance while stood on the top rope, or jumping from the rope to a steel chair and back again to ensure he gets things exactly right. That kind of ability - something that, clumsy and awkward as I am, I find utterly unfathomable - was McAfee brought to this match, his lack of balance and flailing arms, and last second adjustment, when springboarding off the top rope into a dive to the floor made the move feel infinitely more real and compelling than a perfectly choreographed swan dive would have done. The move executed perfectly would feel like a spot honed through practice, the way it went down in reality felt like a desperation move, which is how I feel all dives should ultimately be; a last resort to stay on the offensive, rather than a vain display of athleticism. Similarly, McAfee’s Kurt Angle-esque vertical leap to the top rope ahead of a superplex was made more impressive, not less, by his adjustment after slipping on the top rope, to somehow balance himself on his knees, return to his feet, and execute the move all the same. The mind boggles.The finish was disappointing, and typically WWE in nature. While one could excuse having a babyface cheat to a win a match on the grounds that McAfee is, canonically, “not a wrestler”, the babyface resorting to a low blow when the heel hasn’t done anything of the sort for which they deserve comeuppance, just doesn’t sit right with me. I’m pretty open-minded about how to approach wrestling, but I’m a stubborn old traditionalist when it comes to one simple fact - a babyface should always attempt to win by fair means, and should only resort to foul means once the heel has already escalated things to that point; if a babyface has to cheat to win, why are they a babyface?

The Usos vs. The Street Profits was a good tag team match, but felt like little more than a TV match - they are both superb teams, and I’ve heard good things about their Money In The Bank match, and this failed to meet expectations. Perhaps I’ve been spoiled by how great a run FTR are on at the moment, that my bar for solid tag team wrestling is somewhat higher than it may have been six months ago, or perhaps I’m just growing tired of the Usos schtick.The addition of Jeff Jarrett didn’t help matters. I have been a big-time Jeff Jarrett fan for the last ten years or so, a late convert to the cause, having never really “got” him in the WWF or WCW, and only rarely watching TNA; I saw him on a TNA house show in London, fighting Johnny Moss, and relying on a lifetime of Memphis heel stooging and British holiday camp tactics, that instantly won me over. An incredible worker who can do a lot with a little, and who was wasted in a referee spot that didn’t require him - his timing threw off the natural pace of the match, and his presence never played into anything of meaning to the match as a whole. I love seeing Jarrett get his flowers, but he was unnecessary in this role - perhaps he’s fallen into the “Jerry Lawler in Memphis” role of simply putting him on the card to bolster local interest, but more thought could have been given to exactly why he was there, as it seemed an entirely random choice.

The Riddle and Seth Rollins brawl largely served to make Riddle look like an idiot, but was another interesting touch in a post-Vince McMahon WWE - WWE for years have been largely incapable of making segments feel unplanned or unorganic; there’s nothing more tiresome than cutting to a camera backstage that’s just conveniently filming somewhere immediately before a surprise attack or appearance takes place, or someone who’s apparently “not scheduled to be here” getting a clearly demarcated segment, with all the entrance pyro and ballyhoo and accompanying camera work. Instead, this was a very un-WWE production, in which Riddle’s crashing of the party initially occurred off-camera, while the announce team introduced Kid Rock sat at ringside. It felt, on a larger scale, more akin to something like Terry Funk’s excellent “unscheduled” appearance at ECW November to Remember 1998, or the way Memphis’ studio segments would blend seamlessly together from one match to the next.

Liv Morgan vs. Ronda Rousey was a confusingly booked match, with Ronda’s performance detracting from it - while obviously mechanically sound, there’s just nothing to get emotionally invested in, and it’s astounding how Ronda Rousey makes it difficult to buy her as an elite level fighter. The main problem, though, was with the finish - Liv Morgan tapping out while Rousey’s shoulders were on the mat. The pay-off seemed to be a Ronda Rousey heel turn - though in a promotion that has historically treated attacks on authority figures as a babyface act since the days of Stone Cold Steve Austin, it might not be that clear - but a sly smile and kiss of the title belt by Liv Morgan suggested that there might be the stirrings of a heel turn there too. The latter would make the finish somewhat more palatable - it’s fairly atrocious booking to have an underdog babyface visually lose a championship match and only win on a technicality, and one of WWE’s historic faults when booking heels is to follow the old adage of “a heel should be convinced that they are right” to the point of having the heel more often than not genuinely be right; Ronda Rousey doesn’t just feel like she deservedly won the match, she did deservedly won the match, and the woman who lost, who’s supposed to be the babyface in this situation, effectively lucked out and got away with an undeserved victory. Perhaps the follow-up will make this clearer, but if it doesn’t, and the fallout sees Rousey turn heel (a role she’s far better suited for in any case) and Morgan remain babyface, it will do more harm than good to Morgan’s presentation, unless her first act on television is to be the one to offer a rematch.

Onward to the main event.

Brock Lesnar has always felt like a wrestler who escapes the worst excesses of WWE production, as he’s frankly too big a star to be constrained by it, and when he’s enjoying himself and acting outside of the usual “Brock Lesnar” parameters, it’s infectious, as has been the case through all I’ve seen of his current big laughing farmboy run. That said, a literal tractor is perhaps a little on the nose, and reminiscent of some of the sillier moments of the latter days of Stone Cold Steve Austin’s run, where vehicular crime was as much a part of his character as Stunners and beer baths. It was also a pretty glaring case of Chekhov’s Gun.

The match had some fun moments, with Paul Heyman at his snivelling best, and Lesnar being creatively violent, but after some ten years of matches and rematches, it was difficult to get emotionally invested in either man winning, particularly as their matches have been largely responsible (along with the reemergence of Goldberg) for codifying the WWE main event heavyweight style as little more than an endless string of finishers, signature moves, taunts and table spots. Frankly, I was amazed we didn’t see the done-to-death “spear through the barricade” spot here.

Obviously the tractor spot is all anyone will be talking about - Lesnar using the tractor to shunt the ring a good foot sideways, then lifting one side of it up and tipping Reigns out to the floor, reducing them to fighting in a pocket around ringside for the remainder of the match. It’s one of those visuals that strives for iconic status, that they clearly envisaged as sitting alongside the moment Brock Lesnar and Big Show’s Superplex caused the ring to collapse. In a way it worked; what makes visuals like that so arresting is that they instantly break from your expectation of what a wrestling match is supposed to look like, to see the ring itself upended and deconstructed produces a kind of alienation effect, and forces you to imagine other possibilities.

That said, the visual of a WWE main event match being fought in the shadow of a piece of farming equipment rendered the whole thing ridiculous – while not intended as a comedy spot, any sequence involving the tractor was so absurd as to effectively render it one; the very idea that, at the height of a blood feud and a World Heavyweight Championship match, Brock Lesnar’s train of thought would take him to “place Roman Reigns in the front loader of a tractor and gently deposit him into the ring” requires such a stretch to suspend one’s disbelief that “kayfabe” barely begins to cover it. Not only that, but while the highlight package for something like Big Show and Brock Lesnar breaking the ring, or the classic ECW footage of fans throwing chairs into the ring, or any other such transgressive event, is more or less self-explanatory, a clip of Brock Lesnar, mid-match, commandeering some heavy plant to tip one side of the ring at a 45 degree angle can only possible elicit a response of, “hang on, why is there a tractor there? Why did he do that?”. It’s a shocking visual, for sure, but it’s also an absurd, borderline unfathomable one. It is, in short, very silly.

Regardless of whether you found the visual arresting or absurd, how disappointing it was then, that the remainder of the match was the most pedestrian part, a succession of weapon shots and finishers, and a crushingly inevitable finish. The flaw of any and all Last Man Standing matches is that a ten count simply lacks the drama and immediacy of a three count; by repeatedly requiring the match to grind to a halt, it’s nearly impossible to build any consistent tension or believable heat, and that’s only exacerbated when it’s a match between two opponents we have seen fight so many times. For all the creativity that went into the earlier spot upending the ring (the gimmicking of the ring to allow for such probably accounted for the looseness of the ropes and all the slipping and tripping of earlier in the show), the finish was profoundly uninspired - I don’t know often WWE have gone to the well of “bury the loser under a heap of chairs and miscellaneous wreckage” to end a Last Man Standing Match, but it feels overdone, and incredibly anticlimactic.

As a way to end a show that, while not explicitly advertised as such, was certainly approached by much of the fanbase as ushering in a new era, it wasn’t an ending that spoke of promise and change; instead, it gave us a familiar image, of Roman Reigns, Paul Heyman and The Usos standing tall, of a gimmicky finish that sucked the energy from the room, and reassured everyone that, in the main event picture at least, the status quo is still very much in place.