WWE Summerslam 2017 Review (Part 1)

WWE Summerslam 2017
August 20, 2017
Brooklyn, New York

If Brock Lesnar wants to hold on to his Universal Championship, he must go through the biggest and baddest stars of the Raw roster. A fatal four-way match determines who leaves the biggest event of the summer as the top dog of the WWE. 

Match 1: John Cena vs. Baron Corbin
Baron Corbin's dreams of becoming a WWE Champion slipped away from him after he failed to successfully cash in his Money in the Bank contract after John Cena caused a distraction against him. John Cena doesn't look worried at all about his competition in the ring and even had time to tell JBL how shook Corbin was while putting on JBL's cowboy hat. However, Corbin was able to get in a decent amount of offense in against Cena but let's face it, we all knew what the end result was going to be here. An Attitude Adjustment from Cena ends the match pretty quickly. As of 2020, this was the last time we saw Cena in action during the biggest event of the summer and it's pretty interesting to see how his career was beginning to really slow down at this point.
Winner: John Cena
Rating: **1/4

Match 2: WWE SmackDown Women's Championship - Naomi (c) vs. Natalya
Feel like this match would have been the better option to open up the show. Nonetheless, Naomi puts her title on the line against Natalya. Naomi had some serious steam behind her at this point and was really coming into her own as the brand's champion. Good match here for what it was with the crowd just having trouble sinking their teeth into things. Another reason why I think this would have been better to open the show, crowd would definitely have invested more into this. Regardless, Natalya gets a pretty surprising victory here by submitting Naomi with the Sharpshooter. I liked the ending but the whole match just felt a little too dull for what I was expecting from the two.
Winner: Natalya
Rating: **1/2

Match 3: Shark Cage Match - Big Cass vs. The Big Show
Summerslam has been known to have some bizarre matches... this is one of them. At this point, Enzo Amore was becoming a lost cause and the dead crowd behind his promo before the match proved that. Enzo is being suspended above the ring in a shark cage while The Big Show fights for his honor against Big Cass. As you would expect, a pretty boring match here that probably went on a few minutes longer than it needed to. Enzo tried to add some spice to the match by escaping the shark cage but after quickly getting knocked out by Cass, I question if there was any point to it. Cass hits his Empire Elbow on Show to secure the win.
Winner: Big Cass
Rating: *1/4

Match 4: Randy Orton vs. Rusev
Rusev attacks Randy Orton before the match to get the upper hand on him for the match. Unfortunately, Orton is able to toss Rusev into a turnbuckle before hitting him with an RKO for the win in less than 10 seconds. That was possibly the fastest Summerslam match ever. Guess they just didn't have enough time on the card for these two. 
Winner: Randy Orton
Rating: n/a

Match 5: WWE Raw Women's Championship - Alexa Bliss (c) vs. Sasha Banks
Sasha Banks is looking to score her 4th Women's Championship here against Alexa Bliss. Before the match, Bayley wishes Banks luck which I thought was pretty cool considering their history in the Barclays Center. The whole match was essentially Banks playing defense against Bliss and while there were some cool spots spread out throughout the whole match, much of it felt a bit too slow considering how good these two can be in the ring. Banks is able to lock Bliss in a Bank Statement out of nowhere to submit Bliss for the win. I dug how the submission victory came out of nowhere but it just felt like it was a one-sided affair up until Banks miraculously pulled out the win. Not a fan of the Women's Championship just getting tossed around left and right to everyone.
Winner: Sasha Banks
Rating: **1/4

Match of the Day - 7/30/20: CM Punk vs. Triple H (Night of Champions 2011)

Didn't mean to have two CM Punk matches as the Match of the Day but here we are. On the last post, we looked back at Punk's match with Jeff Hardy from Summerslam 2009 and talked about his epic summer that year, who would have figured that his 2011 summer would completely trump it? Looking back at this match in 2020 is pretty funny considering how real their feud in 2011 was and how the two seemingly have yet to squash whatever beef they have against each other.

Their match at here at Night of Champions can be described as... a mess. A fun mess. A fun No Disqualification match that saw Punk drive an elbow through Triple onto a table, interference from The Miz and R-Truth and finally, some interference from Kevin Nash. Yes, Kevin Nash. Triple H is able to hit a second Pedigree on Punk to score the win. As much as CM Punk annoys me and all, he certainly had a point when he was upset at Triple H not putting him over. It basically shows how much trust and belief they had behind this Punk train. Something tells me Punk still hasn't forgotten this.

Match of the Day - 7/28/20: Jeff Hardy vs. CM Punk (Summerslam 2009)

 

I refuse that this match was 11 years ago... 11 freaking years ago! This match was only just a few years ago, right? RIGHT?! Well, 2009 was an extremely successful year for SmackDown with guys like Chris Jericho, Rey Mysterio, John Morrison, Jeff Hardy and CM Punk all shining like the superstars they are. The summer featured an incredible feud between both Hardy and Punk with Punk making his first heel turn in his WWE career. Their feud culminated in a big TLC match here at Summerslam in Los Angeles.

If you haven't seen any of their matches from 2009, do yourselves a favor and do so. As a matter or fact, watch everything Hardy was doing around this time frame. Nobody in the company was hotter than him, not even John Cena. Their match here at Summerslam did not disappoint. I was so stoked to see this match go on last at the biggest event of the summer, nobody else on that card was holding a candle to these men. This match would be one of Hardy's final WWE matches before returning to the company in 2017 so it was evident that he wanted to leave on a bang. That he did. I don't recall a match where Hardy was as reckless as this one, you could almost feel the passion in his eyes watching this one. The shot of him standing atop the ladder as he was ready to hit a Swanton Bomb on Punk was one of the most insane shots you will ever see in a WWE ring.

Punk secured the win and the World Heavyweight Championship in the process before quickly being met with The Undertaker and a Chokeslam soon after. This was my first time watching this match in years and it absolutely holds up with some of the best you will see out there. Hardy seriously left it all out on the line here. Go watch this.