WWE Summerslam 2017 Review (Part 2)

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 6: Bray Wyatt vs. Finn Balor
Interesting feud heading into this one with Finn Balor bringing out his demon side in his attempt to go against Bray Wyatt and his demons. Dig the entrance from Balor as the children singing "He's Got the Whole World in His Hands" before his music hits. Nice touch. The Match itself was pretty bland, Wyatt is able to get in some offense but Balor was too much to contain. Once Wyatt had an opening, he did his signature taunt that had no effect on Balor. Balor was able to quickly hit his Coup de Grace on Wyatt to secure the win in about 10 minutes. Like I said, a pretty bland match but nobody was really expecting anything amazing and it didn't need to be for a match like this. Take it or leave it. 
Winner: Finn Balor
Rating: **1/4

Match 7: WWE Raw Tag Team Championship - The Bar (c) vs. Seth Rollins & Dean Ambrose
Loved the reunion between Seth Rollins and Dean Ambrose during the summer of 2017 as they challenge both Cesaro and Sheamus for the gold. Always love to note how Cesaro and Rollins worked very well with each other in the Ring of Honor days as they now headline big WWE shows, pretty damn cool. Solid action here between the two teams that felt a little like watching a Raw main event for the better part of the match until they finally got the ball really rolling in the latter end. Also loved Cesaro running into the crowd to tear apart a beach ball, legendary shit right there. Rollins is able to hit a hurricanrana on on Cesaro that drives him into Sheamus as Ambrose hits a Dirty Deeds DDT to secure the big win. Solid match and cool to see Rollins and Ambrose win the tag titles at a Summerslam event, makes the belts get a bit of a rub in the process. 
Winners: Seth Rollins & Dean Ambrose
Rating: ***1/2

Match 8: WWE United States Championship - AJ Styles (c) vs. Kevin Owens
Speaking of guys who were once Ring of Honor stars, we have AJ Styles and Kevin Owens going at it with Shane McMahon serving as the guest referee. These two have great chemistry and it certainly showed here. Great action with each guy getting in a good amount of offense against each other and they played the story of Shane being the third man in the match nicely. The nearfalls were believable here and the spots with Shane didn't insult your intelligence like most matches with referee bumps do. Owens thought he secured the win as Shane made a 3 count until cancelling his decision after realizing that Styles had his foot on the bottom rope. Owens and Shane get into a little bit of a shoving match and soon after, Styles capitalizes on the mayhem and hits Owens with both a Phenomenal Forearm along with a Styles Clash to pick up the big win. Great match. 
Winner: AJ Styles
Rating: ***3/4

Match 9: WWE Championship - Jinder Mahal (c) vs. Shinsuke Nakamura
The hype for Shinsuke Nakamura was for real, everyone and their mother thought that Summerslam 2017 was going to be the event of his official crowning as WWE Champion. Unfortunately for him, the WWE was way bigger on Jinder Mahal. Very cool to see how they showed both broadcasts from the perspective of the Indian and Japanese announcers, nice touch. Nakamura was able to get in his signature offense against Mahal but fighting both Mahal and The Singh Brothers proved to be too much as a late distraction caused Mahal to hit his Khallas finisher to score the win. This was a fairly short match that only ran a bit over 10 minutes and while many were criticizing the match over that fact, I felt like it was exactly what it needed to be. This is their first encounter and it sets up bigger matches between the two down the line after this as Nakamura now his out with the distractions from The Singh Brothers. Mahal just gets way too much hate. 
Winner: Jinder Mahal
Rating: ***

Match 10: WWE Universal Championship - Brock Lesnar (c) vs. Braun Strowman vs. Samoa Joe vs. Roman Reigns
Four of the biggest (maybe even literally) guys in the company and all in their prime... this is the ultimate Summerslam main event. Crowd is pumped for this one and you can feel the buzz in the air as Brock Lesnar circles the ring as his opponents all stare him down. This was a war and Lesnar was the star of it all. Crowd was mostly hot for Braun Strowman going into this one and got even hotter for him when he destroyed Lesnar by driving him through two tables and toppling him with another one. Crowd was going bonkers at this point. However, the only real drawback I had for the match was the few minutes that Lesnar was out of the match, the action in the ring definitely took a step back and the crowd just wasn't as invested as much to what was happening. The action picked up more again once he returned to the ring and eventually hit Roman Reigns with an F5 to secure the win. Interesting choice to have Reigns eat the pin here since it would have made more sense to have Samoa Joe eat it considering he was the last person to challenge Lesnar before this and they still had some beef to settle. Regardless, amazing main event and easily one of the best Summerslam matches in quite some time. Everyone thought for sure that Lesnar was going to drop the belt but they hit us with that swerve. Good stuff.
Winner: Brock Lesnar
Rating: ****3/4

Overall Show Thoughts and Rating:
That main event was worth the price of admission alone. These shows can be way too long and drag at times but this one went by pretty smoothly and most matches on the card played their role nicely. However, the card was still pretty forgettable aside from the main event which was absolutely electric. If there's any real reason to remember this show, it's for that. Brock Lesnar is the best in the game. 
Rating: 7.5/10