The hottest show of the summer had the biggest crowd of a WWE show since Covid and had an blockbuster line up But could it live up to the hype? Courtesy of WWE Home Video Matthew Roberts takes another look at SummerSlam 2021!
Such is the sheer amount of WWE you can catch on a weekly basis, it’s difficult for anything to have that “big match” feel. Coming into SummerSlam 2021 that was not a problem. Although we’ve seen it before, the switch of having heel Roman Reigns taking on “hey, we actually like him now” John Cena, riding a wave of almost unanimous crowd support for the, well, first time ever certainly gave their main event a big match feel. And the two men certainly delivered.
Nearly 25 minutes between these two may seem like overkill on paper but the pacing of this was top notch. Nothing seemed rushed and there was a deliberateness about the action and that attacks that fitted the storyline well. Even with Reigns being the dominant champion and, with all things being equal, it being difficult to see him dropping the belt to a “part-timer” the WWE vision actually worked for this match. It’s John Cena… of course there’s a chance the WWE will put the belt back on him. There were numerous close calls and near finishes, many of which had the fans fooled. In the end TWO superman punches and a Spear from Reigns settled a very good match indeed. Even more so considering this was Cena’s first singles match in ages.
The post-match return of Brock Lesnar was the icing on the cake for an explosive SummerSlam 2021. You can argue he didn’t do anything (on-screen at least – he did F5 Cena after the show went off the air) but the reaction proved he didn’t need to do anything. And a smiling, happy Brock was a sight to behold for sure.
The Raw World Title effort couldn’t match it’s Smackdown counterpart. And with Bill Goldberg in there it was never going to. Even as someone who likes Bill, there is the feeling that he should be done by now. Or at the very least doing squash style matches with mid-card heels (like he did with Ziggler). You could even position them as a way to take guys who need a character re-set of TV for a few months. There was intrigue here if only that a loss would have cut Lashley off the biggest run of his WWE career prematurely but Goldberg keeps coming back to lose matches and surely has to win some occasionally if he’s going to remain somewhat relevant. In the end we had a bit of a fudge as Lashley won but Goldberg wasn’t pinned and didn’t tap out. Instead the referee called for the bell when Goldberg suffered a knee injury and couldn’t stand. It was a testament to Goldberg that there was a sense that we didn’t know if this was real or planned. He sold it well, for sure. Post match Lashley “inadvertently” put Bill’s son Gage in the Hurt Lock. Goldberg said he was going to kill Lashley as he tended to his stricken son.
The Women’s Title matches flipped the Raw/Smackdown men’s vibe to a degree. The Smackdown women’s title match was scheduled to be Bianca Belair against Sasha Banks. Expect there was no Sasha Banks. It looked as if Carmella would fill in the spot but to the surprise of everyone “The Man” Becky Lynch finally made her return, decked Carmella and then cut a promo challenging Belair to a match. Thirty seconds later Lynch had pinned Belair and won the World Title. It was a great moment. And I’m personally not even angry about it, even if I can understand why many saw it as a slap in the face to Belair. Where they’ve gone since has made some sense of it too.
The Raw Women’s championship match between Nikki ASH, Rhea Ripley and Charlotte Flair couldn’t match that “moment” but it was certainly a better match. Even if it did tend to follow the Triple Threat formula. You know, one person feigns death at ringside whilst the other two go at it. It really picked up towards the end with some great near finishes that dragged you in. Inevitably of course Charlotte made Nikki tap to win the title. And again, I’m not even angry about that either. You can argue about the “push” all you want. But Charlotte is extremely good. One of the best.
There were Tag Team Title matches galore too. The Raw match between RK-Bro and AJ Syles & Omos opened up the show proper and was a hell of a lot of fun. It was perfect opening match territory as a babyface team the fans were totally behind challenged for the Raw Tag Team Titles and won them. The Smackdown title match between the Mysterio’s and the Uso’s was a good old fashioned tag team match. Formulaic, yes, but there is a reason why some things become formulaic. They just work. And when you get two good teams out there they can give it a new spin.
Rounding off the title matches was the Untied States championship battle between Sheamus and Damien Priest. The crowd didn’t seem all that invested in the early going so the two picked things up in the old fashioned way by giving each other a stiff beating. It worked and the crowd really did get into it and by the end they were fully engaged. Priest won and that was another right decision on the night.
The big “non-title” match on the undercard was Edge against Seth Rollins. There had been a good build up (and I really did Rollins’ latest character) but the intensity of that somewhat was extinguished by a bit of a slow start that didn’t really reflect the animosity that had been built up. Still they assembled the bout well and again got the fans really into it. The story around Rollins looking to hit the Stomp and Edge wanting to avoid it at all costs added a nice bit of realism into it as well. The clean tap out win for Edge was a surprise but we shouldn’t complain about clean finishes and it won’t hurt Rollins one bit.
In the main card’s other action, Alexa Bliss defeated Eva Marie in a nothing match, although personally it was wonderful to see Piper “Doudrop” Niven get a moment on the big stage. Drew McIntyre and Jinder Mahal came across as filler, but Drew looked dominant and it was fun whilst it lasted.
The Blu-Ray adds the fun kick-off match between Big E and Baron Corbin as well as five segments from Raw and Smackdown shows preceding the PPV.
Overall I thought SummerSlam 2021 was a REALLY enjoyable show. Having an arena full of fans helped it in the sense that it felt like a “big” event but the majority of the action lived up to the billing too and there wasn’t anything that was really offensive to the senses at any point. But with the likes of Reigns/Cena and Rollins/Edge delivering big style, some great undercard title match and the surprise returns of Becky and Brock, this was a fine slice of WWE action.
9 out of 10.
Photographs courtesy of Fetch and WWE. Thank you to WWE Home Video for our review copy of SummerSlam 2021 which is out Monday 11 October on BluRay and DVD. You can buy your copy from WWEDVD.co.uk by clicking here.
You can find me on Twitter @IWFICON