It’s easy to be a prisoner of the moment. We watch wrestling shows all the time and immediately want to compare them to past shows and rank where they stack up. It’s not always necessarily fair, but that doesn’t stop us. What’s more difficult to do is stand the test of time. To become one of those shows that you’re comparing modern ones to. Personally, that’s the type of show I consider SummerSlam 2002 to be. After a whopping 22 years, yours truly is still sitting here saying it is the greatest SummerSlam event of all time.
I’ll boil it down to a single sentence before expanding upon it – SummerSlam 2002 was a no-nonsense show focused on the action and storytelling in the ring. It reminds me of WrestleMania 22 and WrestleMania 31 in that regard, also two of my favorite wrestling shows of all time. The show didn’t drag on. It felt precise and it never wore you down as boring the way some long shows do. But, it also presented fans with a nice variance in styles. The way the show was paced and structured is an example of how to book a complete and efficient wrestling show.
Let’s start with the opener – even at the time, I thought opening the show with Kurt Angle vs. Rey Mysterio, who was fresh off his debut with WWE, was a brilliant call. Looking back all these years later, it stands. Younger me was stoked to see the exciting brand of wrestling that Mysterio brought with him. Older me appreciates the clash of styles and the athleticism that enabled these two to create magic. Every strong show has to have a good opener to set the tone and provide some energy. SummerSlam 2002 checks that box.
Then, you look at the rest of the undercard. Chris Jericho vs. Ric Flair was a ton of fun for what it was…I mean…no, you’re not getting peak Flair in the early 2000s, but he could still go at the time. Edge vs. Eddie Guerrero was just one of the many awesome matches those two had together in one of the more underrated “midcard rivalries” of all time. RVD and Chris Benoit went 16+ minutes for the Intercontinental Championship. The “sport” side of sports entertainment was present in a heavy dosage on this show.
But, the WWE did a good job of mixing things up and adding in some good old fashioned drama. Hot off the heels of 9/11, the WWE put Lance Storm, Test, and Christian together as a faction named “The Un-Americans.” You can call it tasteless if you’d like, but longtime fans of WWE have become numb to this sort of thing. Maybe I’m jaded, but this shit was par for the course, and honestly, the crowds ate it up. The Un-Americans were red hot in 2002, and they helped really build this show to a crescendo. While Lance Storm and Christian defeated Booker T and Goldust (another tag team act that was red hot at the time), the heavies did battle later on in the night, and the crowd absolutely lost their shit when their hero “The American Badass” Undertaker slayed Test. ‘Taker did it for all of America, and he had wrestling audiences in the palm of his hand!
That feel-good moment of unbridled patriotism gave way to the visceral carnage that was the Unsanctioned Street Fight between Shawn Michaels and Triple H. In my opinion, it’s one of the greatest wrestling matches of all time – a 27-minute knockdown drag-out banger. But, it was ripe with storylines. The cerebral assassin era of Triple H was in full swing. He looked downright dominant at the time, and for Michaels, it marked a return to wrestling that many fans thought we’d never see.
Then, there was the passing of the torch in the main event. Brock Lesnar defeated The Rock to become, at the time, the youngest WWE Champion in history. The match itself was good enough, but it was intriguing in a way that you can’t really replicate by design. There were so many “real life” questions swirling around the match that it made it unpredictable. Would Vince McMahon really put the company’s prized possession in the hands of a rookie who had just started wrestling in the WWE a few months prior? Was The Rock really going to bow out and head to Hollywood to make movies for a little bit? They did a masterful job of laying a strong foundation for this show with an energetic opener, and rock solid mid-card, and three main event caliber matches that all offered wrestling fans something different.
WWE was red hot with a loaded roster in 2002. The show was paced well, it featured a little bit of everything from the pure mat style to the brutal street fight to some gaga shit with the Un-Americans, and it concluded with the crowning of a new champion, and the ushering in of a new “top guy” in the WWE. All these years later, and I still watch it and think it is comfortably the best SummerSlam event of all time.
Stoney Keeley is the Editor in Chief of The SoBros Network, and a Dogs Playing Poker on velvet connoisseur. He is a strong supporter of Team GSD, #BeBetter, and ‘Minds right, asses tight.’ “Big Natural” covers the Tennessee Titans, Nashville, Yankee Candle, and a whole wealth of nonsense. Follow on Twitter @StoneyKeeley.
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