10 Fascinating WWE SummerSlam 2014 Facts
There's putting your opponent over, and there's letting Brock Lesnar eat you alive.
Take me down to the Suplex City, where the money's green, and the beatdown's pretty.
Okay, so I'm no Axl or Slash. The Appetite for Destruction, however, was evident in Brock Lesnar, who was the beneficiary of one of the most one-sided pay-per-view main events ever offered by WWE. Champion John Cena offered himself up as a ritualistic sacrifice, and Lesnar did not disappoint as executioner. Sixteen suplexes later, and Cena was going to need some Ibuprofen in the morning.
SummerSlam 2014 was another solid edition of the August annual, with quality matches (Ambrose vs. Rollins, Reigns vs. Orton), well-presented underdcard fun (Ziggler vs. Miz, Swagger vs. Rusev), and a main event that broke the usual formula. Sometimes all you can ask from a wrestling show is to fight off the status quo.
From the retro-fantastic Mean Gene Okerlund-hosted "SummerSlam Report" that fed our nostalgia maws, to the Lesnar/Cena melee, WWE was keen to think outside the box, putting SummerSlam 2014 a cut above other recent SummerSlams that were just so much vanilla.
While WWE life for the remainder of 2014 would be rough (the start of Reigns getting rejected by the fans, no Lesnar in sight, the f--king TLC&S pay-per-view), SummerSlam was anything but rough. Unless you're John Cena.
Here are ten facts about SummerSlam 2014 you may not have known.
10. It Marked The End Of The Los Angeles Run
From 2009 to 2014, SummerSlam emanated from The Staples Center in Los Angeles. This wasn't at all dissimilar to WCW holding five straight Halloween Havocs in Las Vegas, or most of their Great American Bashes in Baltimore. However, WWE would use SummerSlam weekend in LA as the centerpiece for their schmoozing with media companies and the Hollywood elite, attempting to further their brand through networking and a little osmosis.
The 2014 show saw a major downshift in WWE-related activities in the days leading up to the show. There was no Fan AXXESS, and the only truly major event aside from the pay-per-view was the 2K Sports video game panel (which thankfully passed without incident).
WWE even announced Brooklyn as the 2015 location during the pay-per-view itself, so the decision to end the Los Angeles stretch of SummerSlams had been final for quite some time.