11 WWE WrestleMania Headliners Who Didn't Make The Following SummerSlam
From the main event to the sidelines in just a few months.
Does it get any better than performing in the main event of WrestleMania?
Only 34 men can say they have, with Triple H having that distinction more than anyone else with seven appearances in the final match of the night. It is something missing from the resume of some of the greatest of all-time, including CM Punk, Eddie Guerrero, Kane and Goldberg.
It truly is the pinnacle of sports entertainment.
So where does one go after headlining the Grand Daddy of Them All? Well, professional wrestling simply never ends, and the lack of light at the end of the tunnel, heck, the lack of tunnel full stop means that headlining WrestleMania is usually followed by a return to the grind, to TV, live events and PPVs all around the United States of America, with little respite in-between.
SummerSlam represents the next big stop on the WWE calendar, the next biggest pay day, the next biggest stage. More often than not the headliners of the Showcase of the Immortals will have moved on to new stories, tales to play out at the top of the card at the Biggest Party of the Summer.
On a few occasions, however, the men to have closed out WrestleMania have been conspicuously missing from the SummerSlam card. Whether through injury, retirement, release or simply being overlooked, the history of WWE is littered with stars that headlined WrestleMania only to miss out completely on they following SummerSlam.
Here they all are.
11. Hulk Hogan & Sid Justice - WrestleMania VIII
With the beauty of hindsight, we can see that WrestleMania VIII marked the beginning of a new era for the World Wrestling Federation. The show featured many of the stars we had all known and loved in the late 80s, but they were quite clearly at the end of their glory days.
Jake Roberts, Roddy Piper, Randy Savage and Ric Flair were all done in-ring for the WWF before the next WrestleMania.
The eighth instalment of the Show of Shows was headlined by a grudge match between Hulk Hogan and Sid Justice, and it would go on to mark the first time that a WrestleMania headliner failed to feature on the SummerSlam that followed it. Not only that, neither man would make it to the summer extravaganza, which took place that year in Wembley Stadium in the UK.
Hogan went on an extended hiatus following his DQ win over Justice in the main event, and didn't return to the company until February 1993 to kick-start his brief feud alongside Brutus 'The Barber' Beefcake against Money, Inc. Hogan also appeared in the main event of WrestleMania IX (kind of), and was out of the company before SummerSlam that year too.
As for Sid Justice, he entered a program after Mania against the Ultimate Warrior, but he simply wasn't catching on. The program barely got started and, less than a month after 'Mania, Justice had left the company.