4 Ups & 5 Downs From WWE SummerSlam Night 1 (Review & Results)
1. A Woefully Underwhelming Main Event
No matter how many times the WWE hype machine tried to convince everyone that Brock Lesnar versus Oba Femi inside Hell in a Cell was an epic, final confrontation, the truth is that it was a massive disappointment, and possibly the worst of the three matches in this trilogy that didn’t need to exist.
The first bad sign came when news spread that Oba/Brock would be the main event. That immediately added loftier expectations onto the match to deliver. Then the cell stayed up during introductions, which meant these two men, who we were told couldn’t be kept apart, had to stand there waiting for a full minute while the cage was lowered and the flamethrowers were moved out of the way.
Then the bell rang.
The match itself was fine on its own in a vacuum, but the cell barely came into play, with Femi and Lesnar going outside the ring exactly once. This could have been a steel cage match and they could have done 90% of the same match.
Oba hit his Fall from Grace, and Brock kicked out at two… and then sat up and laughed at Femi. To be clear, Baron Corbin went six years on the main roster without a soul kicking out of his End of Days finisher. Brock kicked out of Oba’s finisher in only Femi's 15th main-roster match. For a guy like Oba Femi, Fall from Grace should be a true killshot, a move that, if he hits it, his opponent is a goner. That way, when you need that true shocking moment, it means something. But now, that’s gone.
Additionally, as a trilogy, this should have built on the other two matches. Instead, it was 10 minutes of the usual Paul Heyman formula, with weapons. The only cool, unique spot came when Brock ripped up the mat and padding and then dropped Oba with a Tombstone Piledriver, which was a great callback to Lesnar beating the Undertaker twice inside Hell in a Cell.
And then, 30 seconds later, Oba popped up, hit a Fall from Grace, and it was over.
We also had to endure Brock “endorsing” Oba afterward, which felt entirely tacked on and artificial.
Any way you look at this main event, it was a dismal failure. Oba will be fine coming out of this because he won, and WWE will simply sell that he vanquished the Beast. He still looks like a dope for passing up a world title match at SummerSlam in favor of this Dumpster fire, but he’s still the closest thing to a “next big thing” WWE has.