All 27 WWE SummerSlam Opening Matches - Ranked

27. Chris Benoit Vs. Orlando Jordan - 2005

Whilst many lists including Benoit will instantly have him at the bottom due to the circumstances in which his life ended, but not so here. This is the worst SummerSlam opening match at all time, but this has nothing to do with the skill level of the two competitors. It is simply because the match itself lasted 25.5 seconds, with OJ tapping to the crossface. Jordan had been United States Champion for over five months at this point and had even bested Benoit at the previous pay-per-view. Nobody expected the comedy squash that followed.

Things went from bad to worse for Jordan, as Benoit defeated him in less time the following night on RAW. Needless to say Orlando Jordan’s career in World Wrestling Entertainment never recovered. SummerSlam 2005 was actually a decent event nonetheless, famous for Shawn Michaels and his over the top selling against Hulk Hogan.

Authored by John Bills

Contributor

Born in the middle of Wales in the middle of the 1980's, John can't quite remember when he started watching wrestling but he has a terrible feeling that Dino Bravo was involved. Now living in Prague, John spends most of his time trying to work out how Tomohiro Ishii still stands upright. His favourite wrestler of all time is Dean Malenko, but really it is Repo Man. He is the author of 'An Illustrated History of Slavic Misery', the best book about the Slavic people that you haven't yet read. You can get that and others from www.poshlostbooks.com.

Posted On: 22nd Aug 2015

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