10 Best WWE SummerSlam Openers

Two of the unsung workhorses of the Attitude Era kicked off SummerSlam 1998 (on the HIGHWAY TO HELL). Venis had been in the company for just a few months but was getting over thanks to his porn star gimmick. D-Lo, meanwhile, had revived his career after an eternity standing in the background of the Nation of Domination stable.

D-Lo had an ace up his sleeve (or should I say on his chest) for the bout in the form of his chest protector, which was ostensibly to help protect a torn pectoral muscle but was actually used to make his big splash finisher the Lo Down even more effective.

It's often said that WWE performers work a hell of a lot harder when wrestling in MSG and that certainly seemed to be the case here as the two men suplexed the hell out of each other in a back-and-forth contest full of counters, including a gnarly mid-air counter to the Sky-High powerbomb from D-Lo onto Venis.

Regrettably, the fifteen-minute affair is tarnished somewhat thanks to an unwanted DQ finish after Val shoved the ref down. They were letting it all hang out up until the cop-out, mind, and this one is worth revisiting just to see what these two underrated talents were capable of when given the time and the platform.