10 Fascinating WWE SummerSlam 2003 Facts

9. Injuries Likely Prevented A Christian/Booker T Intercontinental Title Match

shawn michaels triple h elimination chamber summerslam 2003
WWE.com

At an otherwise-innocuous house show in Des Moines, IA on Sunday, August 10, 2003, Christian defeated Booker T to win his third Intercontinental Championship. Switches like this (see: AJ Styles defeating Kevin Owens at MSG) have been extremely rare this millennium, but are occasionally necessary. Sometimes a house show title change is done to boost business. Other times, more serious factors are in play.

Booker had been suffering from serious back injuries, which were reportedly exacerbated by the long flights to and from Australia for a tour the previous week. Booker needed to get off the road as soon as possible, and the switch was done at the house show in order to keep the belt in circulation.

As their feud had been running since May, there was likely an Intercontinental title match between Booker and Christian in the cards for SummerSlam. Booker's injury, of course, put the kibosh on that.

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Justin has been a wrestling fan since 1989, and has been writing about it since 2009. Since 2014, Justin has been a features writer and interviewer for Fighting Spirit Magazine. Justin also writes for History of Wrestling, and is a contributing author to James Dixon's Titan series.