10 Worst WWE SummerSlams Ever - According To Dave Meltzer
7. SummerSlam 1999 (2.29)
Like the Royal Rumble and WrestleMania before it, SummerSlam '99 suffers from being a major pay-per-view from a time where television was king.
The monthly specials still brought in humongous revenue for the company of course, and stood alongside merchandise and gate receipts as the financial pillars of the WWE empire, but the mainstream audience engaged on a diet of short matches, chaotic segments and catchphrase-heavy promos.
With Vince Russo at the wheel, the pay-per-views tried to blend the traditional match-heavy format with the ratings-grabbing checkpoints, leading to shorter-than-acceptable contests between wrestlers that were often far more over talking than they were working.
As well has playing host to one of the worst SummerSlam main events ever, the show offered little on an undercard in desperate need of at least one creditable contest.
Tag team wrestling's dynamic reboot in 2000 couldn't possibly have been foreseen just four months earlier, with an interminable 'Tag Team Turmoil' effort and the Undertaker/Big Show vs Kane/X-Pac title match highlighting that every unit in the division bored the audience to tears when actually required to perform for longer than two minutes on a random Raw.
The 'Kiss My Ass' match was the evening's biggest disaster. Billy Gunn's laughable main event push ended underneath the elbow of The Rock, but served only as a temporary demotion for 'The Great One' in the meantime. Defeating Gangrel the next night, he even acknowledged it, and immediately elevated himself back into the WWE Title picture by sheer force of will.