10 WWE SummerSlam 2020 Impulse Reactions
The (Big) Dog Days of Summer.
The debut of the ThunderDome on the SummerSlam go-home SmackDown was quite the experience.
WWE elected to roll their latest grand gesture on Fox for the ratings instead for the show they've often billed as the second biggest event of the year. It speaks to how valuable those billions of dollars in television rights fees really are to the company now more than ever - the ongoing global b*stard created the need for the endless screens, drones and fan faces in the first place, long after Vince McMahon himself decided that the show must always go on.
It didn't create a lot of optimism for the 'Biggest (Zoom) Party Of The Summer', but the card had already done that and - just about - both event and venue seemed a little more in sync compared to Friday's slightly drab offering. This was an okay show made better by its surroundings, rather than a middling word made substantially worse by the empty gestures of the Performance Center extras.
Low on truly great matches but high on getting through them at pace, SummerSlam that boasted the leanness of the other 2020 supercards but none of the cinematic silliness. After all, you don't spend all that money on LEDs and then dust off the Boneyard again, not least when you've got somebody special waiting in the wings...
10. Forever Young
With John Bradshaw Layfield and Peter Rosenberg booked SummerSlam Kickoff Guests, the return of the panel to a live setting could have been instantly destroyed had it not been for Renee Young enjoying her last hurrah with the organisation.
Charley Caruso paid fitting tribute to her broadcast colleague as she formally took her place as the company's chief anchor. In the time she had, Young gently mocked the absurdity of the Thunderdome and otherwise played it professional, affable and as awesome as always.
Young's run has been one of the longer in company history in her position as interviewer/host, with a steadiness on the microphone that's been long abandoned within the product itself during her tenure.
Within minutes of the warm welcome, we witnessed a bit of WWE production silliness that undercut it - Young and Caruso were asked to swap chairs for whatever reason, before Booker T noted "a lot of people around here don't like Charley Caruso" and JBL started banging on about "fake news".
Some people are too good for wrestling, and especially WWE. She'll be massively missed, but better off out of there.