10 WWE SummerSlam Records You Didn’t Know About

One claim to fame that Cena can’t quite boast is that which befalls his one-time rival, Alberto Del Rio.

Del Rio may no longer be the main event presence he was a couple of years back, but that doesn’t change the fact that he’s the only man in the PPV’s history to have appeared in both the opening bout and the closing bout on the very same SummerSlam card.

Many others can claim to have opened and closed on separate shows. For instance, Triple H kicked off proceedings in 1997 and main evented in 2000, while Bret Hart did the same in ’89 and ’92. But by my calculations, in 2011 Del Rio became the only man to have done both of those things in the space of a single night.

Alongside the Awesome Truth, he opened the show in a six-man tag match against Kofi Kingston, John Morrison and Rey Mysterio, in which his side slipped to a defeat. But he more than atoned for that a couple of hours later, when he predatorily cashed-in his Money in the Bank briefcase to defeat CM Punk for the WWE Championship in an eleven-second encounter.

Those circumstances may make his feat slightly less impressive. I mean, it’s not quite on the same level as Daniel Bryan’s double duty from WrestleMania XXX, but it still earns Del Rio a spot in the SummerSlam record books nonetheless.

Barring a future Money in the Bank cash-in, it’s a record that may not be matched anytime soon.