4 Ups & 4 Downs From WWE SummerSlam Night 2 (Review & Results)

1. Slow-Moving Melodrama Narrated Within An Inch Of Its Life

If you created a checklist or a bingo card with all the tropes, gimmicks and key markers that one might expect in a Roman Reigns-Seth Rollins WWE main event, you had better hope you weren’t wagering money or had turned it into a drinking game.

Rollins and Reigns had a main event that ticked off nearly every trope imaginable: Shield references, melodramatic staredowns, pausing the action to deliver a soliloquy, do an Attitude Era-style brawl into the crowd, break tables, have a referee bump, steel chair drama, spam and steal finishers, and have Michael Cole proclaim it the greatest match in history.

The match was long – 33 minutes – and dragged throughout. They filled the second half with many of the tropes listed above, trading spear and stomp attempts and kicking out of each other’s finishers, which some fans will default to call “awesome” because they’re going for home runs.

The problem here is that Rollins and Reigns also spent a great deal of that time reciting speeches to each other about who is the best. And then there was the drama with a steel chair, as both men had opportunities after the ref bump to use the weapon and declined.

This wasn’t a bad match, but it was clear that they were going for an epic and chose to fill it with every shortcut imaginable to pad out the runtime and keep fans invested. For the most part, that worked, but this could have been ten minutes shorter, worked at a slightly brisker clip, and deleted the chattering, and it would have been light-years better.

As it stands, this is a match no one is going back to rewatch unless they’re a Shield completist.