8 Match Star Ratings For WWE SummerSlam 2020
A good, solid show that can't mask freakish core issues.
The problem with the ThunderDome experience, that shaped the entire SummerSlam show irrespective of how good or bad it was across each match, is that WWE is asking the audience to apply suspension of disbelief twofold.
Not only are you asked, as with all pro wrestling, to suspend your disbelief to the action, but you must now reconcile that bank of Zoom call faces with additional piped-in audio of an old, live crowd. Sometimes, it works; at certain moments, captured serendipitously, a swell of noise is reflected by the odd image of a virtual fan throwing their hands over their hands in despair or elation at the near-fall. Elsewhere, the lack of sync and the generally revealing artifice of it all creates a profound and distracting dissonance that removes you from the action. It can never feel real because it simply isn't, and the irony is that the closer you are, the further away you are, too. This is the uncanny valley.
Perhaps it's a new wavelength that will come to feel normal in time. That might be generous. For now, it's simply weird, but not a disaster. It is possible to lose oneself in it, very briefly, until somebody who needs to work out the MySpace angle pronto is glimpsed looking as bored as they are grainy.
The other problem is that WWE doesn't have a damn clue how to book babyfaces...
8. Kickoff: Apollo Crews Vs. MVP - United States Title Match
A match like this was never got going to be a gentleman's three.
It was never going to be this exhilarating or hard-hitting festival of drama. It was always just going to sort of exist, enjoyed by WWE fans who don't much like non-WWE wrestling and watched detachedly by fans who grew bored of this layout and pace a very, very long time ago.
MVP is good at the details, so it was an engrossing enough watch even if it was entirely forgettable after the fact, but title match on third biggest show of the year demands something far more, does it not?
His facials conveyed the aggressively fine story.
And it was a nice enough story of a man in his physical prime versus a man at his psychological peak, which created the mildest of suspense and a marginally more engaging dynamic than the usual generic back-and-forth template fare of the Kickoff, but at some point, the numb and deeply long-term WWE consumer within surfaces and can think little else but "It's f*cking MVP in 2020, lads, who could care that much?"
Star Rating: ★★¾