8 Ups & 4 Downs From WWE SummerSlam 2023 (Results & Review)

Bloodline drama drags, Cody overcomes, LA Knight arrives, and a surprise title switch!

by Scott Carlson
Roman Reigns Paul Heyman
WWE.com

The biggest party of the summer sure looked a lot like what you could now call a typical WWE premium live event: a mixture of solid to really good wrestling, some !*$%, and a heavy dose of Bloodline drama.

SummerSlam is in the books, and overall, you’ve got to give them passing marks for delivering on most of the promised action. But many events ride or die by their main event, and Roman Reigns versus Jey Uso was some of the slowest, most melodramatic stuff you’ll see in a long time. Oh sure, the never-ending Bloodline saga might make for great TV again next Friday night, but on Saturday night, it was agonizing.

But rather than dwell on that, it’s worth accentuating the positives: Cody Rhodes earned Brock Lesnar’s respect; LA Knight made a splash; Logan Paul continues to impress; and the women’s title match delivered quite the surprise.

Fans in attendance seemed to feel like they got their money’s worth, and these days, it’s hard not to find a few things to enjoy on a PLE. SummerSlam was no different. Sure, there are some shortcomings, and the TV build doesn’t always match what’s delivered on the night, but that seems to be the WWE formula these days.

Let’s get to it…

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Contributor

Scott is a former journalist and longtime wrestling fan who was smart enough to abandon WCW during the Monday Night Wars the same time as the Radicalz. He fondly remembers watching WrestleMania III, IV, V and VI and Saturday Night's Main Event, came back to wrestling during the Attitude Era, and has been a consumer of sports entertainment since then. He's written for WhatCulture for more than a decade, establishing the Ups and Downs articles for WWE Raw and WWE PPVs/PLEs and composing pieces on a variety of topics.