8 Ups And 7 Downs From WWE SummerSlam 2017

7. Title Change-A-Palooza

neville cruiserweight
WWE.com

For the first time in SummerSlam history, eight WWE titles were on the line, which is a lot of gold to be contested.

Even stranger is the fact that five of those titles changed hands Sunday night, although neither of the world titles changed. Both sets of tag and women’s titles and the Cruiserweight Championship turned over to the challenger(s), which is a massive movement of gold. It at least ties WrestleMania X-Seven for new champs at one PPV, which is pretty significant.

And above all else, title changes often interject a lot of emotion from the fans and lets them feel invested in the product. In two of the title changes’ situations, the swaps were basically undoing recent bouts (Cruiserweight and SmackDown Tag Team Championships), so they were more about restoring the status quo.

Still, it bears noting how many title changes there were at SummerSlam and how the crowd reacted to them. Not a huge “up,” but overall a positive in several ways.

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Contributor
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.