9 Ups And 7 Downs From WWE SummerSlam 2021

1. WTF Was That?

Becky Lynch Bianca Belair
WWE.com

The return of Becky Lynch was probably the one big legit main event-level surprise WWE could pull at SummerSlam, and they did. And then they botched it and derailed their biggest homegrown star in 2021 in less than 30 seconds.

Lynch challenged Bianca Belair after Sasha Banks was ruled out of the SmackDown Women’s Championship match. She then cheap-shotted Belair, hit a Manhandle Slam and pinned Bianca for the title.

Keep in mind that Belair was dominant on SmackDown since winning the title at WrestleMania 37, even beating two women in separate matches Friday night. And she was discarded in seconds in what should have been a dream match that was given a proper build.

Sure, you can argue that Becky is by far the bigger superstar – and that’s very true – but sacrificing one of only a handful of homegrown stars to break through recently was just moronic and short-sighted.

WWE will try to retcon this and reverse-engineer this feud, but they very clearly took all the mystique away from Belair to pop a crowd. Unless this was a heel turn for Lynch or gives Belair a serious edge, this was just wrong.

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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.