All 27 WWE SummerSlam Opening Matches - Ranked

8. The 1-2-3 Kid Vs. Hakushi - 1995

kurt angle vs rey mysterio
WWE.com

1995 was not a good time for the WWE. They were leaking stars to WCW on an hourly basis, Mabel was about to headline their second biggest pay-per-view of the year and everything was seemingly heading down the toilet. One bright spot at the time was the emergence of The 1-2-3 Kid (aka Sean Waltman), a plucky young babyface seemingly outmatched by everyone but with the heart of a lion. He would open the 1995 edition of SummerSlam against Hakushi in what is a pretty good match up.

Hakushi putting zero effort in doesn’t help the whole thing, but in 1995 Hakushi at 0% was still more effective than a lot of guys going 110. Seriously, watch the match back. Hakushi often resembles a spoilt child doing one chore after another. Saying that, if you’d just lost to Barry Horowitz then maybe you’d be a bit grumpy. It could also be a ploy, as seemingky out of nowhere he pulls off a springboard moonsault to the outside that completely blew me away when viewing this. Hakushi picks up the win here, which by basic logic means Waltman is below Barry Horowitz, a man whose entire gimmick was ‘I lose matches’.

Contributor
Contributor

Born in the middle of Wales in the middle of the 1980's, John can't quite remember when he started watching wrestling but he has a terrible feeling that Dino Bravo was involved. Now living in Prague, John spends most of his time trying to work out how Tomohiro Ishii still stands upright. His favourite wrestler of all time is Dean Malenko, but really it is Repo Man. He is the author of 'An Illustrated History of Slavic Misery', the best book about the Slavic people that you haven't yet read. You can get that and others from www.poshlostbooks.com.