All 27 WWE SummerSlam Opening Matches - Ranked

4. Chris Jericho Vs. Dolph Ziggler - 2012

kurt angle vs rey mysterio
WWE.com

More taped ribs! Before I get into the match, I must stress how irritating it was throughout to listen to the commentary team talk about how Jericho can’t ‘win the big one’. The guy beat Austin and The Rock in the same night, has won more IC titles than anyone in history and amassed over 30 championships in his career. Dude has done okay in ‘big ones’.

In what has become the most predictably boring trope in professional wrestling, Dolph Ziggler was the Money in the Bank briefcase holder at this time, which pretty much means ‘I’m going to lose a lot so my cash in shocks people’. The same goes here as he eventually taps out the Liontamer, but before then we have a pretty good back and forth match between two guys who know exactly what they are doing within the ropes. You can really feel the swell of popular support for Dolph Ziggler growing at this point as well, as the crowd is as much behind him as they are Y2J. After some great near falls, Jericho traps Ziggler with no escape, and finally wins the big one.

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.