One MIND-BLOWING Secret For Every WWE SummerSlam
16. 2010 | This Would Have SUCKED
Times were bleak in the late 2000s and early 2010s.
WWE’s in-house developmental model faltered as, in parallel, the company could barely bring itself to push dreaded independent talents with any real conviction. Who did they think they were, getting good and over. Pricks.
WWE’s insistence on holding credit over “their” guys, and its staggering incompetence, was a resistible blend that led to the crowning of Jack Swagger: World Heavyweight champion. God, that was awful. Swagger won the Money In The Bank ladder match at WrestleMania 26 and cashed in at the expense of Chris Jericho on the March 30, 2010 SmackDown. This was the era of Vince trying to make the belt make the man. It was a shortcut into a brick wall.
Swagger was a terrible World champion. The perennially dopey Swagger didn’t so much lack presence and focus as look to be trying to recite every digit of pi at all times. He wasn’t magnetic. He wasn’t charismatic. He wasn’t even that good. But he was tall and hadn’t previously worked for Ring Of Honor, which was of vital importance, apparently.
After just 78 days, WWE realised that Swagger was a bust. He dropped the title to transitional champion Rey Mysterio, who lost it to Kane a month later. This was not the original plan.
According to the May 17, 2010 edition of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, WWE had pencilled in Jack Swagger Vs. The Undertaker for SummerSlam: a match between a man whose blank expressions verged on the eerie, and the Undertaker.