One MIND-BLOWING Secret For Every WWE SummerSlam
The biggest party of the summer almost hosted some of the biggest WWE matches ever.
WWE WrestleMania is, quite obviously, the biggest show of the year.
It’s where the biggest matches happen. It’s a show so monumental, at least in name value, that WWE reportedly dangles it in front of potential new signings as a way to combat higher money offers from AEW. SummerSlam used to be almost as massive.
Shawn Michaels was Mr. WrestleMania, but returned from his four-year hiatus at SummerSlam 2002. Brock Lesnar won his first WWE title at the same show. TLC I took place at SummerSlam 2000; it was so fantastic that the sequel was considered WrestleMania-sized.
It was the site of the first-ever meeting between John Cena and Batista. WWE hastily promoted this, with desperation for interest the driving factor, but SummerSlam was once considered a show worthy enough to host such a freash box office dream match. Twice in the 2000s, Hulk Hogan wrestled major singles matches at SummerSlam - Shawn Michaels in 2005, and Randy Orton in 2006 - and not at WrestleMania. Hogan and Vince McMahon shared a comically fractious relationship that decade, mind. These matches coincided with the rare occasions that they could stand the sight of one another. The names of the shows weren’t as much of a consideration as the time they happened, when the stars aligned and they were actually on decent terms. In recent years, though, SummerSlam isn’t what it was.
SummerSlam 2024 was shockingly subpar. Solo Sikoa was a wildly optimistic choice as headliner, and CM Punk Vs. Drew McIntyre, while huge, was just part one of a trilogy. The weakest part, at that.
In years past, far bigger matches than that were planned and dropped…
38. 1988 | Ric Flair Nearly Debuted
Ric Flair, proving for the umpteenth time that you can never say never in pro wrestling, made the jump to the WWF in 1991.
His presentation was fantastic. He very much looked like a different sort of wrestler to the bronzed, musclebound WWF archetype, and Vince McMahon was clever enough to further highlight this contrast. Flair, an elegant and well-dressed figure, walked into the WWF with his pixelated “real” World title. Who was this arrogant interloper, and who was he to think he was more authentic and better than the superstars of wrestling? Which, as far as most young fans knew, began and ended with the World Wrestling Federation? Flair revealed, on the 2020 Jericho Rock n’ Roll Rager at Sea cruise, that he almost made the move three years earlier.
Flair claimed that Vince made him an offer. Vince wanted to book WWF World champion Randy Savage Vs. Ric Flair for the inaugural SummerSlam. (Other rumours suggest that Flair was to be introduced during the pay-per-view debut of ‘The Brother Love Show’).
Flair declined. He said that, while he was interested in working with close friends Ted DiBiase and Roddy Piper, he was already selling out everywhere he went with his Four Horsemen buddies, who he couldn’t bring himself to leave behind. It’s very Flair to have made a key career decision on where the best party was.
Dave Meltzer refuted this rumour in the July 8, 1991 edition of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter however, writing ahead of Ric Flair’s imminent jump to the WWF that Flair “has never had his chance to go to the WWF”.