Ranking The 26 WWE SummerSlam Main Events From Worst To Best
25. Diesel (c) vs. Mabel (WWF Championship) - SummerSlam 1995
You almost have to feel bad for Kevin Nash here. He has proven through the years that he is capable of having a good match with the right opponent. Unfortunately, Mabel is not one of them. Besides that, was anyone in 1995 buying Mabel as King of the Ring, much less a threat to Diesels championship? Like the previous years main event, Diesel vs. Mabel suffered from having an awesome match precede it, this time Shawn Michaels vs. Razor Ramon in an Intercontinental Championship ladder match. Diesel and Mabel plodded through the match, finally ending with Diesel winning the epic battle. Mabel would go on to legit injure Undertaker, which would lead to his being sent into exile for two years.
24. Hulk Hogan & Brutus "The Barber" Beefcake vs. Macho Man Randy Savage & Zeus - SummerSlam 1989
This match is the blueprint for how not to do a movie crossover. The release of Hulk Hogans movie No Holds Barred led WWF to look for ways to increase the movies visibility. And the braintrust decided that the best course would be to have the movie character Zeus, who lost to Hogans character Rip in the movie, challenge Hogan in the real world, with actor Tom Lister still portraying Zeus. Confused? Youre not alone. Nevermind that Lister was an actor, not a trained wrestler. Nevermind the confusing backstory. This was a license to print money!... and a way to boost the movies box office receipts. The match itself was brutal. Thankfully, Randy Savage was Zeus partner, keeping things from falling apart. But after a rematch in a steel cage, Zeus was gone from WWE, and this entire storyline became the butt of many jokes.
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.
