Ranking The 26 WWE SummerSlam Main Events From Worst To Best
17. Booker T. (c) vs. The Rock (WCW Championship) - SummerSlam 2001
At the height of the InVasion, WCW/ECW desperately needed to gain the upper hand in its ongoing bloodfeud with WWF. Someone needed to make a statement. Instead of WCW World Champion Booker T. or WCWs everyman Diamond Dallas Page (arguably the biggest WCW star to make the jump after the 2001 buyout), WWF had Stone Cold Steve Austin switch sides and lead The Alliance. All of that should have been a tipoff as to how the 2001 SummerSlam main event would go, with The Rock defeating WCW champ Booker T. despite repeated interference from Shane McMahon. The match itself was good, but Booker was made out to be a geek, losing his WCW title for the second time in four weeks (the other was to Kurt Angle). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hr0mS9CHF7I This could have made Booker into a star and a legit threat in the main event, but instead it would mark his last world title reign for five years.
16. Edge (c) vs. John Cena (WWE Championship) - SummerSlam 2006
On paper, this had all the potential of being a classic. And while it still is a good match, the champ loses if hes disqualified stipulation helped drag it down a little. Edge had won the title a month earlier from Rob Van Dam after RVD was busted with pot. During the feud leading up to SummerSlam, the Rated-R Superstar also kicked off a tradition: physically abusing Cenas father. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VzshUDgcERU During the match, Lita tried to interfere on Edges behalf, only for Edge to try to talk her out of it since hed lose his title. In the end, Lita would feed Edge brass knuckles and take an FU, allowing Edge to hit Cena with the knucks and retain the title.
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.
