Ranking All 30 WWE SummerSlam Main Events

20. 2001 – Booker T. (C) Vs. The Rock

brock lesnar john cena summerslam 2014
WWE

At the height of the Invasion, WCW/ECW desperately needed to gain the upper hand in its ongoing blood-feud with WWF. Someone needed to make a statement.

Instead of WCW World Champion Booker T. or WCW’s 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 tip-off as to how the 2001 SummerSlam main event would go, with The Rock defeating 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).

This match 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.

Contributor
Contributor

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.