The Secret Link Between AEW & WWE Nobody Is Talking About

SummerSlam 1992 was a night of firsts.

WWE billed it as “the SummerSlam you thought you’d never see”, and that was true, but to look at the sheer amount of things that had, up to that point, never been part of the organisation’s rich pay-per-view legacy is quite remarkable.

It was the first pay-per-view after six years of successfully promoting them to occur in the United Kingdom, but that’s the obvious one. It was also the first to headline with the Intercontinental Championship, the first to feature the commentary duo of Vince McMahon and Bobby Heenan, the first to air in the United States days removed from the actual event taking place, the first to feature both Bret Hart and Davey Boy Smith in singles headline outings, and the first SummerSlam to take place in a stadium since the Supercard launched in 1988.

It wasn’t the first pay-per-view to announce a venue then change it up, of course. The switch from Washington DC to Wembley midway through the marketing in the summer of 1992 represented an enormous uptick in gate receipts as opposed to trading the Los Angeles Coliseum for the Sports Arena next door thanks to the “threats of terrorism” around WrestleMania VII in 1991. The “Stars & Stripes Forever” tagline proved just as overstated as the rationale for why they moved, and eighteen months later when the company finally took the show on the road and over the Atlantic, it featured the most shocking and unthinkable first of all.

SummerSlam 1992 was the first company pay-per-view without Hulk Hogan.

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