The WORST Moment From EVERY WWE SummerSlam

WWE extended SummerSlam into WrestleMania territory by making it a 2-night affair in 2025, and there may be no looking back. There will be in these pages though. We'll be looking all the way back to 1988, in fact. That's when Vince McMahon introduced the show as an accompaniment to other big pay-per-view spectaculars such as 'Mania and Survivor Series - Royal Rumble (which debuted in '88) would follow the PPV trend shortly thereafter.

Many fans view SummerSlam as 'the WrestleMania of the summer', and it's been hard to argue with that over the decades. However, this isn't a gushing appraisal of any scorching sizzlers that happened during the tail end of the 80s into the 90s and then forwards into a new millennium or the 2010s and 20s.

Nope, this is an exhaustive look designed to cherry pick the single worst moment from every iteration of SummerSlam to date. Obviously, that's open to some interpretation. There are crappy matches, angles, botches, injuries and more on this list.

Everything was newsworthy when it happened, but not always for the most positive reasons. Then, there were some truly baffling decisions from the folks in charge too. Lord only knows what they were smoking to stick some of this guff on one of the bigger PPVs/PLEs of the entire year.

Taglines like 'Feel The Heat', 'Highway To Hell' and 'The Biggest Party Of The Summer' have also been used to sell the show as must-see. On that, WWE deployed: 'You'll Never See It Coming' as a hype vehicle in 2020.

To that point, you probably didn't see some of these clangers coming!

This just didn't make a lick of sense.

SummerSlam was the WWF's brand new supercard in 1988. Workhorses Rick Rude and Jake Roberts had a heated feud going into the event, but...they weren't programmed together on the show. Nope. Instead, Rude worked opposite Junkyard Dog, and Roberts wrestled Hercules in a nothing match later on.

Admittedly, Roberts did run in on Rude vs. JYD when the 'Ravishing One' revealed that he had an airbrushed pic of Jake's wife on his tights, but that was about it. Quite why Vince McMahon thought it was necessary to go into a new concept like SummerSlam without leaning on a hot rivalry like this one is anyone's guess.

It was nonsensical. Sure, Rude and Roberts had bored everyone to sleep with a 15 minute draw during the WWF Title tournament at WrestleMania IV, but that was circumstantial. They had to do the distance in March so both would be eliminated from the running to become champ, and that meant plenty of rest holds and stalling.

Surely both deserved the chance to improve on things come August, no? Apparently not. In lieu of that, McMahon booked a nothing burger of a 6-minute scrap between Rude and Dog, then another 10-minute mediocre clash between Jake and the big chain-swinging muscle man later on.

There wasn't too much wrong with the first SummerSlam overall, but leaving a match like this off the booking sheets was a real head-scratcher from the boss and his lieutenants. It wasn't like JYD or Hercules were top workers by mid-1988 either.