The Good: 2002 was an uneven year for WWE on PPV but they got it right with their middle supershow. SummerSlam was, top to bottom, the best show of the year. It had great wrestling, storyline progression and one of the best in-ring comebacks ever. Shawn Michaels returned to a WWE ring for the first time in over four years. His career thought to be over, HBK entered a water-tight performance in a dramatic street fight against former DX partner Triple H. It honestly looked as though he hadn't been gone a day. Brock Lesnar won his first WWE Championship in a cracking main event against The Rock. The Next Big Thing became the youngest WWE Champion in history (at that point) by beating The Great One (who was on his way back to Hollywood) clean as a sheet. Lesnar had arrived. The undercard was chock full of good matches, too. Choice cuts are the Rey Mysterio/Kurt Angle opener (Rey's first WWE PPV match), Eddie Guerrero/Edge and Chris Benoit/RVD. Booker T/Goldust versus The UnAmericans and Test versus Undertaker were also decent. The Bad: There wasn't a bad match on the card, although Ric Flair and Chris Jericho's skirmish was a tad disappointing. The Rest: SummerSlam was very much a transitional show, looking back: Brock Lesnar was on his way to becoming 'the man', Shawn Michaels would make a proper, sustained comeback and The Rock would soon become a full-time movie star and a part-time wrestler. What a roster WWE had back then.
