WWE SUMMERSLAM 2023 HITS & MISSES: Charlotte vs. Bianca vs. Asuka, Cody vs. Brock, Rollins vs. Balor, Jey vs. Roman in Tribal Warfare, more

WWE SUMMERSLAM 2023 HITS & MISSES
AUGUST 4, 2023
DETROIT, MI AT FORD FIELD
AIRED ON PEACOCK, 8:00 p.m. EDT, 5:00 P.M. PDT
BY FRANK PETEANI (@FrankPeteani), PWTORCH.COM CONTRIBUTOR

Announcers: Michael Cole and Corey Graves

HITS

Logan Paul defeats Ricochet

Logan Paul’s in-ring work continues to shine. I feel like I’m watching someone who’s been wrestling for years. I thought he and Ricochet worked incredibly well together.

I like the decision to have Logan win. The guy can’t lose every match, otherwise beating him means nothing. As far as having him win via shenanigans I get it. You want to protect the “regular wrestler.” I don’t know though, as Brandon LeClair pointed out in his Alt Perspective report, Logan has enough credibility for you to believe he could beat Ricochet. Heels can win clean you know, but I’ll forgive it.

Cody Rhodes defeats Brock Lesnar

After splitting the first two matches, Cody needed to win this match and win it decisively with his finisher. Period, end of story. There was no other way. Cody’s win at Backlash was via a “banana peel” and I was forgiving of it, but I needed to see what we saw tonight.

Now the other thing I thought Cody needed was to dominate the match, but that was going to be tricky. You can’t do that with Brock Lesnar. You can’t have Cody dump truck him in five minutes. With that said I thought they told a good story of Cody being in peril and overcoming his obstacle. For you American football fans It was like he went down by two touchdowns but was able to grind it out and win the game.

The post-match handshake was not something I had on my bingo card; I’ll tell you that. It makes me wonder if we’re coming to the end of the line for Brock. He’s on the wrong side of 45. I’m sure he’s not worried his next meal and he can afford the private jet for plenty of more years. With that said it felt like a passing of the torch. I’ll be interested to see what’s next. We do have a Raw in Minnesota coming up. I like the idea of Brock working as a babyface moving forward.

Intercontinental Championship: Gunther defeats Drew McIntyre to retain.

This was certainly a hit, but not what I was expecting. I don’t care about match length so much, but it felt like they had a little more to give. With that said I enjoyed the match. Both men worked hard, and the action was good. Drew had Gunther rocked early but he overcame him in the end. I liked that he hit the powerbomb even though he probably could have won the match with the splash.

The thing I liked here is they put a heel over clean. Historically WWE wants heels winning with shenanigans but, Gunther is a different kind of cat. He dominates and should win clean. The other side of that is you get suspicious when heels go over clean. Is Drew on his way out or has he signed, and this match was just part of a longer story? It doesn’t feel like there’s more for this feud after how this went down. We’ll see what happens with Drew, who seems to have nothing going for him now.

WWE Women’s Championship: Bianca Belair defeats Asuka and Charlotte Flair to win the championship.

WWE Women’s Championship: Iyo Sky cashes in Money in the Bank and defeats Bianca Belair to win the championship.

Overall and I mean overall, the triple threat match was good. I liked that it didn’t have the usual two people working and one person selling for an extended period. It took a while to get going but there were several clunky spots. It felt like the chemistry between the three women was off. Going into the match I didn’t find myself invested in any of the characters. The build on television didn’t do anything to get me to want to see this match. The injury spot with Bianca is something they’ve done several times in past (Daniel Bryan at WrestleMania 30 as an example). I get it in theory, it just didn’t register the way it did for Bryan back at WrestleMania.

It was interesting having Bianca win to put her in the position of vulnerable champion subject to the cash in. Is she entrenched enough in the WWE to afford a quick loss like that? Charlotte and Asuka are better suited for that, but they went with Bianca. It sets up a feud between Bianca and Iyo Sky moving forward, which is a feud to which to look forward.

As far as the cash in look, they’re a dime a dozen. We’ve seen a million of these. They’re moments, something on which today’s WWE is built. The problem with the cash in is it’s a heel act with Bayley and Iyo attacking Bianca with the briefcase but, it got a babyface pop and reaction when the pin was scored. Fans should be upset with Iyo but, because they like her and it’s a great moment it gets cheered.

Reading this you’re probably like ok, why are you grading this a hit? In totality I get what they did, and it worked. They got to a good feud moving forward. I’m just pointing out the issues I had. Too much of today’s wrestling is built on moments and fans getting the matches and feuds they want instead of getting invested in the stories and characters and caring about what they see week to week.

MISSES

LA Knight wins the SummerSlam Battle Royal

Nobody gained anything from this match. I’ll give WWE credit for going with the hot hand with LA Knight. We’ll see what happens moving forward. Sometimes battle royal wins are a consolation prize and a way to throw someone a bone. Has anyone done anything with the Andre the Giant memorial battle royals?

Outside of that, we learned it’s not over between A.J. Styles and Karrion Kross. Grrrrrreat. Omos is still around. Grrrreat. At least he didn’t win. Santos Escobar, who’s challenging for the U.S. Championship next week, got eliminated by Kross. If Escobar wins the title, then maybe Kross is a challenger? Grrrreat. Everything felt inconsequential.

At least it didn’t last long, so there’s that.

MMA Rules Match; Shayna Baszler defeats Ronda Rousey

Both characters have significant damage. The story was flawed from the beginning. I’m sorry but the match stunk. A worked MMA match was going to be difficult to pull off in a wrestling world. The crowd rejected this deal, especially during the “injury” spot. I don’t watch MMA, but I know if there’s doubt to a competitor’s ability to continue, the match is stopped.

I guess the idea is Ronda putting over Shayna but, what does that even do? Ronda has lost several matches and has looked nowhere near the force she was in her first run back in 2018-19. Shayna gets a win, but she has been beaten to smithereens since she came up from NXT. She has a LONG way to go to gain the credibility she had during her NXT run.

World Heavyweight Championship; Seth Rollins defeats Finn Balor

This was a miss overall but that doesn’t mean I thought the match was bad.

This was a better match than what they had at Money in the Bank but, the bar was set low. With that said it was cool to have them face each other at the same event in which Finn won the Universal Championship seven years prior. I very much enjoyed the call back to the move that injured Finn, only having Finn do it this time. Overall, they worked well together which is no surprise considering they have always done as such. Let us not forget they worked several TV matches throughout 2018 for the Intercontinental Championship.

Things picked up with the arrival of Damian Priest and later the rest of Judgment Day. I expected them to get involved considering none of them had matches on the card. I get Priest trying to help Finn win the match but, we saw something similar at Money in the Bank. I suppose it’s what they had to do to continue the story of dissension within Judgment Day, but it still made for a flat ending to the match. I suppose the good side of this is interference from faction members can bite you in the ass.

WWE Universal Championship Tribal Combat Match: Roman Reigns defeats Jey Uso to retain the championship and Tribal Chief position.

I can’t believe I’m going to grade anything involving the Bloodline a miss, because everything to date has been a hit, but here we are. The match went incredibly long and to be quite honest, I lost interest as time went on. Generally, I don’t like long matches, but if you tell a good story I’m fine. I didn’t see what justified nearly 40 minutes. They could have done what they did in around 20.

Jimmy turning on Jey is something I speculated on to myself, but I didn’t know on what they’d base it. They’re gonna need to explain it. I remember Paul Heyman and Roman telling Jey that Jimmy didn’t think he could be the tribal chief. Jimmy didn’t deny it, but Jey forgave him anyway and defected from Roman. Does Jimmy still think as such and after long consideration wanted to preserve Roman? We shall see. I don’t know how much I care about a match between Jimmy and Jey. It makes me think about Matt and Jeff Hardy, which didn’t excite me as much.

Hits 4
Misses 4

Closing Thoughts

I’m not going to bring up my thoughts on the sponsors throughout the show because that would be like complaining in an echo chamber and it’s useless. This is what they do as part of their business model. That said, overall, I enjoyed the show, but it wasn’t what I expected. I’ll remember the Jimmy betrayal, the Money in the Bank cash in, and the post-match handshake between Brock and Cody.

Becky vs. Trish got cut because of time constraints, yet they still went over four hours. Don’t hand me that happy horses*** about time constraints alright? I don’t care that it wasn’t on the card like a lot of others but stop with the dumb excuse.

We have a tie with the Hits and Misses. I don’t really have anything to break the tie, so we’ll leave it at that, and thus this report is adjourned. I will be out of town on a family vacation for Payback, so you won’t hear from me until Fastlane in October. Cheers everyone!

Follow Frank on Twitter @FrankPeteani. Thank you for reading!