WWE Summerslam 2008

(Guest written by Matt)

WWE Summerslam 2008
August 17, 2008
Conseco Fieldhouse
Indianapolis, Indiana

Well, I’m a WWE Network subscriber again, and back to watching Summerslams I’ve never seen. I was previously thinking I watched this in the theater by myself, but after checking out the card, it seemed rather unfamiliar, so I decided to watch it. And sure enough, turns out I had never seen this event before.

2008 is kind of the buffer year between the Ruthless Aggression Era, when wrestling was still pretty good but underappreciated, and the PG Era, which sucked big time. They still had some good workers on the roster, and somewhat of a wrestling focus, but everything was slowly headed downhill. Unfortunately, this Summerslam turned out to be very boring, and one of the weakest Summerslams of all time. It wasn’t as stupid as the likes of Summerslam 2010, but most of the matches are very underwhelming and predictable, the storylines are sub-par, there are a lot of boring restholds stinking up the joint in almost every match, and even the great workers like CM Punk seem a little off on this card. The only exceptional match was the main event between Undertaker and Edge and that was helped a lot by the Hell In A Cell stipulation.

The show has a Hollywood/Summer Blockbuster theme (even though this was in Indianapolis) and the wrestlers enter through a pretty cool entrance way designed to look like the entrance to a movie theater. Too bad the matches sucked in the end.

1. MVP defeated Jeff Hardy.

The show kicks off with a match that could have been in TNA in 2015. I’m guessing both these idiots will be back in WWE after TNA closes its doors for good in September. I don’t know what I was expecting, but this match was rather boring. I guess I thought Jeff would be using all kinds of high flying moves, but instead he’s grounded through most of the match, and worn down by MVP with rest holds. Maybe the drugs were catching up with him, or perhaps he just didn’t care about a secondary event like Summerslam. (Awwww.) In the end, Shelton Benjamin came down looking like The Natural Butch Reed with dyed orange-blonde hair and a rainbow colored shirt and just stood outside the ring, causing Jeff to nail him with a cross body to the outside. Apparently this was enough of a distraction that by the time Jeff returned to the ring, he missed a swanton bomb and was cradled by MVP for the basically clean pin.

2. Intergender Match For The Women’s And Intercontinental Titles: Beth Phoenix/Santino Marella defeated Mickie James/Kofi Kingston.

Before the match was a Maria segment where she was looking damn hot, and of course it had to be spoiled by the annoyance that is Santino. Because this was an intergender match, you had some mixing up of the men and women, albeit rarely. The match was boring but thankfully quick. Kofi only tagged in once or twice. And there was a lot of dumb comedy with Santino cowering to his girlfriend, and boring jokes from Cole and Lawler about who wears the pants in the relationship. In the end, Mickie almost pinned Santino but was grabbed by Phoenix and slammed with a Glam Slam for the pin.

After this was a segment continuing to build the feud between Shawn Michaels and Chris Jericho. Apparently Jericho injured Shawn’s eye at the previous payperview and he was supposed to retire. He came down with his surprisingly horse faced old lady and gave a heart felt but phony speech about hanging it up. Jericho then came down and tried to get Shawn to admit that Jericho ended his career. Shawn instead insulted Jericho, leading to him throwing a super fake looking punch and accidentally knocking out Shawn’s wife. This segment actually did a good job of continuing the feud, but should have been on Raw, not taking up half an hour of a payperview broadcast. Why didn’t Shawn and Jericho wrestle on this card? This was Summerslam after all, the number two payperview of the year supposedly. According to Scott and Justin, this was the best feud of 2008, so seriously, what the F?

3. ECW Title: Matt Hardy defeated Mark Henry by DQ.

This match was nothing. Hardy went for a quick twist of fate 30 seconds into the match, but was pulled from the ring by Tony Atlas, and Henry was DQed. Why was this the ECW title match? Why was Mark Henry the ECW champion? Why was this match a complete waste? The world may never know.

4. World Heavyweight Title: CM Punk defeated John Layfield.

While I didn’t expect much from JBL, I expected Punk to be able to carry him to a decent match. Instead this was a slow boring restholds fest with Punk seemingly dropping to Layfield’s level. Punk was busted wide open during the match after a botched spot that resulted in their heads colliding. Shortly after that, the match went to a conclusion with Punk picking up the win after a GTS.

5. WWE Title: Triple H defeated Great Khali.

I remember laughing so hard when this match was announced at the time. It made absolutely no sense. I think this was around the time Triple H came back as a cyborg with those segments showing him working out with all kinds of futuristic machines and morphing into an even bigger steroid monkey. Anyway, as you probably guessed this match was slow and boring. It kind of reminded me of Hulk Hogan vs. Zeus because Khali couldn’t do much other than nerve pinches and choke holds, and Triple H was also rather limited in his repertoire, at least against this kind of opponent. In the end, Triple H picked up the win after a pedigree.

6. Batista defeated John Cena.

This is a match that has happened many times over the years and is rarely any good. I don’t remember this feud from 2008 but I’m sure it sucked. The match this time is relatively short, has a slow pace, and is dogged down by a lot of restholds. Surprisingly, Batista kicks out of the FU (yes they still called it that at this point) and comes back to powerbomb Cena for the win. I don’t remember Batista getting a colossal push around this time, which surely he must have if he got a clean pin over Cena.

7. Hell In A Cell: Undertaker defeated Edge.

The only very good match on this card, but was carried by the stipulation. Undertaker already looked pretty old at this time, but was still able to hold his own in this type of match where he mainly just had to strike Edge, slam him into the cage walls etc. It was similar to many other HITC matches from the past. At one point, the cage wall fell down and the two brawled around the ring area, slamming each other into the announcer’s table etc. The ring steps also came into play and Edge was slammed on top of them. Eventually Undertaker made a big final push and delivered the Last Ride to score the pin.