Summerslam '96

Legacy Review

Summerslam '96

August 18, 1996 from the Gund Arena in Cleveland, OH

Commentary: Vince McMahon, Jim Ross and Mr. Perfect

The Slammy Award Winning Owen Hart def Savio Vega in 13:23- Owen's doing the old school heel trick of still wearing a cast on his arm long after any injury should have healed. Jim Cornette is noticeably absent, ostensibly to spend more time prepping Vader. The ref stops Owen from ambushing Vega from behind with the cast at the start. Vega tries to attack the "hurt" arm but Owen keeps squirting away. Owen ducks for a backdrop. Vega leapfrogs over, Owen celebrates like he did something as he was wont to do, and Vega finally gets his arm and runs it into the turnbuckles. Standard and pretty dull arm work follows. A speed run ends with a Vega monkey flip, hiptoss and armdrag. Owen Bret bumps and Vega rolls him up for 2. Owen's kickout sends Vega shoulder first into the post. Now it's Owen's turn to kill time with dull arm work. Just zero intensity here. Vega bites Owen's leg to get out of a hold! Camp Cornette attorney Clarence Mason comes out to cheer Owen on in Cornette's place. Vega hits a crossbody for 2. Owen enzuguri! He did that so good it really should have been his finisher. They have some more near fall tradeoffs and trade spinning heel kicks. Vega slam/legdrop combo and side suplex for 2. Owen gets a neckbreaker and missile dropkick for 2. He goes up top again. Vega crotches him and hits a back superplex, but on the way down the back of his head hit Owen's cast. Owen plays dead to sucker Vega in, then takes his cast off! It's healed! It's a Rusev Day miracle! He whacks Vega with the cast and puts it back on! Vega's out cold. Owen hooks on the Sharpshooter to add insult to injury and the ref calls it. There's a nice bit after when Mason goes to raise Owen's hand and he acts like the arm is hurt again. The match was fine once they stopped hitting the snooze button. **1/4

Justin "Hawk" Bradshaw (future JBL) comes out, bitches to Vince about something we can't make out, then attacks Vega from behind as he's being carried off! After that Todd Pettingill joins us from the boiler room to preview the Boiler Room Brawl. He finds Mankind skulking in the shadows. Mankind says "There's no place like home", has some tender moments with various pipes and ends his promo with the soon to be famous "Have a nice day!".

 

Four Way Elimination Match for the WWF Tag Team Championship: The Smoking Gunns (c) (w/Sunny) def The Bodydonnas, The Godwinns (w/Hillbilly Jim) and The New Rockers in 12:18- The New Rockers are former Rocker proper Marty Janetty and newcomer Lief Cassidy (soon to be known as jobber extraordinaire Al Snow) and for some reason are heels. The other three teams have been literally the entire tag team division in 1996 and none of them have exactly been setting the world on fire. Just about the opposite. JR even points out all three have had the tag titles in the calendar year. It's anyone can tag anyone else rules. Billy and Henry start with some speed vs power stuff. The crowd chants for the one person involved the match that's actually over. Hint: it's the one wearing the miniskirt and push up bra. Henry wheelbarrow slams Billy, who scrambles over to tag Zip. The Godwinns swap. Criss cross, then both guys run over to tag the Gunns and strut off! The Gunns are furious, refuse to wrestle each other, try to tag the Godwinns who jump off the apron, then Bart tags Zip back in. Janetty trips Zip and Billy pins him. The Bodydonnas are gone. The Rockers work over Henry to complete crowd apathy. The Gunns and Rockers work together a bit, until Cassidy accidentally clotheslines Billy. Both teams argue. The Rockers get discombobulated, Henry hits Janetty with the slop drop, and the Rockers are done. Henry and Bart do some incredibly not interesting stuff. Billy comes in full of fire and screaming. By this point in their run it's become very clear who's the worthwhile Gunn and who's the useless Gunn. Henry catches Billy and powerslams him. Hot tag to Phineas. Donnybrook-ish. Hillbilly Jim goes over and threatens to throw slop on Sunny, which is just plain dumb because he's distracting the ref from Phineas hitting Billy with the slop drop. Bart comes off the top rope, hits Phineas from behind, and Billy covers to retain the titles. For an early 4 way the initial booking and layout was not too bad, but the last half with the Gunns and Godwinns was just plain dreadful. Owen Hart and the Bulldog would soon become a full time tag team with the mission of saving the division. *

 

Sycho Sid def "The British Bulldog" Davey Boy Smith in 6:24- Once again Cornette is still in the locker room with Vader. Sid takes forever on his entrance, soaking up the cheers from the crowd. When they get going we have a shoulderblock standoff. Sid hits a clothesline and slam, and Bulldog powders. After a Sid headlock Bulldog counters a backdrop into a delayed suplex. Clarence Mason comes out again to take Cornette's place. Bulldog clotheslines Sid 360 to the floor, then again off the apron. He lifts Sid up to suplex him back in but drops him off the top rope instead. Sid decides he's sold enough, turns around and goes back on offense out of nowhere with chops and an avalanche. Bulldog dodges a second avalanche. Bulldog powerslam! Now Cornette's out and arguing with Mason, thinking Mason is encroaching on his turf. Bulldog tries to make peace. Sid slips out of a second powerslam and hits a choke slam. Powerbomb and good night. It's a Sid match. 1/2*

 

Goldust (w/Marlena) def Marc Mero (w/Sable) in 11:01- The story here is Goldust and his partner in weirdness Mankind have been going after Sable. After the lockup Goldust slaps Mero and hides behind the ref. Mero hits Japanese and regular armdrags. Golddust stumbles back and hides in the ropes. Mero ducks clotheslines and hits a crossbody for 2. Drop toe hold and arm work. Goldust hits the patented slide down uppercut. He backdrops Mero to the floor! Mero gets knocked off the apron into the rail. Mankind's wandered out of the boiler room to creep Sable out by calling her "mommy" again. Refs chase him off. Mero hits the fallback off the second rope. Inverted atomic drop. Kneelift. Goldust lifts Mero out of mounted punches and they both tumble over the top rope to the floor. Mero gets back in just to dive right back out with a somersault plancha! He hits a slingshot legdrop back in. Mero goes up top and hits a shooting star press! JR calls it the "Wild Thing", a new finisher he'd been teasing. The ref is distracted by Marlena and when he gets over Goldust is able to kick out. Mero hits a powerslam for 2. Goldust reverses a corner whip, hooks Mero up, and hits the Curtain Call for 3. After the bell Goldust stalks Sable until Mero chases him off. There were moments, but also a lot of dead time. Also it's really dumb booking to debut Mero's new finisher and not have him with with it. *3/4

Next we get clips of Ahmed Johnson's injury. He was supposed to defend the IC title against Faarooq Asad (Ron Simmons, now with the WWF) and his very silly hat but suffered a legit ruptured kidney that required emergency surgery. The angle was reworked to say Faarooq caused it. The injury forced President Gorilla Monsoon to vacate the IC title, and he set up a title tournament to start the next night on Raw. In the interview with Johnson we get a glimpse of very, very young Kevin Kelley! Who would have thought from his humble '90s WWF beginnings he would go on to become the best play by play man in the business with New Japan.

Back live Faarooq is out for an in-ring promo with manager Sunny, a strange pairing. Faarooq demands he be given the IC title belt now. Great badass intensity from Simmons here, allowing him to overcome his ridiculous outfit and get a foothold in WWF that would lead to better things soon. He would end up making it to the finals of the tournament for the vacant title, but lost it to Marc Mero.

After that is yet another video package (what is this, Wrestlemania 38?) recapping the Jake Roberts/Jerry Lawler feud. When Roberts returned to WWF earlier in the year it was as a born again Christian (legit) and recovering alcoholic (not so legit on the recovering part). Lawler played into this by offering to get him back on the wagon. Off the wagon. Whatever the binge drinking one is. Before the match starts Olympian and World's Strongest Man Mark Henry makes his WWF debut, joining commentary and getting a possibly legit lecture from Perfect on backstage handshake etiquette.

 

Jerry "The King" Lawler def Jake "The Snake" Roberts in 4:07- Lawler's got bottles of booze in every pocket and a huge Roberts snake-like bag. He takes his jacket off and he's got a Baltimore Ravens jersey on! Holy shit talk about nuclear heat in Cleveland. For those young'uns not quite up on NFL history, the Ravens were about to start their very first season after leaving Cleveland and temporarily killing off the locally beloved Cleveland Browns. Lawler cuts a long ass promo with a lot of weak comedian one liners before Roberts finally comes out. Lawler's got a surprise for him in his bag- a giant bottle of booze. Roberts gets Revelations out of his bag and sics him on Lawler. Lawler scurries away. The snake goes back in the bag and the bell finally rings. Lawler, shock of shock, stalls and grabs the mic to talk some more. Roberts attacks him on the floor. Slam on the floor. Lawler gets posted. He grabs a soda cup and splashes it in Roberts' face. Roberts gets tied in the ropes and Lawler gets one of the Jim Beam bottles out. Roberts fights loose. Short clothesline. Lawler uses ref Harvey Wippleman to get out of the DDT. He grabs the bottle and whacks Roberts in the throat with it! Cover for 3. After the bell Lawler pours the booze all over Roberts. Henry gets out of commentary and chases him off before he can do the same with the second bottle. Like a lot of Lawler's stuff during this period, this might have worked in Memphis in the '80s but not so much in front of a '90s WWF crowd. 1/4*

 

Boiler Room Brawl: Mankind def The Undertaker in 26:40-The rules are both guys start in the boiler room, then they have to fight out and make their way into the arena. Paul Bearer is waiting in the ring with the urn, and the first one to take the urn from Bearer is the winner. The camera follows Taker from behind as he enters the boiler room. He spends a few minutes slowly searching before Mankind ambushes him from behind with a pipe. The brawl is on. There's really not much to recap here, it's a fight in a boiler room. Commentary stays almost completely silent through the whole thing, only saying the occasional quiet word or short sentence. Not sure if that helps or hurts the overall package. In between all the slow fisticuffs there's trash can lids, trash cans, pipes, and fire extinguishers. What I want to know is, why is there an almost completely full trash can in the boiler room? Hardly anyone goes in there. Are there Burger King wrappers from like 1983 still in there? There's also a couple of "transmission difficulties" with a bunch of static, which was actually WWF making edits to the pretape. Mankind climbs a ladder and Taker pulls it down, making Mankind fall into a small row of boxes for Foley bump #1. The fight continues at the exit door. Mankind gets out first and tries to barricade the door but Taker forces it open. They crawl and brawl through the locker room hallway with lots of other wrestlers looking on. Mankind dumps hot coffee all over Taker! That lets him get into the arena proper first. Taker stops him by breaking a 2x4 over his back. They slow brawl up to the ring. Mankind takes the floor mat off and piledrives Taker on the concrete! But he's not down for long as he stops Mankind getting in the ring. He slingshots Mankind off the apron and Mankind splats on the concrete! Foley bump #2. Taker gets in the ring, gets down on one knee and poses for the urn. Paul Bearer seems oddly uninterested. He turns his back on Taker! What's going on here? Mandible Claw from Mankind! Taker goes down. Bearer is laughing! Mankind does the Taker pose on one knee. Bearer polishes the urn and starts to give it to him! Taker's still got some life left so Mankind puts him down again. Bearer slaps Taker! He hits Taker with the urn! That takes the last bit of HP Taker had left. Bearer happily hands Mankind the urn to win the match and they leave together in triumph. A bunch of druids come out and carry Taker's body out in preparation for his next resurrection. This was an interesting idea not so well executed and way, way too long. Bearer's heel turn is shocking and pretty well done. It would have been better if he'd hit Taker with the urn right away instead of the attempt at a slow burn. In some ways the boiler room portion of this was the embryonic version of the modern cinematic match, which would really be brought into prominence with Matt Hardy's superb Broken Universe mini-movies in Impact and WWE, and then became in vogue with WWE during the pandemic as a way to have epic matches with no crowds (with the Firefly Fun House Match being the best of them at Wrestlemania 36, an absolute masterpiece from Bray Wyatt). *1/2

 

WWF Championship: "The Heartbreak Kid" Shawn Michaels (c) (w/Jose Lothario) def Vader (w/Jim Cornette) in 22:58- Vader tosses the stairs around during his entrance, as if he needed to look more badass. He's Vader. He's also looking to become the first man ever to win the IWGP Heavyweight, WCW World and WWF Titles (yes I know, Hulk Hogan was IWGP Champion, but it was the early version of the title so I'm not counting it). After lockup stalemates Vader starts laying in the potato shots. Huge clothesline. Shawn blocks a big boot, does a leg takedown and hits a low dropkick to a sitting Vader. Vader goes to toss Shawn out. Shawn counters and Vader goes to the floor. Baseball slide. Over the top tope! Double ax handle off the top back in. Hurricanrana! Shawn gets up on Vader's shoulders and ranas Vader down to the floor! Shawn grabs the top rope and skins the cat back in. Plancha! Vader catches him and slams him on the floor! He lifts Shawn up on his shoulder, carries him back up the stairs and drops him in the ring. Corner potatoes. Vader suplex. Shawn flip! A second one and he goes to the floor! Shawn flips out of suplexes and tries to come back but keeps getting cut off by stiff Vader punches. Vader misses an avalanche but kills Shawn with a clothesline. Shawn charges and gets tossed over the top by Vader but skins the cat again. He tries to scissor Vader with his legs but Vader lifts him up and TOSSES him clear across the ring! Cover for 2. Vader hooks on his cobra clutch like sleeper. Shawn fights out, hitting a running knee and clothesline that Vader completely no sells. He tries to slide under but Vader stops him and steps on him! Shawn gets a desperation low blow in and the clothesline after takes Vader down. Shawn goes up top, looks like he's going for the elbow but seems to change his mind midair, lands, and starts kicking and bitching at Vader. Another infamous mid-'90s Shawn in-ring legit tempter tantrum. I couldn't see what Vader might have done wrong there, he was just laying down waiting for the move. A Shawn crossbody sends both guys tumbling to the floor. Vader presses Shawn and drops him on the guardrail! Just as commentary is talking about Vader needing to make sure Shawn doesn't get counted out, Shawn gets counted out. Cornette gets on the mic and demands the match be restarted. After a minute Shawn agrees. Vader attacks him on the aisle. He gets Lothario fired up so Hebner will hold him off and Cornette gets a racket shot in. Avalanche. Vader belly to belly suplex for 2. Shawn fights out of a powerbomb. He ducks multiple clotheslines and hits the flying forearm! Kip up. Elbow off the top. The band tunes up. Cornette grabs his boot. Shawn grabs the racket and whacks Vader with it. The bell rings for a DQ. As the ring fills up with every zebra and official in the building Cornette gets on the mic again, accuses Shawn of getting DQ'd on purpose and wants the match restarted again. Monsoon is in the ring and agrees. Slugfest. Another Shawn forearm. Another elbow off the top. Superkick! VADER KICKS OUT! Hebner gets run over and takes a tumble to the floor. Vader hits the powerbomb! Backup ref Mike Chioda runs in, but the delay was enough for Shawn to kick out. Vader drags Shawn to the corner. He goes to the second rope and starts loading up the Vader Bomb. No. Change of plans. He goes up top. THE VADERSAULT MISSES! Shawn hits a moonsault and that gets the pin! Really good match that was held back from being the classic it absolutely could have been by the overbooking and possibly some personal issues. ***1/2

I will contend until my dying breath that Vader should have won the title here. In fact, he was scheduled to win it until Shawn threw a fit and flat out refused to put him over. In this era whatever Shawn wanted, Shawn got. This might have been the reason for the screwy booking, to try to make everyone happy. That change in plans led to the heel turn and big push for Sid later in the year.

OVERALL SHOW THOUGHTS- Another '96 show with a whole lot of crap leading to a great Shawn Michaels main event. With WCW setting the wrestling world on fire with the early months of the NWO angle this was not the best counterpunch. This will not be remembered in the annals of great Summerslams, though the Boiler Room Brawl is a historical curio that should be checked out once, and Bearer's heel turn would have repercussions for years.

OVERALL SHOW GRADE: D+