Dolph Ziggler (with Vickie Guerrero) defends the Intercontinental Championship against Kofi Kingston in the opening match. Kingston is really good here, taking an insane belly flop on the floor in the opening minutes and not taking his foot off the gas for the duration of the match. Ziggler works hard to slow him down, eventually locking him into a sleeper hold before The Nexus shows up and jumps both guys, ending the match with a whimper. The crowd was into this, both guys were putting in a ton of effort, and while I know these two wrestled each other hundreds of times over the years and I usually wouldn't care too much about a match like this, they really had won me over when the unfortunate finish put an end to things. This was on its way to being at least slightly above-average, but the ending wrecked an otherwise hot opener. I'm guessing this was Vince's way of making sure that the Nexus got even more heel heat before the main event. (2/5)
Next up...Alicia Fox defends her Diva's Championship against the returning Melina. I'm not sure if Fox got knocked loopy early in the match or she was just woefully out of her depth. Either that or she is putting on one of the most realistic selling jobs ever. Melina sells knee damage but Fox either forgot that that was going to be a key theme in the match or wasn't experienced enough to realize that Melina was trying to build a match around working her knee. Things go from not great to bad on commentary as Striker and Lawler make it clear that Fox is ignoring the obvious knee injury to go after Melina's shoulder for no reason. The match only goes around 5 minutes and ends with Melina delivering a move not dissimilar to Miz's Skull Crushing Finale, but because it wasn't established as Melina's new finisher, the audience gives it no reaction and seems genuinely shocked that she wins with it. After the match, LayCool show up and get into it with Melina. I forget if this led to a unification between the Women's Championship and the Divas Championship...? This was objectively bad. (0.5/5)
CM Punk, Luke Gallows, and Joey Mercury teamed up to face Big Show in the next contest. These sorts of matches are super predictable as Punk, the leader of the Straight Edge Society, tried to avoid Big Show at every turn as Gallows and Mercury played his bumbling stooges. Unsurprisingly, the Straight Edge Society team disbanded not too long after looking completely impotent here. A year later, CM Punk would be the most talked-about wrestler on the roster having dropped his "pipebomb promo" and airing his grievances, which probably included having his stable - who got great reactions - treated like cowards and losers and losing a handicap match to a noticeably not-in-shape Big Show. (1.5/5)
The Miz makes his way to the ring to cut a promo about how big of a star he is and how much the WWE's various main eventers are begging him to join their team against The Nexus. Miz ends the lengthy promo by saying that he will, in fact, fight for Team WWE.
The WWE Champion, Sheamus, defended his title against Randy Orton next. Sheamus and Orton worked a slow, methodical pace for the majority of the match. This is the kind of bout that might explain why so many people found Orton boring as a babyface and not all that much more interesting as a heel, though, to be fair, Orton does have the crowd fully engaged for his comeback. A "slow burn" match can be really, really good, but it takes the right competitors with the right amount of hope spots to take the crowd on a journey. It also helps when the destination is good. At this point, Sheamus didn't have the arsenal of cut-offs or signature moves or even the confidence to keep a 20-minute match interesting and it shows during the perfunctory rest hold segments and even in his body language at times. Orton is fine, but he had such better matches than this throughout his career that its almost as if he's checked out for everything but his fiery comeback...which ultimately leads to a solid closing sequence that runs into a creative dead-end as Sheamus gets disqualified when he brings a chair into the ring and the ref ends up on the floor. After the match, Orton hits the RKO on a table to tease a Miz cash-in, but we don't get it. Another bullshit ending which, if you count the fact that Big Show didn't really get his hands on CM Punk, makes for the third one of the evening. (2/5)
The World Heavyweight Championship match follows - Kane defending against Rey Mysterio. The storyline coming into this match was that Kane, who had cashed in his Money in the Bank briefcase on Mysterio (who had won the title a couple months prior at the Fatal Fourway PPV) at the previous pay-per-view, now blamed Rey for attacking the Undertaker. I'm not sure of all the details, but everybody knew that it was actually Kane who had put Taker on the shelf except Michael Cole, who was now a semi-heel announcer. Anyway...these two faced each other hundreds and hundreds of times over the years and while they never had an outright bad match, I can't recall them having a particularly great one. This isn't it either. Mysterio puts in a great effort, but he was fairly banged up around this time and was working through various injuries, if I'm not mistaken, eventually taking off time the following summer (which just shows how much of a trooper he was as a worker and should've never been threatened with having dates added to his contract years later). Kane eventually wins with a chokeslam after a 13 minute match that feels longer because of how plodding Kane works. After the match, they do a great tease with Kane opening up the casket he had brought down and everyone expecting Taker to be inside only for him not to be inside until the second time he opened it up. Taker asks Rey if he's the one who attacked him and Rey tells him no, which leads to Taker grabbing Kane by the throat. Kane responds by grabbing Taker by the throat and they have a scuffle that ends with Kane tombstoning the Undertaker. (2/5)
Main event time - Team Cena vs. Team Nexus. This match is a bit infamous for its finish, but I'll start from the top. After Team Nexus - Wade Barrett, Skip Sheffield (Ryback), Michael Tarver, Justin Gabriel, Darren Young, Heath Slater, and David "A-List" Otunga - make their arrival, John Cena leads his team, followed by Edge, Chris Jericho, Bret Hart, John Morrison, R-Truth and....not The Miz, but rather Daniel Bryan, who had been "cut" from Team Nexus for some storyline reason I can't remember (but had actually been briefly "fired" from the company for choking Justin Roberts during the Nexus' on-screen debut). Speaking of Bryan, he comes out swinging and looks awesome here, submitting Darren Young. From there, Team WWE maintained control as John Morrison eliminated Michael Tarver, definitely the most forgotten member of Nexus. Down 7-on-5, the future Ryback got to shine by eliminating Morrison and R-Truth. From here, things get a bit messier as Bret Hart, whose offense still looked excellent but was clearly and noticeably unable to actually take any sort of real strike or bump, got himself disqualified. Bret Hart's "return" in 2010 is one of my least favorite things in WWE history (and I say that as a fairly big Hitman fan) as it was just sad to see him pretending to "compete" when it was so obvious that his limitations prevented him from actually working a real match. I'll go on record in saying that his WrestleMania match against Vince is one of my all-time least favorite bouts in history too. Anyway...with Nexus now in the lead, Edge and Jericho rally and eliminate Sheffield and Otunga, but then get eliminated themselves. Being bad sports, they take their anger out on Cena as Team Nexus is up 3-on-2. Being up 3-on-2 and then losing wouldn't have been that bad, especially considering that Cena was Superman and Team Nexus were still just "rookies." Plus, though Michael Cole referred to his experiences traveling the world as the greatest technical wrestler of the decade as merely being "in the minors," Daniel Bryan had proven in the first 3 minutes of the match that he was an insanely talented grappler (and also eliminated Health Slater to tie things up around the 30-minute mark). But, in an effort to make sure Nexus looked strong - without actually letting them win - Team Nexus dominates for the next several minutes and gets some unsolicited help from The Miz (who takes Bryan out with a shot from his Money in the Bank briefcase). So, the last 5 minutes involve Barrett and Gabriel (who arguably had the best showing of all of Nexus besides Sheffield) absolutely annihilating Cena only for Cena to make a miraclous and very, very quick comeback, pinning Gabriel after he misses his 450 splash and then, less than 2 minutes later, forcing Wade Barrett to submit to one of his weakest STFs ever. Its a putrid ending to a match that, considering its lack of set pieces and table spots, might have been in the running for being one of the best elimination-based/Survivors-type matches of all time based completely on the characters involved (no small feat considering that, prior to this match, the Nexus 7 weren't individually established all that well). But instead of being considered the launching pad for future stars like Bryan, Barrett, Ryback, and Gabriel, it is a match that is more known for being the match that was the beginning of the end of Barrett's potential main event run and the match that ended up necessitating a complete rehaul of Ryback's character. It didn't end up doing anything for Gabriel except clearly defining him as a guy who did "flippy shit" but couldn't put away a true superstar like Cena. The Miz got to be the one to put away by Daniel Bryan - not Slater (who would've had quite a feather in his cap by being able to claim he'd eliminated three members of Team WWE) or the aforementioned Gabriel or Sheffield or even Wade Barrett, the leader of Team Nexus who didn't get a single true elimination for himself. The WWE would continue the Nexus storyline for the next few months, but they were never a real threat after this and certainly didn't seem like a stable that was altering the landscape of the company. As a match, this could've been not just good or great, but the kind of match that one could've went back to years later and regarded as ground zero for a completely different WWE reality - the way we look back at the 96' King of the Ring tournament and the "What Ifs" that surround it - but because of the finish, this match means absolutely nothing...aside from just being a pretty good match. (3/5)
With a Kwang Score of 1.83-out-of-5, SummerSlam 2010 is a show to avoid. While the action is generally good (this is around the time when the WWE men's roster became so stacked with well-trained wrestlers that terrible booking decisions and lame gimmicks caused way more damage than outright lack of talent), there are too many head-scratching moments and poorly thought-out finishes to recommend any match on this show. The opener is fought with great urgency...but is then cut short by a Nexus run-in for no real reason. Seeing the Straight Edge Society get squashed by Big Show isn't fun or exciting. Alicia Fox vs. Melina is an unfortunate sloppy mess and while Fox would improve in the ring in the years following, she was always a much better character than wrestler and was miscast for most of her career. Sheamus/Orton starts slow, heats up nicely, and then falls apart with a bullshit ending. Kane vs. Mysterio is not very good either, though at least it does end with a cool Undertaker return. The main event is notorious for its "safe" finish and the fact that it buried The Nexus, though there are some genuinely good sequences and spots sprinkled in. Still, as a whole, this show disappoints and veers off-course more often than it entertains.
FINAL RATING - DUDleyville
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