After an interesting first night of SummerSlam, it’s time for the second night.
Like last night, there are six matches on the card. Four titles are on the line, including the World Heavyweight Title that Roman Reigns will be defending against Seth Rollins.
U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis, Minnesota is the host of the event once again. At the start of the pre-show, WrestleTix reported that there were 994 tickets left for purchase. Tonight’s setup of the venue features a total of 34,080 seats, so there will be slightly less fans in attendance tonight than last night, which is weird to me. You’d think Sunday would be the “bigger” show, so you’d want more fans in the building for this, but hey, someone somewhere is being paid a lot of money to make these types of decisions.
Let’s have some fun.
Finn Balor vs Sami Zayn – #1 Contender Match for the Undisputed WWE Title
Unless I’ve missed it, I don’t think they’ve announced when the winner of this match gets their title shot, but I would imagine it will be soon. CM Punk retained the Undisputed WWE Title last night, so he’s certainly watching this with great interest.
Before the match begins, the newly reinstated Smackdown General Manager Nick Aldis walks out on stage and reveals that he has made the announcement to add a participant to the match. Aldis, who appears to have a gnarly black left eye, brings out Gunther as Sami Zayn blows a gasket in the ring.
As we’re about to have a Triple Threat, Nick Aldis is heard again, saying that he never said he was only adding one name to the match, saying that this is actually a Fatal Four-Way. After a few seconds of silence, the music of Kevin Owens hits, and the crowd goes nuts. Sami goes from blowing a gasket to looking on as if he’s seen a ghost. His jaw has damn near hit the mat, and he hasn’t moved in multiple minutes. Cameras catch multiple people crying during KO’s entrance, and I have to admit… I just about shed a tear myself. As a fan, I’m happy to see him back in the ring, but seeing how much his return means to him, I’m more happy for him to be back. This marks Kevin’s first match back since March 1st, 2025, when he faced Sami (of course) in an Unsanctioned Match at the Elimination Chamber pay-per-view.
I don’t know how he did it, but Finn is wrestling this match with what appears to be an even lower body fat percentage than he normally has. You can basically see the man’s individual muscle fibers all throughout his body… you know, if you’re concerned with things like that.
Not only is KO back, but he’s wrestling as if he never left in the first place. He’s not wrestling a “safe” match at all. It’s beautiful to see.
Boy, these guys are wrestling as if there’s a World Title shot on the line or something. We’ve been getting absolutely non-stop action from the sound of the opening bell.
I still can’t believe KO is back.
Now I really can’t believe KO is back, because he just won the match to become the brand new #1 Contender for the Undisputed WWE Title. I wouldn’t say the finish came out of nowhere, but I was still surprised, as I was expecting the match to go longer, especially once Gunther and Owens were added. It didn’t even hit the ten-minute mark, but it’s still a 3.5Â Star match for me, though, and a 5 Star moment. That easily could’ve been a much higher grade, but there have been Maxxine Dupri matches on random episodes of Raw that lasted longer than this.
I’m so happy. It’s hilarious that Gunther was even added in the first place, but I can’t complain. He was really good here, looking like a legit threat from the start.
Trick Williams vs Baron Corbin – WWE United States Title Match
I don’t know if it’s a quiet crowd in general, or if it’s because the stadium is technically half-full, but the crowd has been relatively quiet. They popped for Kevin Owens, without a doubt, but the overall level of excitement didn’t seem to last.
LOL @ Lil Yachty missing his spot. He had the kendo stick at ringside, and while the ref was distracted with Trick, you hear Corbin yell “Yachty! Yachty!” as he looks over at ringside. Corbin stalls for another second or two, then hits the ropes, only to get hit in the back with the kendo stick by Yachty. Whoops. To make it even better, the spot was for nothing, as it didn’t even lead to the end of the match.
You know what did lead to the end of the match, though?
Corbin grabs the United States Title and goes to bring it in the ring, but Boat stops him by grabbing the title. They stand on the ring apron, but when Trick goes to break it up, it accidentally sends Boat flying off the apron and crashing through a table that Trick set up at ringside earlier. While the ref is distracted YET AGAIN, Corbin hits Trick with the title belt, then hits him with End Of Days, and we have ourselves a brand new champion.
WWE created a brand new United States Title belt, put it up for sale on the WWE Shop website, and then almost immediately switched the title to someone else that will undoubtedly bring the normal title back. Makes perfect sense to me.
3 Stars. Nothing super offensive or anything, but there wasn’t much to it.
Charlotte Flair vs Chelsea Green vs Lash Legend vs Jade Cargill vs Tiffany Stratton – Five-Way Ladder Match for the Interim WWE Women’s Title
Rhea Ripley is the current WWE Women’s Champion, but she is out indefinitely with a “slight tear” in her meniscus. WWE is apparently confident enough that Rhea will be able to return soon enough that they didn’t take the title from her, but not confident enough that that she’ll return soon that they avoided creating an interim title.
Yeah, this crowd seems really quiet.
There has been a lack of crazy spots in the early stages of the match. Ladders have been used left and right, but not a lot of the typical spots you expect in these matches.
The ring is mic’d up too much, and there isn’t enough crowd noise to balance it out. There has been multiple spots in this match where you can hear the women speaking to each other to give cues. I just heard Tiffany tell Lash that she was ready to take a bump atop a ladder.
Tiffany climbs to the top of a ladder, but she is interrupted by Chelsea, who tips the ladder over, sending her new friend crashing over the top rope and landing on the other competitors at ringside. The crowd wakes up and goes crazy as Chelsea climbs the ladder. Right when she gets to the top, though, Michin and B-Fab hit the scene and attack her to big heel heat.
We end up with Chelsea essentially tied to the Tree Of Woe on a ladder, and the other four competitors climbing that ladder and another ladder next to it. One by one, the other four women get knocked off, leaving… Chelsea… and the crowd roars to life again. Chelsea rises from the dead, pulls herself up, climbs the ladder, and pulls the belt down to become the new interim WWE Women’s Champion. The crowd loved that.
That was a pretty tame Ladder Match, all things considered. The last couple minutes featured a couple bigger spots, but outside of that, there wasn’t much. It wasn’t a BAD match. Just something that you’re not expecting when you watch matches like this. 3.25 Stars, but I applaud the company for going with the fun booking decision here.
Danhausen vs Dominik Mysterio – Human Monies On A Pole Match
Well… here we go. This one is either going to be hilarious, or it’s going to completely derail the entire show. There’s no real in between. After that segment on Raw involving these two, Joe Hendry, Ryan Garcia, and more, I’m not as confident that this is going to be good. That was an AWFUL segment from beginning to end. We’ll see how this goes.
There’s no disqualifications here, so it doesn’t take long for The Judgment Day to get involved. JD McDonagh shows up and attacks Danhausen, but he doesn’t get to celebrate for long, as the Minihausens appear from under the ring to fight him.
Joe Hendry is here now, taking JD out. Both Danhausen and Dom climb to the top turnbuckle to take the money down, but Danhausen gets crotched on the top rope. He not-so-secretly scoots away from the turnbuckle multiple times, then curses Dom, causing pyro to shoot out of the ring post, knocking Dom to the mat. Danhausen climbs the buckle, pulls the human monies down, and wins the match.
After the match, Danhausen starts tossing the money out to fans in the crowd, and the bag is revealed to be a mixture of real one dollar bills and the Danhausen dollars that are being sold on WWE Shop, because of course.
There was way more match involving JD McDonagh, the Minihausens, and Joe Hendry than there was involving just Danhausen and Dominik Mysterio. I wasn’t expecting a 30-minute singles classic here or anything, but that’s it? Really? 2 Stars. That was a waste of time for anyone other than the biggest of Danhausen fans.
Remember when a WrestleMania crowd went absolutely crazy for Dominik and looked like they were damn near going to turn Dom face overnight? That seems like decades ago. It’s crazy that nothing ever came of that.
Penta vs Chad Gable – WWE Intercontinental Title Match
If you’re a longtime reader of my work, you’ll know that one of my all-time favorite wrestling tropes is wrestling fans not knowing how to count or having absolutely zero rhythm. That continued during Gable’s entrance. He gets to the ring and does his “Skol” hand claps, and the crowd lasts approximately 1.7 claps before completely losing the rhythm, with some clapping too quickly, and others clapping too slowly. Never change, wrestling fans.
Good pops for both men during their entrances, but then the match begins, and there might as well be 500 people in the building.
The story in the early stages is that Gable may have “injured” the same shoulder that put him on the shelf for all those months to begin with. Penta is working a smart match, targeting the shoulder once he realized Gable was favoring it.
Coming out of a mid-ring strike exchange, Gable has a tiny bit of blood on his forehead.
Ankle Lock! Penta fights, but Gable drops to the mat and locks it in! Tap! We have a brand new Intercontinental Champion, and Gable is immediately in tears.
After the match, Penta takes the title belt, but does so to put it on Gable. They shake hands and hug, and Penta leaves the ring, allowing for Gable to celebrate in the ring with his wife, their children, and his parents. Adorably, his mom’s shirt says “Chad Gable #1 Fan” and his dad’s shirt says “Chad Gable #2 Gan.” As Gable grabs a microphone, a “you deserve it” chant breaks out. He celebrates and cuts a brief promo to a nice pop, and he is greeted by a mascot representing Mug root beer. The mascot hands two cans of root beer to him, and Chad downs them both like “Stone Cold” Steve Austin downed his Steveweisers.
This was yet another match that was good, but looked like it could’ve built to something even better if it was given more time. I’m pretty sure this was the fourth of five matches today that ended before the ten-minute mark. If it did reach ten minutes, it didn’t do it by much. This could’ve been a classic with the right amount of time. Instead, it’s another match that gets 3.5 Stars. Really good, but not great.
Roman Reigns vs Seth Rollins – World Heavyweight Title Match
Main event time.
For Seth’s entrance, the old Shield intro begins, and we get a far-off shot of someone standing on the stage that looks like Shield-era Rollins. Then, the music stops, and pillars of flames are seen. Seth’s normal music is then heard, and the Shield-era Rollins person disappears, giving us the usual wildly-dressed Seth of the last few years.
Social media is chock full of people wondering if we’re getting the return of Dean Ambrose here. Whenever Roman and Seth are involved in something, people are expecting Ambrose to return as if Jon Moxley isn’t currently doing anything at the moment. If Ambrose shows up, it would be one of the biggest shocks in recent wrestling history. There hasn’t even been an inkling of a rumor that Moxley’s AEW contract is up, and you know they aren’t just going to “loan” him to WWE for an appearance.
They’re fighting through the crowd. Slowly, but fighting nonetheless. It’s more of a “we’ll walk through the stadium together and punch each other in the face every now and then” situation.
Once they make it back to ringside, Seth goes to Spear Roman through the barricade, but Roman catches him in a choke, then picks Seth up and powerbombs him through the Spanish Announce Table. With Seth still selling that, Roman clears off the English table and goes to powerbomb Seth through that, too… but Seth reverses, and he powerbombs Roman through the table instead. My, how the tables have… tabled… or something like that.
I didn’t mention it in the previous paragraph, but it was hilarious that Seth and Roman spent several minutes roaming throughout the city of Minneapolis, grabbing dinner together, then returned to ringside and had the ref begin his ten count for them. Brilliant.
We’ve reached the “I’ll kick out of your finisher and you can kick out of my finisher” stage of the match, and the crowd is waking up for it.
Ha! Now we’ve reached the “I’ll hit you with your own finisher, but you kick out, and then I’ll kick out when you hit me with my own finisher” stage of the match. The crowd is loving it.
Ref bump! Here comes the shenaniganery!
Even without the shenaniganery, Seth and Roman are now hitting with each other with Dean Ambrose’s signature moves. Does that count as Dean making his return?
Ref bump, part deux! The shenaniganery never came last time, but that was also just the ref being knocked over. This one came after an accidental Spear from Roman, so we’re not going to have any officials for at least the next month or two.
Seth grabs a steel chair, but before he can use it, Roman turns around and pops him in the mouth. Roman has the chair now, and he goes to hit Seth with it. Seth is ready, standing up against the ropes, yelling “COME ON!” to Roman, but Roman drops the chair. Roman says that it’s just the two of them now, and they go to a strike battle in the middle of the ring. There’s still no referee, but there’s also still no interference of any kind yet.
Back-to-back Spears from Roman, but the referee is only just now coming out of his coma at ringside. A third Spear lands, and this time, the ref is in the ring to count the one, two, and three! Roman retains the title.
That was your modern-day WWE main event epic, especially when Roman Reigns is involved. It had a slow build, lots of trash talking, and it picked up tremendously in the second half to really draw the crowd in. Tons of drama, tons of near falls, and that leads to a 4.5 Star match.
After the match, Roman and Seth sit in opposite corners staring at each other. Roman gets up and walks to the center of the ring, putting his fist out to Seth like they used to do as members of The Shield. Seth, who wore a Shield-like mask to the ring, has that mask in his hands as he gets up and walks to Roman. Seth puts the mask down on the mat in between them, and he puts his fist out, and the symbolism is strong. Roman remains in the ring to celebrate as Seth leaves, and we go off the air with the champ, who was once signed with the Minnesota Vikings, talking to members of the current Vikings squad in the front row, telling them that it’s time for them to make the playoffs and win a Super Bowl.
The opening match could’ve, and should’ve, been a classic with more time. Penta vs Chad Gable could’ve, and should’ve, been a classic with more time. More time had to be given to commercial breaks and showing random celebrities in the crowd, though, as is the usual with WWE pay-per-view events these days.
If you took bits and pieces of both nights, you’d end up with one great SummerSlam event. Spread out over two nights, though, and you get a little bit of a mixed bag. Some great, some good, some bad, and some that didn’t belong on pay-per-view to begin with. That’s what you get from WWE in 2026.
Thank you for taking the time to read my work. You’ll never know just how much I truly appreciate you. Be good to each other. I’ll be back in another 16 hours or so with my usual weekly column.
