What’s your favorite SummerSlam moment?

For nearly 30 years, SummerSlam has been one of the biggest pay-per-views in the WWE. We’ve seen great matches like Shawn Michaels vs. Hulk Hogan in 2005 and Bret Hart vs The Undertaker in 1997. On Sunday, Aug. 20, the WWE will air its 30th edition of SummerSlam from Brooklyn’s Barclays Center, and it has the potential to give us a few different moments to join the pantheon of all-time great SummerSlam memories.

Many of you are old enough to remember the inaugural pay-per-view at Madison Square Garden in 1988. Others weren’t born to see that but still avidly watched more recent editions of SummerSlam. Regardless of when you started watching wrestling, you probably remember at least one match that left you in awe. Many of our writers had their own thoughts to share on their favorite matches, so we’ve brought them together to share them with you.

I was only 7 when I saw The Cerebral Assassin and The Showstopper tear the roof off the Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Uniondale, New York. Michaels is my favorite wrestler of all time, so seeing him captivate the crowd was always a treat for me.

Michaels looked like his old self in this bout. After missing four years of action due to a gruesome back injury he suffered in 1998, I thought Triple H, his former D-Generation X brother, would beat him with ease. But The Heartbreak Kid stole the show and won the match.

My favorite part of that match was when HBK hit Triple H with a flying cross-body through a table that was outside of the ring. I remember Jim Ross screaming, “God, the carnage!” after the maneuver. Michaels and Triple H were once friends before this match. They broke rules and were unapologetic about it. But at SummerSlam in 2002, they were trying to break each other. Triple H did that after Michaels won, nearly breaking a sledgehammer over Michaels’ surgically repaired back. — Kaleel Weatherly

There are a lot of reasons why I watch and love pro wrestling. Sometimes it’s for the awe-inspiring athletic feats. Sometimes it’s for the pulpy, often ridiculous storylines. Sometimes it’s for the raw visceral emotion — the violence, the pain and tears, good and evil, the thrill of victory and agony of defeat. The spectacle of sports, combat, theater, and the human struggle all combining into one unique experience. When it works, and works well, pro wrestling can sometimes be the most beautiful art form on the planet.

And then sometimes, I just want to watch Shawn Michaels cartoonishly oversell the offense of a geriatric Hulk Hogan because he’s a big ol’ baby about losing this match and never getting his win back. You do you, Heartbreak Kid. — Jon Benne

If there’s one thing old WWE loved more than big guys, it was putting two big guys in a main event together — and if there’s one thing WWE loved more than that, it was creating fake versions of superstars. Enter ‘94, when Undertaker was booked against fake Undertaker. The story being that ’Taker had left Ted DiBiase for Paul Bearer, so The Million Dollar Man got his own version, or something.

This match was a train wreck. You know how long ’Taker’s entrance is? Now multiply that. It took almost eight minutes to start the dang match and then it was a slow, plodding disaster. Credit where it’s due to WWE: It found a reasonable enough Undertaker facsimile, but the only way you could tell them apart was their glove color and Underfaker’s lack of skill:

At least Underfaker could sell a tombstone. — James Dator

Only 30 seconds into the WWE World Heavyweight Championship match and Lesnar hits Cena with an F5. Cena kicked out, as he typically does, but Lensar and Paul Heyman’s reaction right after was more important. Lesnar smiled. He smelled blood and went right at Cena. You know the rest. German suplex after German suplex after German suplex.

For most of the match, all you hear is a little kid screaming, “Let’s go Cena,” as John Cena lay on the mat while Lesnar stands there just waiting to deliver more punishment. It was sad but it wasn’t hopeless. Even with Brock dominating the match, everyone thought that Cena would come back like he did during that match at Extreme Rules, where Brock did much of the same but LOLCenaWins made an appearance via an Attitude Adjustment to the steel steps.

But that didn’t happen! There was no attempt at creating a familiar wrestling narrative where one wrestler gets beaten down only to come back and win. There was no moral victor. There was barely even any offense from Cena. This was Brock Lesnar embarrassing the current World Heavyweight Champion.

We were also gifted this wonderful GIF of Lesnar’s best impression of a video game boss level.

Two friends who saw it live told me after the event that parents and their children were so angry at the result that they complained to the staff at Staples Center, asking for their money back. That’s how unexpected the result was. — Hector Diaz

I freely admit that I didn’t watch this match until recently, because I definitely wasn’t watching wrestling when I was that young. But watching The British Bulldog, Davey Boy Smith, take on his brother-in-law, Bret “The Hitman” Hart, in front of almost 81,000 people at Wembley Stadium in England for the Intercontinental Championship and win was something special.

The match meant everything to Davey Boy, and he showed it with the performance of his life. Always an excellent performer and sometimes an unappreciated one, he would never hold a bigger title in the then-WWF, with only a single Tag Team Championship run and a couple of runs with lower-rung titles like the Hardcore and European championships to his name otherwise.

Davey Boy Smith may have never won the big one in the WWE, but on one summer’s night, in front of a sold-out Wembley Stadium in his home country, The British Bulldog was the biggest star in the world, and he won an absolutely incredible match to do it. — Conor Dowley

What’s your favorite SummerSlam moment? What match or spot or moment made you stand up and has stuck with you ever since? Sound off in the comments, because we want to hear it!