What we learned from SummerSlam 2017: Braun Strowman is the greatest wrestler of all time

SummerSlam was six hours long, but it didn’t feel quite that lengthy, and not just because Barclays’ security kept fans from entering the arena in a timely fashion that would have allowed them to, you know, watch the wrestling they had paid for and likely traveled to see.

Don’t worry, I’m not that bitter about still not being able to say I’ve seen the Hardy Boyz wrestle. I’m just going to bring it up here in this space on my platform that other people will see, for no reason whatsoever.

Anyway, no time for all that. Let’s dive in to a show that both changed the landscape of WWE and also kept quite a bit the same... but not really.

Not everything can be on the main show, because the main show is four hours long and WWE basically schedules five hours of matches. You know this going in, however, so you’re watching before the 7 p.m. “start” time, which means that Usos vs. New Day was, for all intents and purposes, the opener that got everyone hyped for SummerSlam even though it was on the pre-show.

What we learned: Near falls! Tag team tandem moves! Exciting sequences that led to unexpected places! This was one of the New Day’s better tag matches since the group entered the championship scene a couple of years back. And while a lot of that is thanks to their growth as a unit since Xavier Woods decided he deserved praise for his ring work, too, you have to credit the Usos here as well.

Maybe you prefer the Young Bucks to the Usos. Here’s the thing, though: You don’t have to choose. There are plenty of superkicks to go around, whether your gimmick is that you’re here to break knees on your way to the top, or it’s hey, remember the ‘90s?

John Cena hadn’t won a match at SummerSlam since 2010 when he ground The Nexus into a fine paste that had no practical use. He did the same here with Corbin, who didn’t look bad or anything in any way other than he’s been basically shoved headfirst out of the main event in less than a week.

What we learned: Corbin failed to cash in the men’s Money in the Bank briefcase last Tuesday and looked like a total goober in the process. Then at SummerSlam, he lost to John Cena, who is awesome and all. But if you can’t beat Jinder Mahal after a match where he’s taken a beating and doesn’t have his entourage with him, and he can’t beat Cena clean or even kick out of a single Attitude Adjustment, then, uh, what are you doing here?

Naomi is a special talent who is either straight-up inventing offense or pulling from some real deep cuts no one who is watching remembers. It wasn’t enough for her to overcome Natalya, though, who managed to lock in not one, but two Sharpshooters, forcing Naomi to tap out and hope that she doesn’t get caught in the devastating submission in their rematch.

What we learned: Naomi’s run was a good one, where she basically beat Lana right out of a career in wrestling and managed to hold off a division that added Charlotte and introduced the first women’s Money in the Bank briefcase holder in Carmella. Now it’s time for Natalya, though, who had not held a women’s title since 2010, when the Divas Championship still existed. Nattie was overdue for a run, especially as both her character and in-ring work has improved as the competition around her did.

Now the questions mostly shift to how fellow heel Carmella will react to this championship win. Honor among heels, or, like with the attitude that won her Money in the Bank in the first place, is all Carmella cares about getting Carmella to the top?

[fart noise]

What we learned: Nothing was gained; nothing was learned. Enjoy Arby’s.

Rusev attacked Randy Orton during his entrance. Smart! Rusev forgot that Randy Orton will always go to the RKO when he’s cornered. Not smart!

What we learned: I feel bad for Handsome Rusev, but this is tremendous content.

Alexa Bliss and Sasha Banks once again hit each other hard and often, but Alexa wasn’t able to escape Sasha’s more painful version of her submission, where she further arches her opponent’s back and pulls hard on her face, and man it hurts a little just typing that sentence.

What we learned: Fans sure love both Sasha Banks and Alexa Bliss, as the crowd went wild for both competitors and seemed to be pulling for whichever one of them happened to be on top at a given moment. There’s the obvious question about what Alexa does from here — further team up with Nia Jax to get revenge on Sasha, maybe? — but also what Bayley does now that she’s hurt and being booed and her bff is holding the championship she very well might have held if not for her shoulder.

Evil Bayley? Anyone? You know she can pull it off even if it’ll break hearts, but if this wonderful angel is getting booed, too many hearts might already be broken to not turn her.

Yoooo this was pretty dope actually. There was a real chance for this to suck, because Bray Wyatt is competing with Randy Orton to have, like, the worst year ever. Instead, though, we got Bray showing fear as he began to realize that Finn’s Demon persona is more than just a paint job.

What we learned: Balor moves differently when the demon is unleashed — he’s lower to the ground, he stalks his prey, and he recovers from moves differently than if he were “just” regular old leather-jacking-wearing Balor. Bray’s reaction to that was to drop out of his own creepy shtick and then get kicked into a turnbuckle, setting up Balor for his finisher and the win. So rarely does WWE deliver promise on its delivery of supernatural elements, especially when it relates to Wyatt. But this one worked through and through.

Dean Ambrose and Seth Rollins are best friends and brothers again, and there is no stopping them. Not even the combined strengths of the lads Sheamus and Cesaro can interfere with this destiny. Did you not see Ambrose and Rollins fist bump last week? It is a symbol of their struggle and their power, and no force can contain those who wield it.

What we learned: Man, it was wonderful to see Seth Rollins once again in the role of last-second savior for a tag team match involving Dean Ambrose. Neither side would give in to the other, with tons of false finishes and last-second saves and brutal tag team moves that made this, at times, look more like a WrestleMania 2000 match on Nintendo 64 than one in 2017. That is, in not even the tiniest way, a complaint.

The end result was a ridiculous finishing sequence that saw Rollins save Ambrose from Cesaro and Sheamus with a hurricanrana off the turnbuckle that threw Cesaro into Sheamus, breaking Ambrose free and allowing the two to finally get an advantage that could not be overcome.

In conclusion:

Oh, one more thing: Dean Ambrose is now a Grand Slam champion, as he’s been WWE Champion, Intercontinental Champion, United States Champion (his first title!), and now finally, a Tag Team Champion. He’s only the 16th in the history of the WWE to manage the feat, and Rollins is only an IC title run behind joining him on that list.

AJ Styles was the first of three champions on the show to manage to retain their titles. He did it despite Kevin Owens’ repeated attempts to get the champ in trouble with special guest referee Shane McMahon. But in the end, it was Owens who got overly frustrated with Shane O’Mac and saw it cost him in the end.

Shane did take longer to get up than he maybe should have, but also, he got up faster than a regular ref did. No wonder SummerSlam didn’t feel like it was six hours long!

What we learned: We are indeed heading toward McMahon vs. one of these two, and it’s going to be Owens, who is furious with Shane despite the fact that really, he’s the source of all of his own frustrations since he was the one who started making sure McMahon took damage.

Oh boy, do people have varying opinions on the outcome of this match. Shinsuke Nakamura was the preferred winner for many, but pretending at this point like the Jinder Mahal Experiment isn’t working is ignoring the evidence. He gets a real reaction now, and he received a loud chorus of boos both on the go-home episode of SmackDown Live this week as well as during his entrance to SummerSlam.

However...Jinder also was part of dueling chants. With Shinsuke Nakamura. In the main event for SmackDown on the show. With the WWE Championship on the line. There’s something here: The downside might be that it’s coming at the expense of Nakamura, who still hasn’t even come close to showing who he is capable of being while with WWE.

What we learned: Nakamura was unaware that the Singh Brothers are a trap. Shinsuke: They’re a trap. Please take notes for next time.

On that note, it does feel like Nakamura is the next WWE Champion. He just might need to wait for a later pay-per-view for that to happen.

This match was so good that even if you hated the rest of SummerSlam, you probably have positive thoughts about the show on the whole. It was maybe the best Fatal 4-Way of its kind that WWE has done with the men, as it was near constant action until no one had the ability to stand up and make action happen anymore.

Braun Strowman did not become Universal Champion here. He did, however, become the force to be reckoned with in WWE even with Lesnar retaining. Strowman beat the absolute hell out of Lesnar and repeatedly tossed him around like it took no effort.

He put Lesnar through two announce tables and flipped the third announce table on top of him. He used his running powerslam again, and again, and again, and Lesnar barely had anything left in the tank. The only reason Strowman isn’t Universal Champion right now is because he ended up being the one everyone ganged up on, as Lesnar’s manager Paul Heyman feared would happen to his own client.

Even that double-team (and sometimes triple-team) action didn’t quite work out the way Roman Reigns, Samoa Joe, and Brock Lesnar hoped all of the time, because there was still infighting to take advantage of:

What we learned: Lesnar retained, which means he isn’t running away to UFC as was threatened. Strowman ended up being the single most dangerous entity in a match that also featured Lesnar, so, that’s a thing.

Since Roman Reigns took the pin, both Strowman and Joe were protected — none of these four looked bad. Everyone looked amazing. Some of the competitors just looked a little bit more amazing than others, forcing an entire audience in Brooklyn and at home to realize simultaneously that they need Brock Lesnar vs. Braun Strowman one-on-one at WrestleMania 34.