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The 10 worst WWE SummerSlam matches of all time
When you have just shy of 40 years’ worth of WWE SummerSlam events under your belt, it’s no surprise that not every match to ever take place there is a barnburner. There have been more than a handful of bad bouts at the biggest party of the summer, and all we can hope for is that 2026’s edition of the show doesn’t add any more.
We’ve gone through the dregs to pick out and rank the worst matches in SummerSlam history . If you’d like to see something more positive, check out our list of the best SummerSlam matches ever .
10. Roman Reigns(c) vs Jey Uso – WWE Championship – SummerSlam 2023
Roman Reigns and Seth Rollins during the Royal Rumble The Dome at America’s Center. | Joe Camporeale-Imagn Images While Roman Reigns’ three-and-a-half-year reign as champion brought us plenty of awesome matches and stories, there were also large swathes of it that were extremely boring. While the Roman/Jey story was one of the better ones, their final match in the main event of SummerSlam was an absolute snoozefest, combining the worst of Roman’s slow style with the worst of WWE’s “hardcore” style. Plus, it ended in the confusing and underwhelming twist of Jimmy costing his brother the match for no clear reason.
9. Brock Lesnar vs Randy Orton – SummerSlam 2016
This has to be one of the weirdest endings to a WWE pay-per-view of all time. Lesnar and Orton had a decent enough feud, and while the match wasn’t anything special, it’s the ending that really put it over the top as something awful. Brock used specialised elbow strikes to cut Randy Orton’s head open for real, leaving him lying in a pool of his own blood in the ring as officials helped him. It was deflating, uncomfortable, and entirely pointless.
8. Team WWE vs The Nexus – SummerSlam 2010
Jey Uso pushes John Cena off the ring during the WWE Royal Rumble at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis. | Grace Smith/IndyStar / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images This match is bad less for the in-ring action, and more for what it failed to accomplish. The Nexus in 2010 was far and away WWE’s hottest angle in a long time, and it gave WWE a renewed sense of freshness in an era where fans had been beaten down by the staleness of Cena and Orton ruling the roost. However, the decision to have Team WWE and John Cena come out victorious on this night killed any chance the faction had of being a serious main event threat.
Wrestling isn’t real; this is something we all know, but for some reason WWE occasionally tries to promote a match like this, where the gimmick is that it’s “more real” than all of the other matches on the show, which just makes no sense and it never works. Rousey and Baszler did have the chemistry to make a match work, but under these restrictions it was never going to be good. The result was a weird match that lacked any sense of intensity or heat, as the crowd who came to see pro-wrestling reaction were in no mood to match grounded MMA “fighting”.
6. Hulk Hogan & Brutus Beefcake vs Randy Savage & Zeus – SummerSlam 1989
Frankly, I think the phrase “Kane vs The Great Khali” should really be enough explanation as to what makes this one of the worst SummerSlam matches of all time. The Great Khali had absolutely no in-ring abilities to speak of outside of “is tall”, yet WWE management still tried their damnedest to push him as any kind of star for many years. While Kane is no slouch, 2009 is far from his best days, and his strength has never been in making other lumbering competitors look good.
Jul 30, 2022; Nashville, Tennessee, US; Becky Lynch (red/orange attire) and Bianca Belair (blue/silver attire) wrestle during their Raw Women s Championship match during SummerSlam at Nissan Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Joe Camporeale-Imagn Images While their rematch the following year would be an all-time great SummerSlam match, this setup for their feud was awful. Becky Lynch made her surprise return to beat Bianca for the title in just 26 seconds in a move that made neither of them look good and upset all of the fans watching who had invested in Belair’s emotional ascension to the top of WWE’s women’s division.
3. Yokozuna(c) vs Lex Luger – WWF Championship – SummerSlam 1993
After Hulk Hogan left the WWF in 1993 in the wake of the steroids scandal, they were in the market for a new top star, and Lex Luger was their choice. It didn’t matter that he was a bad wrestler; he looked sort of like Hulk Hogan, so that would do. However, it seemed someone behind the scenes got cold feet at the last minute, as Lex Luger won this bad match via countout, meaning he didn’t win the WWF Championship. Except then he still celebrated among confetti as if he had succeeded in his mission. It was laughable.
2. Diesel(c) vs King Mabel – WWF Championship – SummerSlam 1995
1995 is often cited as the worst business year in WWE history, and with a SummerSlam main event like this, it’s very easy to see why. Mabel falls into the Great Khali category of “the guy can barely walk, let alone wrestle,” and Diesel was never known for being an in-ring technician, so the result was a plodding, dull match in which Mabel seriously hurt Diesel b...
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