Review for WWE Summerslam 1992: 30th Anniversary

Every year whenever there are talks of 'Where should WWE present Wrestlemania from?' everyone from UK says surely here would be perfect. This has always been batted away with a simple 'No'. The only time this ever happened was in 1992 with Summerslam. In theory it was a massive success drawing over 80,000 people but when you look at the nuts and bolts of it the Buyrate (where the company makes the majority of their money) was almost half what the previous year was and looking back thirty years later it wasn't the best event to watch again.

There are two versions a Broadcast Version and Live Version with the only difference is the Live version starts with two of the dark matches Hacksaw Jim Duggan and The Bushwhackers against The Nasty Boys and The Mountie and Papa Shango against Tito Santana and the Tatanka against The Bezerker match which came later in the night. These three can all we watched separately on the disk, but none are worth it.

Money Inc against The Legion of Doom. For some reason, I always thought this was for the Tag Team Championship, but saying that, this was a great match for fans of smash-mouth wrestling which Legion of Doom and seeing the Roadwarriors come down on motorcycles was amazing... just a shame this was the 'Rocco-era' of the team.

Virgil against Nailz was a quick, but pointless match and one that I would never watch again. Sad to say, but the match between Shawn Michaels and Rick Martel is also the same. Having the 'No hitting in face' just made this a bit boring and I can't believe I am saying this about HBK.

The actual WWE Tag Team Championship match was between The Natural Disasters against The Beverly Brothers could have been better, but the teams just did not work and it's a shame. Same could be said about the next match between Crush and The Repo Man which is odd when you consider they were once partners as part of Demolition, but again this was a pretty poor match.

Thankfully the next match was the WWE Championship match between Macho Man Randy Savage defending against The Ultimate Warrior. I loved this match and if there was ever someone who could carry Warrior through to a great match it would be Macho Man. The whole story of Ric Flair and Mr Perfect playing mind games with them was not necessary, but didn't take much away from the match. My only real issue with this match is the ending which really didn't satisfy me in any way and it didn't matter who won, just not in this way.

This was followed by probably one of the worst matches I have seen in a while with The Undertaker against Kamala. This is the kind of match that would have been fine on TV or as a dark match, but sandwiched between the last match and the next one it is horrible. The only highlight of this match was The Undertaker's entrance.

Finally, we have possibly one of the most emotionally charged matches I have seen in my life. The Intercontinental Championship was on the line between Bret Hitman Hart and British Bulldog Davey Boy Smith. Both were fan favourites and also both family (Davey was married to Bret's sister) and so it was hard to make a choice as to who you wanted to win. It is a shame that this match does not include an alternate commentary as Bret has had much to say about the match over the years and it would have been interesting to have heard his thoughts looking back on it.

These two are perfect in the ring and it is a match that really shows wrestling at its best. By the end, I still didn't know how it ended and I was stunned at just how good it was.

Extras include a Summerslam Countdown Show which was a great way to get up to speed with the matches in this PPV and I enjoyed this stroll down memory lane as to how WWE used to promote their big shows when there were only four/five of them in the year.

Also included are three full episodes of the WWE Supertstars show leading up to the event. It is a shame that they didn't include any from after it to show the aftermath, but it really did act as almost a time capsule of what watching wrestling in 1992 was like with these forty-five minute shows filled top to bottom with squash or jobber matches with people like Razor Ramon, The Undertaker and Bret Hart against nobodies and interview sections and updates by Sean Mooney.

Summerslam 1992 was a significant moment in the WWE. It was the apex of their first wave of popularity and also proof that they could continue without Hulk Hogan. It is also a clear example of what was wrong with wrestling at this time. Of the eight matches (eleven if you include the dark matches) I only enjoyed three of them, the rest were more or less squash matches and not something I will want to watch again. Bret/Bulldog will always be a classic, Warrior/Savage was fantastic until it ended and Legion of Doom/ Money Inc is fine, but nothing special.

If they had included more extras, maybe people talking about it in retrospect and (as I said) a commentary on the main event, I would say this would be more of a must-have item. Instead the main reason to watch is a match that is available elsewhere and you may not want to relive through all the awful matches to get to it. With the build up to WWE's next UK PPV coming up, I am hoping that this has more gold to look back on in thirty years than this one.