WWE: 30 Years of Summerslam Review – Christopher Cummings

This set from WWE, which looks at the 30 years of one of WWE’s biggest annual shows, SummerSlam, does what it says on the tin, it’s a look back at some of the greatest parts of SummerSlam events from the inaugural event back in 1988 all the way up to 2018’s event. From New York in ’88 to New York in 2018. Madison Square Garden to The Barclays Centre. Lovely stuff.

I’ve always loved SummerSlam as an event. It’s been one of the biggest wrestling shows of every year. It’s like the WrestleMania os the summer. The year I began watching wrestling, 1992, was the year SummerSlam took place in the UK, the first and last time a big main PPV from WWE was held in the United Kingdom, and what a show it was. Part of that memorable show is featured on here too, and it was excellent to go back and watch the classic bout between Bret Hart and British Bulldog from Wembley Stadium again. It still holds up today. A classic.

And that’s what you’ll find a lot of the time with this box-set. Classics. The old matches hold up. The new matches are a blast to revisit. There’s no shortage of purely brilliant matches, from some of the very best pro-wrestlers in history. Bret and Owen Hart’s incredible Cage Match from 1994, Steve Austin against Kurt Angle from 2001, John Cena versus Daniel Bryan from 2013 and Sasha Banks taking on Charlotte Flair in 2016 are just a small handful of some of the highlights, for me, on this fantastic release.

Yes, there are matches missing from here that I might have personally included, but that’s what makes us fans. We get to be happy at what we get, but sad we don’t get more. There’s always the WWE Network to fill in any gaps you feel is missing here. What we do get is very very good.

There isn’t a documentary portion to this set, I will say that, and while that might have been cool, I don’t think it was really necessary. The matches speak for themselves, and the lack of talking heads just mean we get to sit and watch match after match, enjoying the action without any stalling. I thought the flow of matches worked really well too, with the chronological order and not overwhelming things with too much of the same in a row. Very nicely designed indeed.

This is a great education on the event for fans who might not want to go back and watch every single event in full, but for those of us who have already seen each event through the years, this is a really entertaining set that takes us back to a variety of awesome clashes in the shows history. Think of this as the equivalent to a music compilation CD or playlist full of your favourite songs, one great track after another. That’s what’s on offer here. The quality of ‘WWE: 30 Years of Summerslam’ is very high, and it’s one I will pop in from time to time, for sure, to go back and enjoy some of the very best parts of SummerSlam through the ages.