Summer has always been a hot season for professional wrestling mainly because of that season’s big show. We’re going back 20 years to SummerSlam ‘99 as well as WCWs final Road Wild. Yes! This is a double review WWE vs. WCW, August of 1999 who had the better show!
Road Wild ‘99
Since it was held August 14, I guess we’ll review this one first. PPVs held outdoors have always been my jam. Especially when they’re set up to where you know they’re outside. WCW was always good at this. WWE not so much. They had a few shows where they got it right but most of them you can’t really tell unless you’re in the venue.
At any rate, let’s take a gander at this card. Oof. I mean—hard oof. This is the work of a temp who no longer gives a f***. You’ve got to consider that by this time in WCW, things couldn’t be turned around. The ship was on crisis control and everyone was just having mimosas and waiting for the ship to go full-blown Hindenburg on water.
“Titanic.” That’s what I was looking for. Why did I go with “Hindenburg on water”?
The matches on this show were all kept bite-sized so you weren’t going to be sitting through masterclass after masterclass here. I guess they kept it short because it was early August and it averaged 90-something degrees out there. So yes, wrap it up. I would go into the card but after watching it back to back with SummerSlam…oof.
The three matches worth a watch includes Harlem Heat taking the titles of Jersey Triad members Kanyon and Bam Bam Bigelow was good. Nothing special but far from dreadful. The six-man tag match between The Revolution and The West Texas Rednecks was a fine bout. If you want to see the perfect example of one star standing above the rest as far as in-ring work goes, watch this one and tell me who showed out.
Chris Benoit defending his WCW U.S title against DDP in a no DQ match. DDP was always good, worked harder than most on the roster. He worked so hard that Savage wanted to see him succeed and got behind him. I have to tell you, that the feud between the two was incredible. Benoit’s always been the perfect in-ring wrestler so nothing more is necessary. They got enough done in 12-minutes.
The Finish
It’s late period WCW and a lot of the shows were hit or miss before they devolved into mostly miss. There were a few matches that were worth watching—the ones mentioned. The rest of this show match-wise? Forget about it. You could skip matches on the Network, check out the angles and interview from the show, and then watch the following Nitro.
Rating: 4/10
SummerSlam ‘99
So we already looked at the card for both and watched both. Road Wild ’99 was pretty bad but there were watchable matches there. Now, those watchable matches weren’t anything to write home about but they exist. Looking at SummerSlam ’99 and it doesn’t look impressive at all on paper. I mean, it looks better than Road Wild ’99 but not by a wide margin.
The thing here is if you’ve watched WWE this whole period, you know to go in with neutral or low expectations for the undercard. If anything flips your lid then congratulations. If not, well it’s a 90s WWE undercard. Congratulations on not being disappointed.
Several of these matches were actually solid. I mean I wouldn’t write home about any of these but I wasn’t soundly disappointed. The opener with Jeff Jarrett taking both the IC and European titles in action against D’Lo Brown was short but good! These two work well together…it’s a shame they didn’t run that as the main event feud in early TNA. Both solid on the mic and in the ring. Oh well.
The Tag Turmoil bout was enjoyable. I like Steve Blackman and love Ken Shamrock, didn’t care for the Lion’s Den match. Unnecessary and then some. As much as I didn’t care for Test in WWE and was indifferent toward Shane for the most part, this feud over Stephanie wasn’t bad and for it to escalate into this match? It makes sense.
I didn’t care to see Taker and Big Show team up to fight Kane and X-Pac but I will say: it wasn’t a bad match at all. I actually found it fun! Skip the Rock beating the brakes off Billy Gunn, no one cares. World title main event was good! You had Austin defending against Triple H and Mankind so that’s a good match on paper. In execution, it went off well.
The Finish
Most of the matches on SummerSlam ’99 that turned out well were bolstered by being tied to an ongoing story. Even if the story was minor, it helped these matches going in. The same couldn’t be said about SummerSlam. While there stories to their matches, they weren’t heavily woven into these matches on the card. Instead, they just read as “Oh damn, there’s a PPV today?! Let me see the roster and tie something together.”
That said, the card still didn’t “wow” me off the bat.
Rating: 5.5/10
It wasn’t the best August to buy a PPV at all. I can’t really spin it or anything. I will say check out Jordan’s coverage of SummerSlam from this year. Twenty years later and you get a good August to buy a PPV–not that we’re still doing that in 2019.
