5 Greatest SummerSlam main events

Counting down the top SummerSlam main 

The 1980's was a pivotal period in professional wrestling's storied history. Vince  McMahon Sr. was contending with Jim Crockett for industry supremacy. Crockett would fire first, with the birth of the Starrcade event. Vince Sr. would fire back with an idea of his own. That idea was called Wrestlemania. As we all are well aware of by now, Wrestlemania was a complete game-changer. Not only did this give The World Wrestling Federation control wrestling production as we knew it, but it would also light a fire inside Sr. to press forward in coming up with more ideas, to widen the competitive gap between the WWF and the rest of the world. 

It was the summer of 1988 and the inaugural SummerSlam pay-per-view was on its way. While Crockett had relied on closed-circuit television to air his special events, such as Starrcade, McMahon had rolled the dice and made the complete transfer to pay-per-view broadcasting. On August 29, 1988, the first SummerSlam went live on pay-per-view, to an impressive PPV audience of 1,800,000 buyers. Dubbed "the biggest party of the year," the first ever SummerSlam was indeed a huge success. 

As the years have passed by, SummerSlam has remained a yearly fixture, ever since it's inception in 1988. In fact, SummerSlam is one of the WWE's original "Big Four," which includes Wrestlemania, SummerSlam, Royal Rumble and Survivor Series. Each year, there is a headlining bout to cap off the show, and each year’s main event has varied from big time tag matches to various gimmick bouts, including Hell in a Cell matches. Regardless of the type of match, each main event is intended to be the primary selling match for the event. Some have been a huge success, while others have tanked miserably. 

In this column, we will take a look at the top five matches to ever main event a SummerSlam pay-per-view.