Who is Mr. SummerSlam? Big Vinny V’s honorable mention: Shawn Michaels
Welcome to the Mr. SummerSlam Countdown, our look at the wrestlers who have the most matches named as the best on WWE’s biggest show of the summer. Starting next Monday, we’ll count down the top five wrestlers in SummerSlam history. Today we’re going to look at some honorable mentions. We’ll start with someone best known for his performances at WrestleMania: Shawn Michaels.
(See this piece for our data and methodology.)
Michaels has competed at SummerSlam 11 times and had the best match on four times, according to one selector or another. Let’s look back at those four matches one-by-one, along with how they were graded at the time, and what Dave Meltzer had to say in the Wrestling Observer Newsletter.
1989: Rick Martel & the Rougeaus vs. Tito Santana & the Rockers
Meltzer: ***1/4
If you’re struggling to remember what made this match so special, well, something on this show had to be the best. It was not a strong card. Meltzer only had three matches higher than two stars: the Michaels six-man tag, Ultimate Warrior vs. Rick Rude for the Intercontinental Championship (also ***1/4), and the main event of Hulk Hogan & Brutus Beefcake vs. Randy Savage & Zeus (**1/2). Cagematch users actually had this as the third-best match on the show with a rating of 6.57, behind Brainbusters-Hart Foundation (7.16) and Warrior-Rude (7.09).
1995: Shawn Michaels vs. Razor Ramon in a ladder match for the Intercontinental Championship
Meltzer: ****3/4
Observer Readers: 95% of the votes for best match
Cagematch Users: 8.88
No controversy this time: this was a unanimous pick for best match on the show, with nothing else coming close. (Observer readers gave the other 5% of their vote to Hakushi vs. 1-2-3 Kid, which was also ranked second-best by Meltzer and Cagematch users.) Here’s what Meltzer wrote about Michaels in the Observer at the time:
There should be no more doubt as to who the star performer in American pro wrestling. Whatever doubt should have been erased by Shawn Michaels at SummerSlam on 8/27 from the Pittsburgh Civic Arena, stealing the show for the third time at a PPV event in 1995.
You can call him the Ric Flair of the 90s or the most talented American worker of all-time. You should call him WWF champion. Michaels, in comparison with Flair, is far superior athletically, and as charismatic as Flair was at his peak, Michaels has the potential to far surpass him there. Michaels is not Flair’s equal on interviews and Flair’s one advantage when it comes to in-ring performance is that in his prime he did it 300 nights a year with a level of consistency that Michaels and nobody else in WWF can come close to. But I don’t think on Flair’s best day he could have put on a show like Michaels did at SummerSlam.
And here are some highlights of Meltzer’s actual review of the match:
Michaels got the bigger pop coming out but that’s because he puts on a show before the match. Ramon wasn’t booed at all except by a small smattering of fans midway through the match while he was destroying Michaels. The crowd live was more pro-Ramon believe it or not, even at the finish. They opened like Misawa-Kawada with them teasing each others’ big spots. … Finally Ramon suplexed Michaels over the top rope and Michaels took the bump so high and so far that he caught his ankle on the guard rail. It actually appeared he hurt himself but this was actually the beginning of the heat spot. … Michaels hit Ramon with the ladder and climbed, but Ramon pulled down Michaels’ pants. Michaels took a bump where his bad ankle was caught in the ladder on the way down. Ramon kept stomping on the ladder with the knee and ankle in it and rammed Michaels’ knee into the ladder. He even clipped Michaels’ knee with the ladder. You can’t say enough for how well Michaels sold the knee. Ramon used a bodyslam on the ladder and kept working on the knee. … For drama this was better than their Wrestlemania match but not for bumps. Both climbed to the top of the ladder and it ended up tipping over with Michaels crotching himself on the way down and Ramon falling out of the ring. Ramon got a second ladder from under the ring and brought it in. Michaels climbed a ladder but Ramon used his Razor’s edge off the ladder. Both climbed a different ladder but at the top, Michaels used a superkick and dove for the belt but missed. Ramon went for another Razor’s edge but Michaels flipped out of it and Ramon went over the top. Michaels then climbed and made a leaping grab for the belt which was supposed to be the finish, except the belt didn’t come down with him. Michaels looked visibly pissed at missing the spot, then climbed up and nicely pulled the belt down for the finish. Ramon grabbed the belt after the match and teased a heel turn before handing the belt to Michaels and shaking his hand.
1996: Shawn Michaels vs. Vader for the WWF World Heavyweight Championship
Meltzer: ****
Observer Readers: 77% of the votes for best match
Cagematch Users: 7.43
Again, this was selected as the best match on the show in all three categories, though this year there were other strong challengers. Three other matches (Undertaker vs. Mankind in a boiler room brawl, Owen Hart vs. Savio Vega, and Goldust vs. Marc Mero) got votes as the best among Observer readers.
Meltzer:
Excellent match. Michaels did a dive over the top rope early and got in the ring and kind of did a Hogan spoof. Michaels used a huracanrana in the ring and then got on Vader’s shoulder and used a rana over the top rope. Michaels went over the top to do a plancha into a Frankensteiner, but Vader caught him at the top and power bombed him on the floor. Vader whipped Michaels into one turnbuckle and he took the Ray Stevens bump out and back in, then across the ring where he took a Harley Race bump over the top to the floor. … Vader pressed Michaels and dropped his throat on the guard rail and the bell ring signalling a count out win at 13:53. [Jim] Cornette began ranting and raving about not wanting a count out win and challenged Michaels to re-start the match. While it never appeared Michaels accepted, the match was restarted. Vader went after Jose Lothario giving Cornette the chance to use the racquet on Michaels. … After an elbow off the top, Michaels teased the superkick. Cornette grabbed his leg and threw the tennis racquet to Vader. Michaels got the racquet first and hit Vader and Cornette with it several times each for a DQ in 2:10. Again Cornette asked for the match to be re-started as they did a pull-apart brawl, and Gorilla Monsoon okayed it. In the re-start, Michaels finally hit the superkick, but Vader kicked out. After a ref bump, Vader hit the power bomb but there was originally no ref to count the fall. A second ref counted the fall but Michaels then kicked out. Vader climbed up for the Vader bomb, but Cornette told him to go up to the top for the moonsault. Vader missed the moonsault and Michaels climbed to the top with a moonsault bodyblock and got the pin at 2:56 of the third re-start.
2002: Shawn Michaels vs. Triple H in an unsanctioned match
Meltzer: ****1/4
Observer Readers: 71% of the votes for best match
Cagematch Users: 9.13
This was Michaels’ first match in the WWE since WrestleMania XIV, when he dropped the WWF World Championship to Steve Austin.
Meltzer:
[Jim] Ross was pushing that it was Michaels’ first match since Wrestlemania in 1998, or more than four years. Actually he did one match in 2000 against Paul Diamond in his own promotion that few remember, but still. He wore jeans and they did a street fight match using weapons. Michaels did a plancha right away before a selling his back for much of the match. Michaels’ selling was the best on the show (only one close was [Ric] Flair), but that’s actually the part of the match that didn’t seem to get over with the crowd. They pushed the back injury hard, and HHH spent the match working over the back, doing old style backbreakers including one on a chair. Michaels juiced early, and the blood actually had dried up by late in the match. … Michaels made a comeback by superkicking a chair into HHH’s face, and he juiced heavy. Michaels’ punches in the comeback weren’t quite the same as the past, and he was smaller, but he didn’t seem to get tired and looked in very good shape, particularly for a guy with a bad back. … Ross was throwing around Hall of Fame references for Michaels. Michaels pulled out a ladder, symbolic of his famous ladder matches years ago. He catapulted HHH into the ladder and even delivered a superplex (Michaels turned to take the bump on his side). Outside the ring, after leveling HHH with a fire extinguisher shot, he gave him a plancha to the floor through a table. In the ring, he came off from about seven feet on a ladder with an elbow drop. Finish saw a blocked superkick, a blocked pedigree, and then Michaels scoring the pin with a cradle. HHH destroyed him afterwards with two sledge hammer shots to the back and Michaels went out on a stretcher. A hell of an emotional ride.
Michaels would wrestle at SummerSlam four times after the Triple H match, including the notorious main event against Hulk Hogan in 2005.
Other Honorable Mentions
Right behind Michaels, there are three wrestlers who have had the best match at SummerSlam three times: Triple H, Chris Jericho, CM Punk, and Roman Reigns.
In addition to the Michaels match, Triple H was also recognized for having SummerSlam’s best match in 1998 (a ladder match for the Intercontinental Championship against The Rock) and in 2012 (a no-disqualification match against Brock Lesnar).
Two of Jericho’s best matches at SummerSlam were pretty straightforward: one was against John Cena for the WWE Championship in 2005, and another was the opener against Dolph Ziggler in 2012. The third comes with a bit of an asterisk: Jericho was part of Team WWE in the seven-on-seven match elimination match against The Nexus in 2010. How much credit should we give Jericho for that match? Especially when he was eliminated at the 20-minute mark, and the match went 15 more minutes after that? It’s not a simple question to answer, but we’re going to go with a simple solution: This was the best match at SummerSlam in 2010, Jericho was in it, and thus it counts for him. Yes, this means that Michael Tarver has had the best match at SummerSlam as often than Rey Mysterio. Get used to reading about this match, it’s going come up quite a few times in our countdown.
CM Punk qualifies here with a trio of very physical matches. The first was a TLC match against Jeff Hardy in 2009. That was followed by a no-disqualification match against Brock Lesnar in 2013. His WWE World Heavyweight Championship victory over Gunther on Night 1 last year was enough to get him onto this list.
As for Reigns, he was part of a four-way in 2017 that also included Samoa Joe, Braun Strowman, and Brock Lesnar. His WWE Universal Championship defense against Seth Rollins in 2021 and last man standing match against Brock Lesnar in 2022 were also picked as the best match on those shows.
Punk and Reigns are active again this year, against Cody Rhodes and Seth Rollins respectively. They each have a good chance to climb out of a tie with Triple H and Jericho and into a tie with Michaels.
And finally…
After those three, there 10 men who have had the best match at SummerSlam twice:
- Two are still active in WWE and competing at SummerSlam this year (Gunther and Cody Rhodes)
- Three are in AEW in one capacity or another (Christian, Samoa Joa, and Daniel Bryan)
- One is in TNA (Jeff Hardy)
- Three are retired (AJ Styles, Kurt Angle, and Undertaker)
- One has passed away (Jim Neidhart)
Finally, 53 men (actually, 51 men and two women) have been recognized as having SummerSlam’s best match exactly one time. No, we aren’t going to name them all. But yes, one of them is Michael Tarver.
Our Countdown to SummerSlam officially begins on Monday. Come back to see which six men made our top five. (And no, that’s not a typo.)
