The best Invasion-era PPV? WWF SummerSlam 2001 | WON Flashback

August 19 2001 was the date of WWF SummerSlam 2001, which took place during the Invasion angle. Overall that angle was not well received at all, and barring some one off shows that did big business (like the Invasion 2001 PPV), there wasn’t really anything that matched the quality of WWF programming from January 2001 up to WrestleMania 17 of that year.

SummerSlam 2001, however, was a bit of a reprieve, as the PPV had several good to decent matches including an extremely underrated Kurt Angle vs Stone Cold Steve Austin match for the WWF Title that our own Dave Meltzer had at ****1/2, which was the best rated match of that issue ahead of Yuji Nagata vs Keiji Muto at ****1/4.

You can find our own Dave Meltzer’s review of the matches from WWF SummerSlam 2001 in the August 27, 2001 Wrestling Observer Newsletter (which you can read in full with a subscription).

WWF SummerSlam 2001

Here is some of what Dave had to say about SummerSlam 2001:

“SummerSlam, traditionally the WWF’s second biggest PPV event of the year, was more of a by-the-book show, with a strong line-up presented and a straight forward approach with few swerves and curves. The show was largely well received and had little controversy afterwards aside from analysis of whether the WWF title match or Rock should have gone on in the main event position. The decision regarding this non-issue was since they weren’t going to have a clean finish in the WWF title match and the WCW title match would have the happy ending with Rock winning, it was put on last. Virtually all the advertising for the show was based around Rock’s return to PPV, another argument for putting him on last. In hindsight, because as a match, Rock vs. Booker T couldn’t follow a near match of the year performance by Steve Austin and Kurt Angle, you could make the argument in the other direction.

“The show on 8/19 drew a sellout crowd of 15,293 fans, which was 14,087 paying $907,105 to the Compaq Center in San Jose, CA, as well as another $162,867 in merchandise, exemplifying the recent trend of arena merchandise increasing as the $11.56 per paying customer for this show is the highest total in many months.

“The feeling internally was that they didn’t want a finish in the Austin vs. Angle match because they didn’t want to hurt Angle’s momentum so quickly after his turn, but the big money is with Austin vs. Rock (at this point scheduled for Survivor Series on 11/18 in Greensboro but that could change) and eventually Austin vs. HHH (which may end up as the Mania main event). Rock’s winning the WCW title is a step to attempt to elevate it to the same level as the WWF title, which, since the company is planning on splitting into two touring factions next year, is something needed for the long haul.

“The lone negative to the show was Undertaker & Kane vs. Diamond Dallas Page & Chris Kanyon in the tag team title unification match. It was a one-sided squash match in a cage, where the belts themselves seemed not just secondary, but inconsequential. It would have been better to have other teams in the tag title hunt and leave these four simply to do a cage match since the idea was to blow off the hugely disappointing stalker angle. Undertaker, because of his tenure at the top, is something of the company icon and few will dare say anything negative about since he’s considered a locker room leader, but his lack of selling and putting over new talent is turning him into the same type of wolf on the top of the hill that killed WCW. Kevin Nash was also a locker room leader and while Undertaker has a career history of being more of a star (partially because of the mentality that exists these days that unless it was done in the WWF, it doesn’t count) and working harder, from a fan standpoint at this point, there are a lot of similarities.”