{"id":51425,"date":"2026-08-02T12:51:59","date_gmt":"2026-08-02T17:51:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/?p=51425"},"modified":"2026-08-07T12:52:04","modified_gmt":"2026-08-07T17:52:04","slug":"summerslam-blets-and-moments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/?p=51425","title":{"rendered":"SummerSlam, blets and moments"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"border-image alignnone wp-image-51426 size-full\" src=\"http:\/\/totfc.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/chelsea_wins.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"560\" height=\"312\" srcset=\"https:\/\/totfc.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/chelsea_wins.jpg 560w, https:\/\/totfc.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/chelsea_wins-300x167.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 560px) 100vw, 560px\" \/><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 16px;\">I didn\u2019t watch <em>SummerSlam<\/em>, nor did I actually care to even exert a modicum of effort in order to watch it.\u00a0 I know that my general fandom of the WWE product has been tested and waning over the last year or so and the grand consensus of all the changes and corporatization of the company is resulting in me gaining more and more distance from the product like it were 1990 all over again and my parents cancelling cable television, preventing me from keeping up with the biz.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 16px;\">Every show is behind a different pay wall, Fanatics has standardized and priced merchandise to inaccessibility, and frankly the product blows chunks now.\u00a0 Storylines are convoluted and limited to the smallest of pools, and <em>RAW<\/em> on Netflix is so overwhelmingly buried in ads, I sometimes feel like I\u2019m watching a pirated stream instead of a program that I\u2019m paying a subscription to watch.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 16px;\">That being said, when one of my bros asked our group chat if anyone were watching SummerSlam, it took me 0.2 seconds to respond \u2018no.\u2019\u00a0 I left out the part that I thought it was probably going to be mid as fuck, and the whole two-night show thing that TKO is trying to force like it\u2019s a second <em>Wrestlemania<\/em> seems like bullshit and when the day is over, there were only two matches on the entire event that I remotely cared about.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 16px;\">Additionally, I knew that there was little point to watching the show, given the fact that with maybe an 18-minute delay, the results of every single match would be spoiled and revealed on various social media outlets, and I could get the Cliff\u2019s notes on the entire show without having to sit through all the ads, rest holds, and botches from the gradual blunting of talent over the last years.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 16px;\">The good news for me was that the two matches I did care about, ended in the ways that I was happy with.\u00a0 One was predictable, which was the culmination of <strong>Chad Gable\u2019s<\/strong> redemption story, with him defeating Penta for the Intercontinental championship.\u00a0 In the past, I would\u2019ve said for certain that Gable was going to lose, because in the Vince McMahon era of the company, it was almost an unwritten rule that superstars did not win in their hometowns, but in the TKO era, they\u2019re so obsessed with <em>creating moments<\/em> but more importantly farming footage for future <em>UnTolds<\/em>, that stuff like this flips, and it\u2019s become pretty predictable, even moreso than it used to be, even for a wrestling oracle like myself.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 16px;\">But still, I\u2019m happy to see Chad Gable get a signature W at the event, because the man has been one of the hardest working and mold-breaking performers over the last few years and it always brings me great joy to see hard workers get their just desserts.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 16px;\">The other match I was intrigued in, ended in really the only winner I had hoped for, but assumed was not going to be the case, which was <strong>Chelsea Green<\/strong> climbing to the top of the ladder and winning the Women\u2019s championship, made vacant by the very legitimate Rhea Ripley injury.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 16px;\">As much as I love Chelsea and the internet loves Chelsea, there\u2019s no denying that the E has treated her like this expendable comedy act, and given the fact that she was in the match with former champions like Charlotte, Jade Cargill and Tiffany Stratton, it seemed more likely the E would give it to one of the safe choices, and that Chelsea was there to provide some highlights and outstanding character work.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 16px;\">But the E loves to give surprises, and like I had mentioned, I\u2019m convinced now that they\u2019re so fixated on creating compelling content for UnTold documentaries, they allowed for the impossible to happen, and regardless of their motivations, I was stoked to discover that Chelsea Green had outlasted all the competition, and walked away as the new women\u2019s champion.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 16px;\">Naturally, both these matches occurred on Night 2 of SummerSlam, and if the E really wants to ensure that two-day events have any modicum of succeeding in the long run, they have got to stop backloading their events so blatantly, because history has not been kind to the small number of two-day events they\u2019ve held thusfar, with Night 1 shows being mid as fuck compared to their Night 2 counterparts.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 16px;\">Among the ocean of mediocrity that was the rest of SummerSlam, what stood out to me the most was the introduction of, what\u2019s being called the <em>ESPN Moment of the Night<\/em> championship blet, inconsequentially being handed out, pretty informally on social media, to the worker of the show that, much to the low-hanging fruit name of the title goes, perceived to have made the best moment of the night.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 16px;\">Night 1 of SummerSlam, the \u201ctitle\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com\/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSS0ZKhXi8gFNBcdPt7Jr0eXItEL2QC9aVT1OKlmtZBUs7BP9bD6V4s_IQ&amp;s=10\">went to Oba Femi<\/a>, presumably because of his emotional and landmark victory over Brock Lesnar, supposedly ending the career of one of the most impactful performers in the history of the business.\u00a0 I mean, considering what else was on the card that night, it was pretty low-hanging fruit, and much like the importance of what the title represents, it\u2019s pretty useless, and for a jaded smark like me, actually more of a detriment, because I kind of see it as ESPN giving a middle finger to all the oldhead fans like myself who don\u2019t like all these paywalls, all these separate services, and all the infectious corporatization of the product we once loved so much.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 16px;\">That being said, as happy as I was to see Chelsea Green win the Women\u2019s championship, it was like someone peeing into the pool of celebration when I later saw that ESPN had \u201cawarded\u201d her with the ESPN moment of the night blet, and <a href=\"https:\/\/encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com\/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRverKti2M1RKhpEOvIxCoNEwYOw8UlJ8N0RDQsXifjwQLzT0u2CFSisAs&amp;s=10\">seeing it on her shoulder<\/a> in conjunction with an infinitely more meaningful prize on her other. \u00a0Fewer things spoil a good time than the arrival of the asshole that everyone doesn\u2019t like but feels obligated to be civil towards because they have a lot of money and influence.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 16px;\">Either way, I\u2019m stoked that performers I like got their flowers and moments at SummerSlam, but at same time I feel satisfied with my choice to not bother watching or pursuing the show because aside from those two matches I don\u2019t really feel like I missed anything, and even if there were, it\u2019s not like I wouldn\u2019t be able to find it on YouTube or any other temporary hosting of the important things.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 16px;\">But that fucking ESPN blet, it is astonishing, that TKO has managed to create a championship blet that is somehow more meaningless and has less importance than any of the 25 straps circulating in the AEW\/ROH wrestling space, as well as any of the 14 straps that Mercedes Mone was concurrently holding a little while back.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I didn\u2019t watch SummerSlam, nor did I actually care to even exert a modicum of effort in order to watch it.\u00a0 I know that my general fandom of the WWE product has been tested and waning over the last year or so and the grand consensus of all the changes and corporatization of the company &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/totfc.net\/?p=51425\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">SummerSlam, blets and moments<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[151,79,45,191,83,69,190,54,49,55],"class_list":["post-51425","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brog","tag-blets","tag-cashmoney","tag-fail","tag-greed","tag-observations","tag-television","tag-white-people","tag-wrestling","tag-wtf","tag-wwe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51425","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=51425"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51425\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51427,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51425\/revisions\/51427"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=51425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=51425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=51425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}