WWE SummerSlam: Ranking every main event in history

17. SummerSlam 1997: Bret Hart vs. The Undertaker

The WWF Championship match between Bret Hart and The Undertaker at SummerSlam 1997 was about 10 minutes too long but it was good enough, especially with Shawn Michaels being thrown in as the special guest referee.

The history between Hart and Michaels is well known and things got heated once again during the months leading up to SummerSlam. The stipulation in this match was that if Bret Hart failed to win the WWF Championship from The Undertaker, he would never again be able to wrestle on U.S. soil. HBK then asked Vince McMahon if he could be a part of SummerSlam and when he was made the referee, Hart obviously wasn’t pleased. However, if Shawn was biased toward The Undertaker, he wouldn’t be able to wrestle in the United States again. As the champ, ‘Taker was almost an afterthought while all this was going on.

So the match gets going on and it’s pretty slow at the start with some back and forth. However, things picked up as Hart and Michaels got after each other with verbal assaults, which The Undertaker got involved with as well towards HBK. The end came when Bret spat on Shawn and Michaels swung a chair and unshockingly hit The Deadman, forcing him to count the 1-2-3 for his archrival. While the match was okay, it was everything that followed that changed the course of the company forever.

Hart would get into a forgettable program with The Patriot as The Undertaker wanted revenge on Michaels for costing him the title and this led to a match at Ground Zero: In Your House, which ended in a No Contest. That led to the first-ever Hell in a Cell match at Badd Blood, which Michaels won due to the interference from the debuting Kane. In turn, that led to Michaels getting a shot at Hart’s title at Survivor Series in Montreal … and I think we all remember how that turned out.