WWE SummerSlam: Ranking every main event in history

3. SummerSlam 2008: The Undertaker vs. Edge

I’ve gotta say that it was extremely difficult to rank these top three matches, especially since I’ve gone on record to say that I think the main event of a pay-per-view should usually be for a world title and two of the final three bouts on this list are not. However, when the three world title matches on the 2008 SummerSlam card were Matt Hardy vs. Mark Henry for the ECW Championship (they’re lucky I’m even putting WWECW in that category, especially when that match went 31 seconds), CM Punk vs. JBL for the World Heavyweight Championship and Triple H vs. The Great Khali for the WWE Championship, it’s understandable why they would want to put a Hell in a Cell match between Edge and The Undertaker. This was the best rivalry of the year, so it made sense as the final match of the night, especially when it basically became a TLC Match inside of Hell in a Cell.

After defeating Edge for the World Heavyweight Championship in an underrated match at WrestleMania XXIV, the two went at it again at Backlash with The Undertaker once again coming out on top. After Vickie Guerrero, who was the General Manager of SmackDown and romantically involved with Edge, stripped The Undertaker of the title by claiming he used an illegal submission hold to win at Backlash, the two battled again at Judgment Day, a match ‘Taker won by countout. Vickie said that since it was a countout victory, The Deadman was not the champion and the belt remained vacant. The two would then have an epic TLC bout at One Night Stand and Edge would win the title with help from Zack Ryder and Curt Hawkins (think about that for a minute. With the stipulation that ‘Taker had to leave WWE if he lost, he went away for a while as Edge moved on to beat Batista at Night of Champions but would lose his title to CM Punk a few weeks later. He moved onto a program with Triple H, who told Vickie that Edge has cheated on her with Alicia Fox, which in turn led Vickie to reinstate The Undertaker, leading to this feud-ending battle at SummerSlam.

Again, much like the CM Punk vs. Jeff Hardy match, there are so many spots to keep track of in this one but it’s absolutely awesome. Edge putting ‘Taker through a table with a kind of chair/elbow drop was great and as expected, the two men fought through the cage to the outside, which led to a few more great spots and the end of the match was excellent as ‘Taker uncharacteristically used Edge’s finishers to help set up the win and threw in a con-chair-to for good measure. He hith the Tombstone to officially get the win. The post-match stuff was a little cheesy as ‘Taker threw Edge threw the ring and then magically set it on fire but it wasn’t enough to take away from the brutality and the greatness of the match.