WWE SummerSlam: Ranking every main event in history

26. SummerSlam 1993: Lex Luger vs. Yokozuna

If you’re sensing a pattern here with a lot of these early entries on the list being from the early-to-mid-1990s, it’s not a coincidence. The SummerSlam main events just weren’t good and the championship match from the 1993 edition between Lex Luger and Yokozuna falls right into that category.

Hulk Hogan had finally left the company that June after dropping the title to Yokozuna at King of the Ring and Vince McMahon had decided that Lex Luger would be the new Hulk Hogan. The problem was that Vince McMahon had decided that Lex Luger would be the new Hulk Hogan. Yes, you read that same sentence twice. Luger was never going to be Hogan, even with “The Lex Express” and the whole red, white and blue thing happening and the Yokozuna Bodyslam Challenge fiasco on the USS Intrepid.

The match itself was a mess. You got the obligatory staredown and then the obligatory failed attempt at a bodyslam on the big guy spot and all that goes with that. Yokozuna took control and Luger fought back valiantly (sound familiar?) and then came the strangest finish and celebration in SummerSlam history. Okay, the finish wasn’t that strange as Luger knocked Yoko out of the ring and picked up a countout victory. The problem was that after he won, the celebration looked like he’d won the title. But again, it was a countout victory, obviously meaning that Yokozuna kept the strap. But that didn’t stop the red, white and blue confetti and balloons and the babyface superstars coming from the locker room.

It was a very strange scene to say the least and one that I could have gone my whole life without seeing. Throw this main event on the end of a weak card and the monstrosity that was WrestleMania IX and it adds up to a horrible pay-per-view scene in 1993.