Ranking every WWE SummerSlam PPV in history

11. WWE SummerSlam 2005

• Chris Benoit def. Orlando Jordan to retain the WWE United States Championship
• Edge def. Matt Hardy by KO
• Rey Mysterio def. Eddie Guerrero (Ladder Match for custody of Dominik)
• Kurt Angle def. Eugene
• Randy Orton def. The Undertaker
• John Cena def. Chris Jericho to retain the WWE Championship
• Batista def. JBL to retain the World Heavyweight Championship (No Holds Barred Match)
• Hulk Hogan def. Shawn Michaels

The 2005 edition of SummerSlam started off with a 25-second match, which I’m not really a fan of, but the D.C. Crowd seemed to enjoy Chris Benoit taking the United States Championship from Orlando Jordan in quick fashion.

Real life came to SummerSlam for the next match as Edge, with Lita by his side, took on Matt Hardy, who used to have Lita by his side. I always thought how crazy it was for this story to make its way onto WWE television and even more crazy that all parties agreed to go through with it.

If you’re unfamiliar with the entire story, just watch the WWE Network special that was done on it. It’s good that everyone has gotten past it. This only went about five minutes but was very physical and stiff at points, which is understandable. It was surprising that Edge went over so quickly. The Steel Cage Match the next month at Unforgiven was much better.

Reality continued in the next match with Rey Mysterio’s son on the line in a ladder match with Eddie Guerrero. Okay, maybe it wasn’t reality, but Dominick is actually Rey’s son. The story was that Eddie was the real dad but couldn’t handle the situation. It was a pretty emotional storyline that actually did feel real at points, with custody of Dominick on the line. Even with the odd stipulation, this match still was very good.

Rey and Eddie had great chemistry with one another and put on a good show. Unfortunately, Vickie Guerrero missed her spot, which threw things off a bit but overall, it didn’t hurt things that much and Rey picked up the win after Vickie held Eddie down so Rey could climb the ladder. This was Eddie’s last SummerSlam.

Kurt Angle picked up a quick win over Eugene, which was followed by a WrestleMania rematch between The Undertaker and Randy Orton. ‘Taker had gotten the win a few months earlier but Orton picked up the victory here with some help from his dad, WWE Hall of Famer Bob Orton, who hit the ring as a “fan,” which distracted The Deadman and allowed Randy to hit the RKO for the win. This wasn’t bad and helped Orton’s heel persona.

The WWE Championship Match between John Cena and Chris Jericho was up next and was one of the best matches of the night. Jericho was about to leave WWE for a while so it was pretty clear that Cena was going to get the win, but it was still entertaining. Y2J had the advantage for most of the match with Cena fighting back and picking up the win with a very cool finish.

The other World title match was up next as Batista defended the Big Gold Belt against JBL. This No Holds Barred Match wasn’t as good as the Cena-Jericho bout but it was good for what it was supposed to be. It only went about 10 minutes but it got physical and The Animal got a win to keep his title reign going.

The main event was the highly-anticipated matchup between Hulk Hogan and Shawn Michaels, who had never faced one another in a one-on-one setting until this night. The build for this match was insane, as Michaels turned heel for a short time and we got to see some of that old HBK attitude come out.

This match gets criticized often and Michaels overselling everything was a bit unprofessional but I still think this was a solid match. Hogan was 52 at the time and still went for more than 20 minutes and got busted open pretty badly, which made the win for him look even better. This was supposed to be the first in a trilogy of matches that never ended up happening, mainly due to Hogan backing out of the original deal, which is why Shawn acted like he did that night.

This match combined with the Edge-Matt, Eddie-Rey and Cena-Jericho matches made for a good night overall, just not quite good enough to crack the top 10.