SummerSlam 2009: CM Punk and Jeff Hardy Rescue an Uneven Night

Rey Mysterio and Dolph Ziggler give SummerSlam the opener it needs: quick, athletic, and structured around Ziggler proving he belongs without forcing a title change. Mysterio's timing lets every counter feel dangerous, especially when Ziggler turns aerial attempts into sudden power offense. The challenger keeps pace without looking like a passenger, which matters because this is a rematch rather than a novelty pairing. The finishing frankensteiner from the ropes is clean, emphatic, and earned. Contemporary reviewers repeatedly singled this out as one of the card's strongest matches, and the praise still makes sense. It is the kind of opener that raises expectations for the entire show and quietly makes the next few bouts feel flatter by comparison.

MVP and Jack Swagger work a compact midcard match that is better than its place in SummerSlam memory suggests, but it never develops enough urgency to become more than useful connective tissue. Swagger's size and amateur base give the exchanges a different texture from the opener, while MVP's comeback is straightforward and crowd-friendly. The Playmaker finish is decisive, which helps a feud that had spent weeks leaning on verbal attacks and interference. Nothing is technically broken here; the problem is scale. On a card marketed as WWE's second-biggest event, eight minutes of competent television-level wrestling lands as a modest achievement. The match advances MVP, gives Swagger a clean obstacle, and then disappears from the larger story of the night almost immediately.

Chris Jericho and Big Show already understand the easiest version of their championship formula: let Jericho absorb trouble, then let Show change the geometry of the match. Cryme Tyme bring enough speed and crowd connection to make the champions work, particularly when JTG creates brief openings against Jericho. The finish uses the champions' strengths logically, with Big Show's punch turning Jericho's submission trouble into an immediate pinfall opportunity. The bout never threatens to steal the show, but it does something valuable for the new team by making their partnership look coherent rather than accidental. At under ten minutes, the match leaves before the size mismatch becomes repetitive. It is a solid defense that strengthens the champions without treating the challengers as comic relief.

Kane and The Great Khali are asked to turn a kidnapping angle into a wrestling match, and the limitations are obvious almost immediately. The pace is slow, the movement is restricted, and the crowd has little reason to believe the physical exchanges will suddenly become dynamic. Kane's focus on Ranjin Singh gives the bout a storyline thread, but it also means the match keeps drifting away from the two wrestlers actually advertised. The running DDT finish is at least decisive and avoids a prolonged closing sequence. Contemporary criticism was harsh, and time has not uncovered much hidden value. The match accomplishes the narrow booking goal of giving Kane a win and extending the feud, but on SummerSlam it feels like an angle that should have remained on SmackDown.

Shawn Michaels' return could have swallowed the match whole, but The Legacy earn enough offense to keep the reunion from becoming a nostalgia exhibition. Cody Rhodes and Ted DiBiase isolate Michaels, counter familiar DX offense, and force Triple H to spend stretches reacting rather than posing. That balance gives the eventual comeback weight. The finishing run is crowded without becoming sloppy, moving through Cross Rhodes, Pedigree, Dream Street, and finally Sweet Chin Music in a sequence that rewards the audience for investing twenty minutes. Contemporary reviewers praised the match heavily, with some calling it WWE's best tag bout of the year. The theatrical DX entrance is enormous, but the wrestling underneath it is strong enough to justify the presentation instead of merely surviving it.

Eight seconds is not enough time to grade a conventional wrestling match, so the value here comes almost entirely from the surprise and the post-match violence. Christian catches William Regal before he is even settled, hits the Killswitch, and retains immediately. The shock gets a reaction, but it also throws away a pairing that could have provided the card with another technically strong match. Ezekiel Jackson and Vladimir Kozlov attacking Christian afterward gives Regal's side some heat back, yet it does not replace the championship bout that viewers were promised. Year-end criticism later identified this as one of WWE's biggest match disappointments of 2009. As an angle it is functional. As a SummerSlam title defense, it is a frustrating choice that leaves obvious quality on the table.

Randy Orton and John Cena have enough familiarity to produce a strong title match, which makes the repeated restart machinery more aggravating. The early work is competent and the crowd understands every major beat, but the finish keeps stopping itself: disqualification, restart, countout, restart, feet on the ropes, another restart, then Brett DiBiase's interference. Each added twist reduces the impact of the previous one. By the time Orton lands the RKO and retains, the result feels less like a cunning escape and more like relief that the referee will finally stop restarting the match. Contemporary reviewers consistently attacked the overbooking, and that criticism has aged well. There are good performances inside the structure, but the structure refuses to trust them.

CM Punk and Jeff Hardy turn months of personal hostility into the kind of main event SummerSlam is supposed to deliver. The weapons are not random decoration; ladders, chairs, and tables become extensions of the feud's escalating desperation. Hardy's Swanton from the ladder through the broadcast table remains the signature image, but the match works because both men keep returning to the championship hanging above them. Punk's final climb feels ruthless rather than triumphant, exactly right for the character shift that had defined the summer. Contemporary reviewers were nearly unanimous in calling this the night's best match, and later rankings kept it prominent in SummerSlam history. The Undertaker's post-match return adds one last major image without stealing the victory from Punk.