SummerSlam


SummerSlam is a professional wrestling pay-per-view event, produced annually in August by professional wrestling promotion WWE. Dubbed as "The Biggest Party of the Summer," it is one of the original "Big Four" pay-per-view events of WWE and is considered the WWE's second biggest event of the year behind WrestleMania. The inaugural SummerSlam took place on August 29, 1988, at Madison Square Garden in New York City and was broadcast via pay-per-view. From 2009 to 2014, SummerSlam was held at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, and from 2015 to 2018, the event took place at the Barclays Center in the New York City borough of Brooklyn.

History

In the 1980s, Vince McMahon's World Wrestling Federation 's main competition in the professional wrestling industry was from the Charlotte-based Jim Crockett Promotions, which was a member of the National Wrestling Alliance. McMahon countered Jim Crockett's successful Starrcade closed-circuit television event, which began airing in 1983, with the WrestleMania franchise in 1985 and eventually forced Crockett to sell his company to Ted Turner, who renamed it World Championship Wrestling. The WWF continued to replace its closed circuit programming with pay-per-view programming and added more pay-per-views to the lineup to capitalize on the success of its previous events. In addition to WrestleMania in March and Survivor Series in November, McMahon added a third pay-per-view for August, which he named SummerSlam. To keep the WWF from having a pay-per-view market monopoly, WCW began airing monthly pay-per-views, and both companies began bringing in hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue. The first SummerSlam was held on August 29, 1988 in Madison Square Garden in New York City. SummerSlam became one of the WWF's most successful events and one of the "Big Four" pay-per-views, along with WrestleMania, Survivor Series, and Royal Rumble.
The 2020 event will be held behind closed doors for the first time in 33 years, caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Dates and venues