WWE SummerSlam 2001: Retro 3 Things We Hated & 3 Things We Loved

Welcome to another edition of Wrestling Inc.'s retro reviews, where we travel back in time to take a look at a memorable or iconic show using our celebrated loved/hated format. With WWE SummerSlam 2026 on the horizon, it's only right that we highlight a SummerSlam from years gone by, and this time around, we're traveling to the year 2001, where the World Wrestling Federation is at war with The Alliance.

2001 was a quarter of a century ago, and looking back on that year, it was one of the most historic years in the history of wrestling. The Monday Night Wars came to an end when Vince McMahon bought WCW, the famed "Attitude Era" effectively ended that same week at WWE WrestleMania X-Seven, and ECW had been declared bankrupt. For the first time in a long time, there was only one game in town and that was WWE.

However, there was now the chance to do the storyline that everyone wanted to see — an interpromotional fight for supremacy between WWE and WCW, which ended up incorporating ECW as well. The infamous "Invasion" storyline got under way a few months earlier, and despite its many flaws, WWE going at it with the WCW and ECW contingent was still doing big business throughout the summer of 2001. The Invasion pay-per-view itself still holds the record for the biggest non-WrestleMania pay-per-view buyrate in company history, and the "Biggest Party of the Summer" did the same buyrate as the year before as fans still held out hope for improvement in the story and The Rock made his return to wrestling after jetting off to Hollywood to film "The Scorpion King."

Sit back, relax, and get ready to hear a whole lot of "Bodies" by Drowning Pool; here are three things we hated and three things we loved about WWE SummerSlam 2001!

Fans inside the Compaq Center in San Jose, California may not have realized it at the time, but they were about to witness history when X-Pac and Tajiri stepped into the ring for their title vs. title match. This bout would end up being the final time that the WWF Light Heavyweight Championship would ever be defended on pay-per-view, with the title being quietly retired in March 2002. Despite having a complex and interesting history, the Light Heavyweight Title never really matched up to the success of the WCW Cruiserweight Championship, but it at least had a fun swan song at one of the company's biggest events of the year.

This is easily the match on the show that I think could have been an underrated classic had it been given more time. By the summer of 2001, everyone was ready for Tajiri to become someone who they saw winning big matches on a regular basis, hence why he was part of the WWE rather than The Alliance during this period despite being best known for his work in ECW. He got one of the biggest reactions of the entire night and backed it up with a great performance against another underrated worker.

"X-Pac Heat" was very real by 2001 as X-Pac was still being featured regularly and winning championships while keeping the character he had in the nWo and D-Generation X despite both of those factions being dead for over a year. However, he was genuinely very good and very reliable in the ring and this match is a prime example. 

In the land of the giants, guys like X-Pac and Tajiri had to go the extra mile to get the attention and credit of Vince McMahon. Their in-ring work spoke for itself, so they had to lean into more TV-friendly tropes to get more screentime. However, when they were able to just work on pay-per-view, they really had the chance to shine. Tajiri's offense was so different compared to everyone else in the company, and even though he did better work in ECW, he was still very much the "Japanese Buzzsaw" that everyone praises to this day. X-Pac had great chemistry with Tajiri as well, stooging when he needed to while also throwing himself around to make himself look good.

The interference by Albert at the end wasn't really necessary, but didn't take anything away from the match, and X-Pac walked away as a double champion. A fun match that, if it had more time, would be heralded as a hidden gem in a period of storyline nonsense.

WWE SummerSlam 2001 is, for the most part, a very consistent show with not too many low points. It's when the action moves away from the ring and into the backstage area where you start to lose interest rapidly because most of the stuff backstage revolves around one running joke: Shawn Stasiak.

A former three-time WCW World Tag Team Champion with Chuck Palumbo before joining WWE in 2001 as part of the WCW invasion, Stasiak wasn't exactly the best wrestler in the world, far from it. But he was the son of the legendary Stan Stasiak and for most people, having a famous wrestling surname or family history carries enough weight to take you places. Stasiak was in great shape, could work well enough that he wouldn't look foolish in the ring, but also had enough vacancy in his character for WWE to potentially create something new.

Instead, Stasiak was transformed into a clumsy, braindead, golden retriever-esque character who would do anything to impress the leader of The Alliance, Stone Cold Steve Austin. He would try and attack some of the biggest stars in the WWE like Kurt Angle, The Brothers of Destruction and more, but would ultimately eat nothing but brick walls, steel shutters, and anything else he could possibly run into. To make matters worse, whenever he did run into something, the people involved in the segment would carry on as if nothing had happened, further burying the second-generation performer.

In this instance, Stasiak has not one, not two, but three segments backstage where he comes across as the biggest loser in the world. The first is when he talks to Debra about needing a word with Stone Cold, only for Debra to brush him off in a way that screams "I couldn't care less about you and neither should the audience." The second is when The Rock arrives at the building and is being interviewed about his match with Booker T. He is cutting one of his classic Rock promos when Stasiak charges in, nearly breaks all of his teeth on a steel shutter, and The Rock carries on like that's an every day occurrence. The third one sees The Rock getting checked in the doctor's office before Stasiak dives in, misses everything and vanishes out of the shot, which in fairness was a funny visual.

While it's never been fully confirmed, it is believed that this was all punishment for Stasiak spoiling the Vince McMahon vs. Shane McMahon match at WWE WrestleMania X-Seven on local radio. If true, dedicating three segments on a pay-per-view just to punish a guy is nasty work.

Now we move on to the feud that even the biggest detractor of the Invasion storyline looked at and thought "That's cool to be fair." 

Even before he came into WWE, Rob Van Dam was already someone who had the world talking through his work in Japan and ECW, to the point where in 1999, only Stone Cold Steve Austin was ranked higher than him in the annual PWI500 list, which for that time was a huge achievement. WWE did need to put RVD in situations that allowed him to shine the brightest though. He couldn't just waltz in and work with anyone, so who better than someone like Jeff Hardy, one of only a few people in the WWE at the time who was willing to take as many chances as Van Dam, to be "Mr. Monday Night's" first real feud.

Hardy and RVD's ladder match for the WWE Hardcore Championship at SummerSlam 2001 isn't as good as their initial match they had at Invasion a month earlier. That bout genuinely stole the show and made everyone who watched it an RVD fan almost instantly. However, that isn't to say this match isn't good; it's probably the second best match on the entire show. The chain wrestling sequence at the start was a little clunkier than I would have liked, but once the ladder is introduced, these guys just don't stop.

It's refreshing going back and watching ladder matches from this time because there is one glaring difference compared to matches that happen today; there are fewer ladders. You don't need a structure made up of 18 ladders of all shapes and sizes to get a big pop because one ladder hurts just as much when it's being thrown at you (just read our review of WWE Royal Rumble 2001 for an example). Hardy and Van Dam use the ladder in so many different ways that I could be sitting here all night listing spots that, back in 2001, no one had ever seen before, and that's what makes this match hold up all these years later. If only the spot of Hardy hanging from the belt and Van Dam trying to hit a flying kick paid off.

In the end, much like Invasion, Hardy burnt out too quickly throwing caution to the wind, while RVD was more methodical in his risk taking. He gets the job done again and is now primed to move up the card and be the star that everyone, including himself, already knew he was going to be.

Here we go, the one true stinker on this card. A match that basically killed the career of one of WCW's biggest babyfaces, stomped out one of the most innovative workers of the era, and further solidified the idea that this invasion was just a way for Vince McMahon to take a big steaming dump on the corpse of World Championship Wrestling.

Diamond Dallas Page was a generational babyface when he was in WCW, particularly in the late 1990s where you couldn't sit through an episode of "WCW Monday Nitro" without seeing people randomly throwing up the hands and screaming "BANG!" So when he was one of the few top guys to actually want to join WWE after WCW was bought in 2001, a lot of people had high hopes since Steve Austin had just turned heel, The Rock was heading off to Hollywood, and there was a big gaping hole primed for a hot new babyface.

Then they made him stalk The Undertaker's wife.

You could argue that DDP got one over on The Undertaker at Invasion as The Alliance ended up winning the main event match, but when this feud continued on to SummerSlam, everyone could see a disaster waiting to happen and that's what this Steel Cage Match was, a disaster. Jim Ross tried his best to hype it up as a "Satanic Structure," even bringing up Mick Foley being thrown off the Hell in a Cell three years earlier to build it up. But there was nothing to build up, because this was simply a glorified squash match that benefited absolutely no one. 

Kanyon tried his best to do some stuff, but he ended up being paired with Kane who was so big at this point he could hardly move. DDP was naturally paired up with a version of "The Deadman" who had fun entrance music and that was about it. Taker and Kane let Kanyon escape so they can have their way with DDP, with Kane even chilling on the ropes for a bit while Taker toyed with DDP to the sound of silence from the crowd. No one wanted this match, absolutely no one.

It was slow, it was boring, there was nothing barbaric about it for what was supposed to be a blood feud, it was terrible. DDP and Kanyon looked worthless, The Brothers of Destruction came off looking petty as anything, and this will go down as one of the biggest wastes of anyone's time in WWE history.

When he's in this sort of form, I can forgive Stone Cold Steve Austin leading the company that fired him over the phone to war against the company that made him a legend because my word was this good.

I've written about the 2001 version of Austin before, and let me tell you something, it might be his best year as an in-ring worker. He had shaken off the ring rust he had at the back end of 2000 when he returned from neck surgery, and you could tell that he was really trying to make the heel character work by going the extra mile against everyone he faced. The Rock, Chris Benoit, Chris Jericho; all of them benefited greatly from working with Austin in 2001, and Kurt Angle is no exception.

He wasn't quite the wrestling machine we'd all come to know and love, but Angle is still a beast here in 2001. He understood the weight of the situation and wanted to kill Austin at times in this match, but the problem was that he was facing a man who would do anything and everything to keep hold of his title. That desperate viciousness he carried throughout the WrestleMania main event against The Rock is on display here as well, not just using underhanded tactics to try and get the win, but being extra mean about it. Just look at him constantly slamming Angle's head against the ring post. He's demented!

That all plays wonderfully into the finishing stretch for this match. A beaten and bloodied up Angle just will not stay down, even after three Stone Cold Stunners. That visual of him giving Austin the Ankle Lock over the guardrail is stunning because it encapsulates the type of guy Austin is up against. He's been beaten half to death, is probably concussed, and is screaming with joy at the idea of breaking another guy's ankle. He's demented as well! 

Of course, Austin knows he can't get the job done and ends up resorting to beating up every referee he can in order to get disqualified, only for Nick Patrick to come down and save the day for The Alliance just when you think Angle has got it won. A DQ finish on pay-per-view is usually a copout way to end a match, but this is a glorious exception. It keeps Angle strong, sets up an eventual rematch, and has people wanting to see Austin get what was coming to him even more. Match of the night for me.

Closing out WWE SummerSlam 2001 was the highly anticipated return of The Rock after he was away filming the not-so-highly anticipated movie "The Scorpion King." The Rock was still one of the biggest names in the business, and thanks to his movie career getting underway, he was probably the biggest celebrity in WWE at the time. Him headlining the second-biggest show of the year was a big draw on pay-per-view, but sadly this match had to follow the Angle/Austin affair and that caused it to suffer as a main event bout.

To be honest, the match isn't all that bad. If anything, it's one of the better Booker T matches we ever got in WWE. Much like Austin, The Rock really came into his own as in-ring worker after the acclaimed "Attitude Era" finished, having a number of his best matches while his foot was already out the door. As for Booker, he had something to prove coming in as the WCW World Heavyweight Champion, and being given the chance to headline SummerSlam with someone like The Rock, he wanted to put his best foot forward, which he did for the most part.

The downside to this match was that, for a main event match, it was kind of put in the dreaded death spot of following the best match on the show. The crowd were always going to be a bit drained after the drama that was Austin vs. Angle. They gave it a good go, especially with Shane McMahon on the outside causing havoc that was only stopped by an interfering Bradshaw (Shane cost them their match earlier in the show). However, the predictability of the result also caused this match to suffer as well. There was no way WWE was going to feed The Rock to Booker T, no matter how much people were hyping up the Spinaroonie at the time. "The Great One" was always going to win, and it was made even more obvious by the fact that Austin kept hold of the WWE Championship — give each group each other's top title to level the playing field. 

Overall, it wasn't a bad match, and if it had gone on before the Austin/Angle match it might be more fondly remembered. With that said, ending a show as big as SummerSlam with a DQ finish wouldn't have sat right with anyone so I understand the match order. It did its job, but it was given a gargantuan task of following the match of the night, and it just didn't live up to expectations for me personally.