WWE’s biggest event of the summer will take place on Saturday, serving as a bridge between the company’s past and an exciting new era that’s just beginning.
SummerSlam will be the first WWE pay-per-view since Vince McMahon retired from the company amid a sexual misconduct scandal. While McMahon may be gone, the direction for SummerSlam was put in place while he was still in charge. It’s up to new head of creative Paul “Triple H” Levesque to make SummerSlam a PPV that wraps up WWE’s existing storylines while also showing that a new direction is coming.
Calling McMahon’s retirement industry-changing feels like an understatement. It’s the most seismic event that’s happened in professional wrestling since WWE’s national expansion in the 1980s. For four decades, McMahon was the most powerful person in the wrestling world. Through Hulkamania, the Attitude Era, the Ruthless Aggression Era and up until his retirement, McMahon was singularly responsible for WWE and its creative direction. The abrupt departure of an ever-present figure like McMahon is inevitably going to lead to changes throughout WWE, both in the short and long term. The WWE that existed before McMahon’s retirement is a fundamentally different place than the WWE that will exist after it.
