WWE SummerSlam results: Five things we learned as Finn Balor and Bray Wyatt dazzle and tag team bouts deliver

New champions aplenty, WWE SummerSlam delivered a great show, but why weren't fans let in soon enough to see it from the start?

WWE’s Raw and Smackdown rosters delivered a solid show at SummerSlam from Brooklyn New York late on Sunday night.

Hot on the heels of a fantastic night of action with the company’s younger stars on NXT 24 hours prior, the more established names on the book followed suit with a busy and impressive line-up of matches.

There were some frustrations as the likes of the WWE Championship match between Jinder Mahal and Shinsuke Nakamura and Randy Orton’s meeting with Rusev were given a scant amount of time on a card that at times felt wasted but, overall, the rest delivered convincingly to leave SummerSlam regarded widely as something of a success.

With bones crunching, announce tables flying and a flurry of action in between, it would have been easy to miss the best of what the night had to offer – we’ve put together the five key things we learned from the 2017 edition of SummerSlam.

We have a new champion...

Ring announcers at SummerSlam certainly earned their money - countless championships changed hands on a night that felt like WWE having a real shake-up across both rosters. The landscape of the respective women's divisions now has a truly different complexion with Natalya and Sasha Banks sitting petty, while both tag titles also switched around on a busy night. It had been widely expected that we’d see Lesnar bow out of WWE for a while by dropping his championship, but The Beast joined Smackdown’s Jinder Mahal in standing tall.

Brock Lesnar retained his WWE Universal Championship at SummerSlam (WWE)

Tag team classics...

It was a night of some solid in-ring action and some that frustrated between the ropes, but the two tag team championship bouts were really quite special and were candidates for match of the night. The Usos and The New Day have worked so well together over the years that their chemistry is unrivalled- their meeting really deserved a better placing on the card. And if you're talking chemistry then you can't look past the new Raw tag champs Seth Rollins and Dean Ambrose, back together again, as they edged out Sheamus and Cesaro in another thriller. Fantastic work from a collection of some of WWE's best talent.


 The Usos delivered a classic with The New Day 
 (WWE)

Let the people in...

SummerSlam's runtime was, in total, over six hours long, a feast of entertainment. But while those watching on WWE Network were treated to the whole party, many thousands of fans in attendance in Brooklyn missed out on some early matches. The area doors opened locally at 2pm - by which time WWE had already begun airing content for the night, including the first match featuring the Hardy Boyz. This match-up played out in front of a smattering of people - dozens at best - which looked awful on television and left a bad taste in the mouth of those queuing. Whether this was always the plan or whether it was a mix-up of some sorts isn't clear but, if it's the former, surely we'd see fewer matches given a proper amount of time in front of a real crowd? Especially given Orton-Rusev was given nine seconds bell-to-bell.

Nobody does theatrics better...

While many feel WWE has plenty of rivals around the world when it comes to an in-ring product, the company really stands undisputed when talking about production, theatrics and dramatics. From the video packages that precede every match to those that build the event themselves, they really are impeccable. For the perfect illustration of the point watch the entrances for the Balor-Wyatt clash at SummerSlam and the theme that followed during the match. Theatre indeed.

Bray Wyatt's entry combined with Finn Balor's was a spectacle to behold (Getty)

Cena should still be winning the big ones

After a long, long career at the top level of WWE, John Cena appears to be winding down. Over the years we've seen many a top star in WWE put over young talent on their way out of the spotlight and while we've seen Cena do plenty of that over the last couple of years, it's important he still gets his fair share of big victories like Sunday's one against Corbin at SummerSlam. He spent much of his career being built up as an unassailable superhero, and annihilating that image now does nobody any favours. Keep victories over Cena rare to ensure they really mean something - giving a solid showing at SummerSlam in a losing effort, for example, did Corbin no harm.