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Summerslam 2017 can be summed up as a fairly underwhelming night capped off by a tremendous main event that might have changed the face of the WWE forever.
Braun Strowman was easily the star of the night and fans will be keen to see where his rivalry with Brock Lesnar goes from here.
As for the rest of the action, it wasn't exactly a bad Summerslam show but there were still some very questionable booking decisions and points of concern for the WWE going forward.
Now that the dust has settled, here are eight questions from WWE Summerslam 2017 that most need answering:
#1 How much trouble is Smackdown Live in?
In the period immediately following the WWE Draft in 2016, Smackdown Live! was arguably the more enjoyable show of the two. It has the advantage of being an hour shorter than RAW and fans were appreciating the opportunities given to stars that had long been left to drown in the mid-card.
Fast forward to August 2017, and RAW has clearly wrestled control back from its Tuesday night younger brother. It has the more engaging storylines, more compelling characters and much better booking. Summerslam 2017 really showed it too.
When you think about the comparisons we can draw from Summerslam, things actually start to look really worrying for the Blue Brand. The Universal Title match was light years ahead of the WWE Championship bout, and the same can pretty much be said of the women's division.
While the RAW tag-team title match saw the reunion of the Shield in a very solid match, the Smackdown tag-titles were relegated to the pre-show.
If you see Big Cass and Baron Corbin as being on a slight par with each other at the moment, it's safe to say the former had the better of the action last night, and now looks like a believable future champion while the latter might as well look for another job.
It's always possible for Daniel Bryan and Shane McMahon to turn things around, but Summerslam 2017 was definitely RAW's night.
#2 Were the 'Glow' belts not selling very well?
One of the stranger decisions of the night at Summerslam was to have Natalya defeat Naomi for the Smackdown Women's Championship. Natalya is not an unworthy champion, but in terms of the division as a whole, she isn't exactly top of the fan's likeability list.
It felt very much as if this match was going to be another stepping stone for Naomi before a more suitable challenge became available. In normal circumstances, either Charlotte or Becky Lynch would have taken the belt off her at some point in the near future in a match that would have genuinely split the crowd in a positive way.
Now we are looking forward to some kind of rivalry involving Natalya and one of the aforementioned superstars on the roster. This does make sense from a straight heel/face dynamic, but again, does anyone really care about Natalya enough for any of these feuds to be engaging?
And another point -- what was the plan with the light-up 'Glow' Smackdown Women's Championship? It appeared as though the replica belts were serving as a fairly decent merchandise seller but are the young kids really going to want one now that the main belt has to be changed again?
Not much about this rivalry or match made very much sense, and considering how Smackdown is faring against RAW at the moment, that's really not a good thing.
#3 Why doesn't Randy Orton get the John Cena treatment?
One thing that really baffles a lot of people about Randy Orton is that he does not generally receive enough criticism for not putting guys over.
Triple H and John Cena have been guilty of this in WWE's recent past but they've at least sparked quite a lot of backlash from the fans about it. Orton has been just as guilty and still continues to be in 2017, yet most of the fans stay quiet.
You could make the case that he has lost to Jinder Mahal several times over the past few months, but that argument doesn't really hold a lot of weight. For one thing, none of those losses were clean, so at no point did Orton sacrifice himself to make the champion look better than him.
Secondly, Jinder was never somebody the crowd wanted as champion in the first place, despite the fact that he's starting to win a few people around now.
At Summerslam, Orton showed us yet again that when it comes to helping fresher, younger talent climb to the top, he just isn't that interested. He practically squashed Rusev last night, a wrestler that really needed a signature victory after losing to Cena at the last PPV. And the less said about the Bray Wyatt rivalry earlier this year, the better.
Orton doesn't really have a solidified position in WWE anymore. He certainly can no longer be considered as one of the main attractions, and due to his age, he does not have that many more years to prove anything to us.
So why people are not more angry at the way he deliberately stops people advancing is baffling.
#4 Why is Bray Wyatt afraid of body paint?
A significant portion of the WWE Universe has been critical of Bray Wyatt in recent months and for good reason. His transition to RAW has somehow been worse than his treatment on Smackdown since the Superstar Shake-up; his feuds have been largely pointless, and his booking is not fitting of somebody once tipped to be the new Undertaker.
Unfortunately, his rivalry with Finn Balor has been no different. Their interactions are always stuck somewhere in the middle of the card each week on RAW, and are usually filled with pointless vignettes that try to come across as spooky or demented. but actually end up making both guys look foolish.
One redeeming feature of the rivalry was the return of the Demon King, Finn Balor's alter ego. It did make a bit of sense seeing as Balor needed to bring out his own dark side in order to counter the sinister mind games of Wyatt. But the way this match played out made the whole affair revert straight back to being confusing and unnecessary.
Bray Wyatt is supposed to be somebody who hears voices in his head and lives in a creepy old house with the remains of 'Sister Abigail' lying below the floorboards. He also has some kind of affinity with dangerous animals like snakes and crocodiles and can teleport at will as a way of getting into people's heads.
So why would he be in any way intimidated by Finn Balor who is effectively just wearing body paint? Apart from the entrance, there isn't too much that separates Balor from the Demon King.
The in-ring style is largely the same, and without the head gear on, it really does just look like Balor has visited the face painting stand at a young child's birthday party.
Sometimes, even though you can see the WWE are trying to tell a story, you just have to sit back and realise that they're not as good at it anymore.
#5 Should Seth and Dean have worn Shield gear?
A real highlight of RAW recently has been the storyline involving Dean Ambrose and Seth Rollins. This has several different narratives running through it including friendship, betrayal, forgiveness and resentment.
The former Sheild members are obviously having a difficult time trusting one another after all that has gone on between them but their victory at Summerslam for the RAW Tag-Team Championships seems to have cemented their reunion.
The match itself was very good, arguably the match of the night, if you don't take the main event into account. But perhaps as a way to make the occasion feel even more special, Dean and Seth could have come to the ring wearing their old Shield gear.
The Shield are still one of the best inventions of the WWE Creative team in the past decade and ever since their split back in 2014, fans have been wondering whether a full reunion was ever going to be possible.
Luckily for us, WWE Superstars are very forgiving, especially when they both happen to be babyfaces at the same time. As much as fans love Seth and Dean as singles competitors, we haven't really cared about them as much since they ceased being the 'Hounds of Justice'.
Maybe last night could have been a symbolic break with the recent past and drawn a line under the somewhat questionable booking the two have suffered over the past couple of years.
There's no indication that this is a return to the Shield, albeit as a two-person, rather than a three-person outfit. They aren't explicitly calling themselves 'The Shield' and they are both still dressed as singles competitors.
Maybe this is a minor detail the WWE might think about including later on down the road, but for pure sentimentality reasons, they might have visited that particular avenue last night instead.
#6 Why would any other Japanese stars want to come to WWE?
There's no point denying it any longer, the WWE have a real problem with their booking of Shinsuke Nakamura. Yes, he did beat John Cena clean on Smackdown to become the number one contender for the WWE Championship, but this isn't 2010, and beating Cena clean isn't that much of a big deal anymore.
In all of his other rivalries, Nakamura has just come across as a round peg in a square hole.
Last night's WWE Championship match was the worst of the bunch. A slow, awkward series of moves followed by a slight distraction and a clean victory for Mahal was far from what most of us were expecting.
While a lot of people might be unaware of Shinsuke's true abilities, those who watched him as part of NJPW, and later on NXT, know how good the Japanese sensation can be. Signing him was a stroke of genius on the part of WWE, but they just haven't managed to get it right with him since, at least not on the main roster.
The reason his purchase was so important was that Shinsuke was effectively being used as a guinea-pig to see whether it was plausible for big names from Japan to come to the States and make a similar name for themselves.
NJPW is undoubtedly the king of the Japenese wrestling market at the moment, and this is something the WWE should not take lightly. Their appeal is also currently making huge waves in the US to the point where an NJPW US Tour is starting to sound like a more attractive prospect than a WWE Japanese Tour.
If handled correctly, Nakamura's time with WWE could have precipitated more big names from the Far East to consider a career state-side. After last night, and following the months of half-hearted booking that has come before it, why would somebody like Okada or Naito even think about following in the footsteps of the "King of Strong Style"?
If the rise of NJPW continues to the point where they can successfully challenge Vince's company on US soil, it will be booking decisions like last night's that will prove to be where WWE let their lead slip.
#7 How huge is Strowman vs. Lesnar going to be?
Many Wrestling fans might argue that no matter how bad an undercard has been, a good main event can always save an evening. I'm not 100% convinced by this myself, but Summerslam 2017 definitely did make a good case for it.
With the exception of the RAW Tag-team title match and Alexa vs. Banks, the night was pretty underwhelming, especially when you consider this was supposed to be the biggest pro-wrestling PPV of the summer. However, the fatal 4-way main event for the Universal Title was simply exceptional.
Right from the very start, the crowd were into the match on a level not previously seen throughout the night. The sight of these four huge dudes throwing each other around the building was WWE at its very best.
Samoa Joe and Roman Reigns certainly played their part, but the real stars of the night were easily Brock Lesnar and Braun Strowman.
Strowman has won people in a way that deserves the highest praise. Going from just another member of the Wyatt Family before the Brand Split to a main event monster capable of going toe to toe with the Beast is such an impressive feat in this day and age of WWE and the crowd were more than happy to show their appreciation for him last night.
In the first half of the match, Braun made Lesnar look like just another ordinary WWE Superstar, something nobody has been able to do in quite some time. Every time Roman or Joe entered the match, it felt as though they were just getting in the way.
There is something about the chemistry between Lesnar and Strowman that could potentially serve to make Vince McMahon a lot of money going forward.
What was even more impressive about this was the way Strowman never really looked vulnerable. He brushed off attacks from both Joe and Reigns and managed to avoid Lesnar's German Suplexes.
This has set the table perfectly for Brock vs. Braun at the next PPV. Lesnar has some work to do to redeem his image, and Strowman will not be eager to finish off the job he started. Without a doubt the match of the night.
#8 Should we feel sorry for Baron Corbin?
It's safe to say it's been a bad week for Baron Corbin. After losing his Money in the Bank cash-in match against Jinder Mahal on Smackdown, some hoped this would be the start of a monster heel push that would have seen him tear through the rest of the roster out of anger and frustration.
If his Summerslam match with John Cena is anything to go by, this certainly isn't the plan for "The Lone Wolf" going forward. He instead succumbed to the Cena monster, losing his match in an unceremonious fashion that did nothing to redeem his embarrassment last Tuesday.
If we believe the rumours and speculation, this downward trend is the result of Corbin getting into a few misguided tussles with several people on Twitter. In one sense, Corbin has nobody to blame but himself because if you're someone who is tipped to become a WWE Champion, you'd probably be more cautious about how you behave online.
But we can't deny that the WWE have some responsibility in all of this, and the punishment Corbin is receiving does come across as a little unjustified. Surely the company has its own measures in place to monitor what their Superstars say and do online. Who is asking any questions about the WWE's social media policy for instance?
Plus, we seem to live in a much more protected time than we used to. Imagine if Stone Cold or The Rock had access to Twitter back in 1998. It's hard to believe they would have always remained tactful, but would Vince have really cared back then anyway?
It all seems a little too harsh on Corbin at the moment, especially when you consider that people like Seth Rollins have been forgiven for far worse activity online recently. Where does The Lone Wolf go from here? Let's just hope Vince has learnt how to let things go.
