On Raw this past Monday, Triple H announced that WWE SummerSlam, which goes down at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn on August 23, will now be a four-hour show. While that means that the card could now feature more of the under-utilized talent on the roster, a new report from Dave Meltzer at the Wrestling Observer Newsletter says that Sting, one of the big names that was rumored to be appearing at the show this year, is now potentially off the card entirely.
According to Meltzer, the original plan was to announce that Sting would be coming to a fan meet and greet about a week before SummerSlam, then have him emerge as a mystery third partner, potentially for Dean Ambrose and Roman Reigns (the early SummerSlam card rumors had this pegged as a six-man tag match against The Wyatt Family). The WWE had apparently even shot commercials with both Sting and The Undertaker for SummerSlam, although no matches were listed, and Sting got into "ridiculously good shape for his age" for this potential bout.
Then, everything changed.
For some reason, Sting has apparently been told that he won't be wrestling at SummerSlam. With the storyline between Ambrose and Reigns vs. the Wyatts, the idea is now supposed to be that the two would soon be outnumbered by Bray Wyatt and his goons (though Erik Rowan has been sidelined with an injury that is going to have him out of action for four-to-six months, so who knows how that angle might play out?).
On a recent episode of Wrestling Observer Radio, Meltzer recounted these details, but he did speculate that the WWE didn't realize that the Undertaker/Brock Lesnar feud was going to end up being more popular than they initially planned. Maybe they thought SummerSlam needed both 'Taker and Sting for star power, especially since they're effectively positioning SummerSlam as their clear No. 2 pay-per-view? Meltzer also hinted that Wrestlemania plans for Sting were still being discussed, but we're quite a ways from being able to speculate on that.
In the meantime, we still have about four weeks left before SummerSlam hits BK. Maybe plans for Sting might change...again? Stay tuned.
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[via WrestleZone]
