SummerSlam
WWE pay-per-view
SummerSlam is a professional wrestling event, produced annually since 1988 by the world's largest professional wrestling promotion, WWE. Dubbed "The Biggest Event of the Summer", it is considered WWE's second biggest event of the year behind their flagship event, WrestleMania. It is also considered one of the company's five biggest events of the year, along with WrestleMania, Royal Rumble, Survivor Series, and Money in the Bank, referred to as the "Big Five". The event has been broadcast on pay-per-view (PPV) since the inaugural 1988 event and via livestreaming since the 2014 event.
The inaugural SummerSlam took place on August 29, 1988, at Madison Square Garden in New York City. The 1992 event was the company's first major PPV to take place outside of North America with it being held at the original Wembley Stadium in London, England; it had a reported attendance of 80,355, which as of April 2023, WWE considers this to be their seventh largest live gate in history. From 2009 to 2014, SummerSlam was held at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, California and from 2015 to 2018, the event took place at the Barclays Center in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. Beginning with the 2021 event, SummerSlam has been held in National Football League stadiums across the United States. From its inception up through that 2021 event, SummerSlam was held annually in August. The 2022 event marked the first and thus far only time that the event was not held in August, as it was instead held in July, with SummerSlam returning to August with the 2023 edition. Beginning with the 2025 event, SummerSlam is now hosted as a double-night feature, a format originally exclusive to WrestleMania (beginning with WrestleMania 36 in 2020).
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “SummerSlam” is wWE pay-per-view. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through SummerSlam and pay-per-view, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “wWE pay-per-view” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q59284. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1988, 2014, 1992 and 2023.
A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
- Subject orientation
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The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “SummerSlam”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow SummerSlam primary sources, SummerSlam archive and SummerSlam research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “SummerSlam” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.