As WWE continues the build to these shows, it's our duty as professional wrestling fans to speculate and give our predictions on what we think is going to happen, wax poetic about ideas that we want to see, lament the decisions already made that we don't agree with and so on.
Anything can happen in WWE, and the pay-per-views always have some elements of unpredictability, but some things are pretty easy to see coming from a mile away.
With that in mind, here are 10 things that you can bet on that will happen during SummerSlam week.
1) Ronda Rousey will win the Raw Women's Championship
Ronda Rousey had the Raw Women's Championship in her grasp at Money in the Bank before Alexa Bliss interrupted her match with Nia Jax, cashed in her title opportunity, stole the belt and ran off with it.
Since then, Rousey has been positioned—as expected—as a shark that smells blood and can't wait to sink her teeth into Bliss and get what's rightfully hers.
That's going to happen sooner or later, and the only way Rousey doesn't win the title at SummerSlam is if there's some needlessly overbooked scenario where Bliss retains due to shenanigans so they can stretch this story out even longer and have another match at Hell in a Cell and possibly even the Super Show-Down and even Evolution.
The easier and smarter call, though, is to just bite the bullet and have Rousey beat Bliss here.
When you were hitting up a site like Betting Top10 and always placing your money on Rousey with her MMA fights, you were pretty much guaranteed to be right. Whether it's UFC or WWE, the same thing applies. Bet on Rousey and you won't be disappointed.
2) Becky Lynch will win the SmackDown Women's Championship
Now that James Ellsworth has been fired from SmackDown Live, there will be no insurance policy for Carmella to bank on as a means to retain the SmackDown Women's Championship.
Becky Lynch has been booked very strong over the past few weeks and is gaining a lot of momentum toward what appears to be a guaranteed title win come SummerSlam.
She's the more serious wrestler of the two, with the more credible background heading into Evolution, and Carmella has already had a title run long enough that she can drop the belt without looking like a failure of an experiment.
Once Lynch wins the title, she can have a feud with Asuka, a match with Charlotte Flair, and even a match against Ronda Rousey at Survivor Series if they do the "champion versus champion" concept like last year.
But for all that to happen, she has to win the title, first, and that will happen at SummerSlam.
3) NXT TakeOver: Brooklyn IV will be easier to digest and less controversial
Over the past few years, NXT has hosted a TakeOver event before every major WWE pay-per-view, and more often than not, they end up being the better shows overall.
They're smaller, which allows for a more compact, tight show that doesn't come off bloated or tiresome, as there's no time to get bored.
The quality of the in-ring action is normally better, too, as the roster is hungry to show their skills and prove how valuable of an asset they can be to the company.
Even the storylines can be better, since there's less over-exposure and convoluted booking to get in the way.
By Monday morning, it's extremely likely people will look back on TakeOver and SummerSlam and think more fondly of the NXT performance.
4) The only NXT title in danger is the North American Championship
The card for TakeOver consists of all championships in NXT on the line, but three of them aren't going anywhere, for sure.
Aleister Black just lost the NXT Championship to Tommaso Ciampa, and in a Triple Threat with Johnny Gargano, there are so many ways the heel champion can retain. He can quickly snatch a pin away from either babyface on the other by capitalizing on what they did and swooping in. He can utilize weaponry in the No Disqualification setting to give himself an edge. Hell, he can win just by pure momentum. He's not losing here, as he needs to drop the belt at the next event or even further down the line.
Shayna Baszler has even less of a chance of losing. She already lost to Kairi Sane in the Mae Young Classic finals last year, so this is her chance to get back the win, even the odds between the two, and further her dominant title reign.
The Undisputed Era likely only lost the titles to Moustache Mountain to give them a boost that they can carry into the NXT UK brand, as well as to have at least one title change hands during the most recent tournament. They swiftly won the titles back, and they're not dropping them to Tyler Bate and Trent Seven again. War Raiders are next in line.
But Adam Cole may not be so lucky. He's putting the North American Championship on the line against Ricochet, who has the popularity, talent, and buzz to be granted a title without it being controversial or unbelievable. Plus, since all of the titles are held by heels right now, it would be a good change of pace to have a babyface holding at least one of them.
For this event to go down without a single title change wouldn't be the end of the world or anything of the sort, but it's unlikely, and if any belts are going to new winners, it's Ricochet winning Adam Cole's.
There's no question about it: @KingRicochet has his sights SET on @AdamColePro's #WWENXT North American Championship! pic.twitter.com/9GfsYcCEtN— WWE (@WWE) July 20, 2018
5) You're going to hear more promotion for Evolution than any other upcoming event
This week on Monday Night Raw, the announcement was made that WWE will have its first-ever pay-per-view event featuring only women, called WWE Evolution.
It's an historic thing, for sure, and a great means to offset the controversial Greatest Royal Rumble fiasco by proving that WWE really does have an investment in pushing the women's division going forward.
However, there are still some negatives, and it's also going to be one of those annoying things that WWE will not stop talking about and will promote nonstop, with more of an emphasis on it than any other event.
Hell in a Cell will be the event following SummerSlam, then the Super Show-Down in Australia, but you can guarantee that at most, those two will receive a passing mention at best, while Evolution will have some kind of featured commercial or backstage segment touting how amazing it's going to be.
6) If Dean Ambrose shows up, he's getting involved in the Intercontinental Championship match
The Lunatic Fringe has been out with an injury for the past several months, but reports are saying he might be ready to go around the time SummerSlam happens.
This could be totally unfounded as far as rumors go, and we might not see him until much later down the line, but if he does make an appearance, he's going to be involved in the match between Seth Rollins and Dolph Ziggler for the Intercontinental Championship.
How that happens and what he does is up for debate. Does he screw over Rollins and prevent him from winning the match, or does he make the save by evening the odds, balancing out Drew McIntyre's influence, helping Rollins win the title?
It all depends on where WWE wants to go post-SummerSlam. If Rollins and Ambrose are going to be tag team champions again and split up later down the line to give them a match against each other at WrestleMania, they'll be best buds again here. But if WWE wishes to have Ambrose come back and immediately start feuding with Rollins, he'll do something like hit the Dirty Deeds on his former partner.
7) The cruiserweights will either be left off the card or on the pre-show
Since WWE decided to have all pay-per-views going forward be co-branded, we haven't seen a single Cruiserweight Championship match on any of them.
Nobody from 205 Live competed on Backlash, Money in the Bank, or Extreme Rules. At all. The last time was the Greatest Royal Rumble.
That's such a shame, as the cruiserweight division consistently puts on some of the best matches and has such bright talent that are being ignored.
Clearly, WWE doesn't view them as important enough to justify finding time on the cards for them, which is very sad, and after three events in a row, we should just expect this as a norm going forward.
SummerSlam has the time to be able to incorporate a Cruiserweight Championship match on the card, but it's not a guarantee like it used to be. However, if it does make it to the lineup, you can place your bets on it being located on the kickoff.
The pre-show is the block of time dedicated to the matches WWE feels are the least valuable, and since they haven't even deemed the cruiserweights worthy of competing at all on the past three events, the kickoff is likely the only chance they have of appearing at SummerSlam.
8) Roman Reigns vs. Brock Lesnar will not go over well
There's no way the crowd reacts to Brock Lesnar vs. Roman Reigns in a positive sense. Absolutely not.
The entire time this match was being set up a few years ago, people crapped all over it. Then, they followed through with that negativity at WrestleMania 31, and yet, WWE felt the need to try it again, and again, and again, and again.
Every single time Roman Reigns and Brock Lesnar square off, the audience is not invested in it, boos incessantly, voices frustration about how this keeps happening and doesn't embrace Reigns as a babyface champion of the people like WWE wants.
There's absolutely no chance whatsoever that this is received with smiles and cheers and happiness, especially if the match ends up being as rough as it likely will be.
— WWE (@WWE) July 24, 2018
Lesnar has phoned in his performances for such a long time now, wrestling short matches that consist of pretty much nothing but German suplexes, F5s, and being hit with spears and Superman punches from Reigns.
If that happens again, as it's been happening, the crowd will be furious, and the ending stands virtually no chance of making up for it. If Lesnar wins, people will be frustrated that it's the same thing we've seen before every single time. If Reigns wins, people will still boo, because he's not the guy they want to see hold the title. If Braun Strowman or Kevin Owens cashes in and wins the title, people will still have a chip on their shoulder that it should have had a clean finish, and it will just seem like a rehash of WrestleMania 31. If Strowman or Owens cashes in and loses, there will be even more people even more upset.
It's a no-win situation, and WWE is too stubborn to see it.
9) If Kevin Owens wins the Money in the Bank briefcase, he's cashing in
It was announced on Raw that Kevin Owens and Braun Strowman will face each other again at SummerSlam, and if Owens wins in any capacity—pinfall, submission, count out or disqualification—he'll actually be awarded Strowman's Money in the Bank contract.
Normally, when WWE has this type of stipulation, they follow through with the more interesting idea. In this instance, it's extremely likely Owens will either win by DQ or count out in order to take the briefcase and be a dastardly heel.
If that happens, you can certainly bet on WWE pulling the trigger with the cash-in by the end of the night, having Owens be so impatient that he tries to defeat Reigns and/or Lesnar to steal the Universal Championship.
Whether or not he would be successful in doing that is up in the air, but if he wins the case from Strowman, it's doubtful he'll hold onto it very long.
10) Samoa Joe will win the WWE Championship
It seems like there are a lot of title changes that will go down, which makes it somewhat hard to think that another one will happen, but when it comes to the WWE Championship, AJ Styles has held it quite a long time.
That's not a bad thing, necessarily, but it does mean that with every passing day, he's closer to the time he's going to drop the title, and it appears Samoa Joe may have his number.
Joe needs a world title reign to legitimize him on the main roster, as he's accomplished absolutely nothing since moving up from NXT.
While he's had more momentum in the past than he currently is working with, now is the best time to strike and to put the title on him.
He and Styles have a history together from their time in TNA, so they should be comfortable working each other and for The Phenomenal One to pass the baton over to The Samoan Submission Machine.
Those are 10 things you can bet on when it comes to SummerSlam week, so go ahead and try your luck!
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