Four Years of Summer Rae

As many of you know by now, I’m a pretty big fan of Summer Rae. And April 22^nd 2017 marks four years to the date where Summer made her main roster debut as the permanent dance partner and manager of Fandango. While Summer has unfortunately not held any gold in WWE over her tenure, I believe she’s had a very profound impact on the WWE. And to get all of that, we’ll start with before her main roster debut…

FCW & NXT

Summer Rae signed to WWE in November of 2011 and literally made her on screen debut in FCW a month later. By March, she was the general manager of FCW with Rob Naylor as her right hand man. Summer did a great job as GM of FCW but when FCW transitioned in NXT, she became a ring announcer. Summer wore a lot of hats around here. That all changed in January of 2013, when she attacked Paige after a match and began the first big women’s feud in NXT. This was when I began to realize just how talented Summer is. Her and Paige had a wonderful feud that really introduced the fans to NXT women’s wrestling. There were women’s matches here and there before this, but not many with any kind of storyline behind them. During this feud, Summer officially got the call-up to WWE, making her the first female superstar to ever be called up from NXT. But that wasn’t the end of her time in NXT. Summer managed to pull off working both the main roster and NXT for nearly a year! Summer went on to have a very fun feud with Emma, where their dueling personalities shined and they had what I consider to be by far the best dance contest in WWE history. Summer then set her sights on up-start rookie Sasha Banks. Summer had seen Sasha passively taking loss after loss and wanted to knock some sense into her. In a fantastic promo, Summer managed to turn Sasha heel and began crafting her into The Boss that she is today. Not long after, Summer and Sasha managed to recruit Charlotte alongside them, creating The BFFs. The BFFs stirred chaos all over NXT until around February of 2014 when Summer stuck around the main roster and began filming The Marine 4. However, Summer made her return to NXT in the Spring and tried to get the gang back together. Charlotte and Sasha weren’t having any of it and it all culminated to Summer’s final NXT appearance where she lost to Charlotte in an NXT Women’s Championship match.

Mrs Fandango & The Slayers

Meanwhile, on the main roster, Summer Rae and Fandango had taken the main roster by storm. Through hilarious interactions with each other and their opponents, they were doing some of the funniest segments on TV at the time. At Wrestlemania 30, Summer Rae and Emma became the first two NXT graduates to compete at a Wrestlemania. Summer took some time off after Mania to film The Marine 4 along with The Miz, becoming the first WWE women’s wrestler to star in a WWE film. However Fandango decided to dump Summer and get together with Layla while Summer was filming the movie. Layla would come out every week wearing the same dresses that Summer used to wear and dance just like Summer did. Summer would return the next month, leading to a nasty feud with Layla over Fandango. It featured sneak attacks, milk baths, brawls and a lot of name calling but ultimately both Summer and Layla realized that Fandango played them and became a team, taking their anger out on Fandango. Summer & Layla would become known as the Slayers and went around causing mischief in the women’s division at the time. After Layla retired, Summer was back on her own. She was putting on very fun matches but was coming up on the losing end more often than not.

Rae Rae & Ru Ru

Summer also briefly inserted herself into the Miz vs Damien Mizdow feud, pretending to align with Mizdow before turning on him and joining Miz. However it did not last long. In the Spring of 2015, Rusev and Lana split up as Rusev began blaming his problems on Lana, especially as he was injured. As Rusev watched in rage as Lana made out with Dolph Ziggler in the center of the ring, Summer Rae was seen comforting Rusev backstage. Summer, seeing an opportunity, aligned herself with Rusev and took a page out of Layla’s book, acting and dressing like Lana. Summer and Rusev were absolutely hilarious during this storyline. Just about every expression and mannerism Summer did during this feud was funny. As Rusev and Ziggler would battle it out in the middle of the ring, Summer and Lana would take the fight to the ground outside the ring, engaging in nasty catfights nearly every week. Summer even managed to lock Lana in the Accolade, Rusev’s finisher, one week for some insult to injury. Ultimately this feud came to an end as Summer found out that Rusev was actually back with, and engaged to Lana. Summer cut a fiery promo, arguably the best of her career in front of her hometown crowd, slapping Rusev and ending her run with him. A fun fact about that promo was that Summer actually got to write it as well.

Prince & Princess Pretty

From there, Summer tried to get friendly with Ziggler but was rejected. Summer decided to make him pay by bringing Tyler Breeze, her new boyfriend, to take care of him. Breeze and Ziggler fought it out for a couple months before Summer and Breeze decided to mutually call it quits. Summer would then move back into the women’s division, defeating Paige on Raw in February of 2016, her first televised match in 8 months. But right before that, Summer made history again, along with Charlotte, becoming the first women in WWE to have a match in India. And as someone that’s seen footage from both of those matches, they’re pretty awesome. At Wrestlemania 32, Summer Rae was a part of Team BAD & Blonde along with Emma, Naomi, Tamina & Lana. Around this time, Summer was really getting on a roll in the ring. She was having awesome matches with Natalya, Paige and Sasha Banks especially. Many of these matches came on Main Event & Superstars, which unfortunately don’t have the following that Raw, Smackodwn and PPVs do. But rest assure, Summer treats every match she has like it’s a PPV and managed to really turn some heads in her two bouts against Sasha especially. Sadly, due to injury, Summer’s most recent match in WWE dates back to Superstars the week of the brand split draft. Despite being on the Raw roster, we have yet to see Summer make an appearance on TV.

Rae of Hope

Despite not having the big time exposure that many other wrestlers have, I believe Summer has had an awesome career in WWE. She’s managed multiple superstars, been a general manager, had lots of good matches and has been a top level ambassador of the brand. As someone that’s been following Summer’s recovery efforts, it was heartbreaking to see the pain she was in late last year and nice to hear that she seems to be doing better as of late. I personally can’t wait to see her back on television, where there’s lots of new women for her to face and potentially some new managerial candidates. Regardless, Summer has managed to make everything she’s been involved with fun and I don’t see it being any different upon return. We’ve had four years of Summer Rae and I can’t wait more!

A list of essential Summer Rae matches:

vs Paige – NXT 2/13/13 (shows how amazing her ring psychology was in her very first televised match)

vs Paige – NXT 5/1/13

vs Natalya – NXT 5/15/13

vs Paige – NXT 10/30/13

vs Kaityn – Superstars 12/20/13

vs Emma – NXT 2/19/14

vs Emma – Main Event 4/7/15

vs Naomi – Main Event 6/17/15 (a rare face performance)

vs Paige – Main Event 2/16/16

vs Natalya – Superstars 3/4/16

vs Natalya – Superstars 5/27/16

vs Sasha Banks – Main Event 5/31/16

vs Becky Lynch – Main Event 6/14/16

vs Sasha Banks – Smackdown 6/30/16

vs Becky Lynch – Superstars 7/15/16