Best-of-seven series starts at SummerSlam for Cesaro and Sheamus

With six hours to fill, WWE finds itself with a lot of room on the SummerSlam card.

Raw General Manager Mick Foley didn’t specify if it would be on the pay-per-view (PPV) portion of Aug. 21’s show in Brooklyn’s Barclay Center, but he’s had enough of Cesaro and Sheamus interfering in each others matches, so they’re getting a match this Sunday.

But he doesn’t expect one match to settle the issues he started when he challenged the Swiss Superman and the Celtic Warrior to up their game after the draft. That’s why he’s making their SummerSlam match the first in best-of-seven series between the two heavy hitters.

It’s been a long time since WWE has run a multi-match series (honestly, the last one I can recall is Booker T vs. [redacted] for the U.S. title in 2005 during the SmackDown Six era), but these are a good pair of workers with whom to restart the tradition. Creative has built up the animosity between them to such a degree that there doesn’t need to be a championship at stake. And you have to figure the winner jumps to the front of at least the United States title picture, if not possibly into the Universal championship scene.

Sheamus vs. Cesaro joins the following bouts already announced for this weekend’s show:

- Seth Rollins vs. Finn Balor for the WWE Universal championship
- Dean Ambrose (c) vs. Dolph Ziggler for the WWE world heavyweight championship
- Sasha Banks (c) vs. Charlotte for the WWE Women’s championship
- Randy Orton vs. Brock Lesnar
- John Cena vs. AJ Styles
- Enzo & Big Cass vs. JeriKO
- The Miz (c) vs. Apollo Crews for the Intercontinental championship
- The New Day (c) vs. The Club for the tag team championship
- Rusev (c) vs. Roman Reigns for the United States championship