Predicting the match order at WWE SummerSlam 2016

It's one thing to predict the winners and losers at WWE's SummerSlam 2016, but how about taking a guess at the match order on that card?

WWE has announced 11 different matches for SummerSlam 2016, excluding the pre-show matches.

Here is my subjective view of how important each of these 11 segments rank on the SummerSlam 2016 card, ordered from most important to least important. The parentheses indicate whether a given bout is a Raw match (R) or a SmackDown Live match (S).

1. Brock Lesnar vs Randy Orton
2. Seth Rollins vs Finn Balor (R)
3. John Cena vs AJ Styles (S)
4. Dean Ambrose vs Dolph Ziggler (S)
5. Roman Reigns vs Rusev (R)
6. Sasha Banks vs Charlotte (R)
7. Enzo and Cass vs Jericho and Owens (R)
8. New Day vs Gallows and Anderson (R)
9. Sheamus vs Cesaro (R)
10. The Miz vs Apollo Crews (S)
11. Becky, Naomi, Carmella vs Natalya, Alexa, Eva Marie (S)

It is important to come up with a list like this to get an idea of which matches are going to be placed in the key spots on the card or take up the most time, and which matches might end up in the cool-down spots or be given the least amount of time.

The top 4 matches are essentially the main attractions of the night.

The remainder of the list shows how Raw dominates the mid-card of this event.

The bottom two matches on the list could easily be chopped from the show and I don’t think too many people would lose sleep over it.

Main event match

This is the most difficult card of 2016 to predict the match order for because there are 11 different matches, and even the main event match isn’t obvious.

Any one of the top 4 matches on the above list could potentially main event this card.

The Smackdown Live matches are the clear underdogs for that main event spot. A singles match with Ziggler doesn’t seem likely to main event, but the presence of the WWE Championship gives it a non-zero chance. Similarly, any match with John Cena has a chance to main event even though there is no championship in his match.

But the two favorites for the main event spot are Brock’s match and the WWE Universal Championship match.

Brock Lesnar almost always has a strong chance to main event any PPV that he appears on. Ever since he conquered the Undertaker’s undefeated streak at WrestleMania 30, Brock has competed in the main event of 8 of the 10 PPVs that he has wrestled on.

However it would seem weird for the WWE Universal Championship to be awarded for the first time on a night when it isn’t closing the show.

Considering Vince’s love of Brock and Orton, combined with Finn Balor not being an established main event attraction in WWE, I’m giving the nod to Lesnar versus Orton in the main event slot.

Opening match

After that it’s time to focus on the opening match of the night. The first match is usually one of the medium-level attractions of the night that won’t require a dedicated video package beforehand to hype it up. The goal here is to usually get the crowd fired up either through a high work rate match or with a charismatic personality like Enzo Amore.

There are a whopping 5 matches that loosely fit the bill here - Enzo, New Day, Sasha, Reigns, and Sheamus.

These are a lot of choices, but I am going to strike Reigns, New Day, and Sasha off the list, because it’s easy to see dedicated video packages being created for those matches.

That leaves Cesaro versus Sheamus and the Enzo tag team match. Considering the venue in Brooklyn, I’m pretty confident that WWE will open the night (excluding whatever Jon Stewart might be doing) with an Enzo promo and match.

Alternating brand matches

This is a dual-brand PPV, so I am going to assume that each brand’s commentary team will be on hand to call the matches of their respective brand. Therefore, I am also going to assume that there will be no more than two consecutive matches for any single brand, so that there is a reasonable distribution of each commentary team throughout the broadcast.

Furthermore, considering that there are only 4 SmackDown Live matches (though I guess it’s possible the SmackDown Live crew could call the Lesnar match to even things up a bit), I don’t think any of those 4 SmackDown Live matches will take place back-to-back.

Here’s one potential configuration of a card based on alternating brand matches:

Segment 1: Enzo and Cass vs Jericho and Owens (Raw)
Segment 2: Raw
Segment 3: SmackDown
Segment 4: Raw
Segment 5: SmackDown
Segment 6: Raw
Segment 7: SmackDown
Segment 8: Raw
Segment 9: SmackDown
Segment 10: Raw
Segment 11: Brock Lesnar vs Randy Orton

With this arrangement, the only instance of consecutive matches from one brand occurs at the very opening of the card. Of course there are other possible configurations that satisfy my assumptions, but I like the simplicity of this arrangement, and so I am going to try to stick with it.

What will the first SmackDown Live match be?

I have a SmackDown Live match penciled into Segment 3, but which one will it be? I would normally scoff at the idea of a WWE Championship or a Cena match taking place so early in the card, but considering that this is a 4-hour card, WWE might want to spread out those 4 main event matches throughout the card rather than run them all at the back-end. Segment 3 still seems a little early for that though, so perhaps Segment 5 is a better spot for an early SmackDown Live main event type match.

That leaves Miz or Becky for Segment 3. Becky’s match seems like the most obvious cool-down match of the night, and I don’t think WWE will run a Raw match in Segment 2 that necessitates a cool-down in Segment 3. Therefore I am going with Miz for Segment 3.

What about Segment 10?

Segment 10 will either be a cool-down match or a big main event match. Because Segment 10 is a Raw slot based on my earlier assumptions, that means either Cesaro will be thrown into that death slot (just like he and Owens were slotted in at SummerSlam 2015) or WWE will instead run both Balor’s match and Lesnar’s match back-to-back. I’m not a fan of the former option, so I’m hoping WWE just runs both main event matches back-to-back.

It’s worth noting that Becky’s match stands out as the obvious cool-down spot for Segment 10, if I were willing to consider a Smackdown Live match for that spot.

Here is my currently constructed card:

Segment 1: Enzo and Cass vs Jericho and Owens
Segment 2: Raw
Segment 3: The Miz vs Apollo Crews
Segment 4: Raw
Segment 5: SmackDown
Segment 6: Raw
Segment 7: SmackDown
Segment 8: Raw
Segment 9: SmackDown
Segment 10: Seth Rollins vs Finn Balor
Segment 11: Brock Lesnar vs Randy Orton

Everything else

I’m having a difficult time placing cool-down matches in the back-end of the card, so I am going to abandon that plan and go with mostly all the big matches at the end of the night. This means Sasha probably gets Segment 8, and I don’t think WWE will want to potentially hurt her match by putting on John Cena right before it. That means Cena gets Segment 9, with WWE having confidence that the presence of the Demon King in Segment 10 will keep the smark crowd invested in things after Cena and Styles are done in Segment 9.

That transforms the card into this:

Segment 1: Enzo and Cass vs Jericho and Owens
Segment 2: Raw
Segment 3: The Miz vs Apollo Crews
Segment 4: Raw
Segment 5: SmackDown
Segment 6: Raw
Segment 7: SmackDown
Segment 8: Sasha Banks vs Charlotte
Segment 9: John Cena vs AJ Styles
Segment 10: Seth Rollins vs Finn Balor
Segment 11: Brock Lesnar vs Randy Orton

I don’t see both women’s matches being run back-to-back, so Becky’s match ends up in Segment 5, with Ziggler in Segment 7.

I also think Reigns will be massively booed throughout the entirety of his match, and so the women’s tag team match in Segment 5 can be used as a cool-down after a heated Reigns match in Segment 4.

Now the card looks like:

Segment 1: Enzo and Cass vs Jericho and Owens
Segment 2: Raw
Segment 3: The Miz vs Apollo Crews
Segment 4: Rusev vs Roman Reigns
Segment 5: Becky, Naomi, Carmella vs Natalya, Alexa, Eva Marie
Segment 6: Raw
Segment 7: Dean Ambrose vs Dolph Ziggler
Segment 8: Sasha Banks vs Charlotte
Segment 9: John Cena vs AJ Styles
Segment 10: Seth Rollins vs Finn Balor
Segment 11: Brock Lesnar vs Randy Orton

I don’t think WWE will want to run both Raw tag matches back-to-back to open the night, so I’m going to put New Day in Segment 6 and Cesaro in Segment 2.

Finalized card

So here is my final prediction for the match order at SummerSlam 2016, along with guesses on the bell-to-bell match times. The total match time on this show will probably be somewhere in the neighborhood of 120 minutes. It might even go beyond that number if this show stretches past 4 hours. My numbers below add up to 131 minutes, so it would almost certainly require more than 4 hours to fit in that much wrestling onto the card.

Segment 1: Enzo and Cass vs Jericho and Owens (10 minutes)
Segment 2: Sheamus vs Cesaro (9)
Segment 3: The Miz vs Apollo Crews (7)
Segment 4: Rusev vs Roman Reigns (13)
Segment 5: Becky, Naomi, Carmella vs Natalya, Alexa, Eva Marie (5)
Segment 6: New Day vs Gallows and Anderson (8)
Segment 7: Dean Ambrose vs Dolph Ziggler (14)
Segment 8: Sasha Banks vs Charlotte (12)
Segment 9: John Cena vs AJ Styles (20)
Segment 10: Seth Rollins vs Finn Balor (18)
Segment 11: Brock Lesnar vs Randy Orton (15)

It’s ridiculously hard to predict the match order for such a massive lineup. This is my best attempt to make sense of this gargantuan task. Outside of the opening match, predicting the match order at SummerSlam 2016 feels like a giant crapshoot.

How do you see it playing out, Cagesiders?