Predicting the match order at SummerSlam 2023

It’s one thing to predict the winners and losers at SummerSlam 2023, but how about taking a guess at the match order for the event?

SummerSlam takes place tonight (Sat., Aug. 5) from Ford Field in Detroit, Michigan. The show begins at 8 pm ET, live on Peacock (in the U.S.) and WWE Network (everywhere else).

WWE has announced eight different segments for the main card of this event. Here is my subjective view of how important each of these seven segments rank, ordered from most important to least important.

1. Roman Reigns vs. Jey Uso
2. Seth Rollins vs. Finn Balor
3. Cody Rhodes vs. Brock Lesnar
4. Asuka vs. Belair vs. Flair
5. Logan Paul vs. Ricochet
6. GUNTHER vs. Drew McIntyre
7. Ronda Rousey vs. Shayna Baszler
8. SummerSlam Battle Royal presented by Slim Jim

Opening match & Main event

The main event and opening match of SummerSlam are both slam dunk obvious choices.

Roman Reigns’ status as the Tribal Chief is on the line, so he is for sure competing in the main event.

Meanwhile, YouTube star Logan Paul has made it known that he intends to leave SummerSlam early to catch a flight to be in Dallas in time for his brother Jake’s fight against Nate Diaz. In order for that to happen, Paul vs. Ricochet needs to be the opening match, and it might not go very long.

That gives me the following card:

Segment 1: Ricochet vs. Logan Paul
Segment 2:
Segment 3:
Segment 4:
Segment 5:
Segment 6:
Segment 7:
Segment 8: Roman Reigns vs. Jey Uso

Segments 2 and 3

The second match of the night is often one of the least important matches of the card, which means I’ll be considering Rousey, GUNTHER, or the Battle Royal presented by Slim Jim for this spot. I want to save Ronda’s match for later in the card, so the Battle Royal presented by Slim Jim looks like the best candidate for Segment 2. If Logan Paul is winning in the opener, they might as well get the fans back up for LA Knight.

As far as Segment 3 goes, I want to put one of the women’s matches here. I would normally put the less important match earlier in the card, but I’m instead going to put Asuka’s match here. That’s because I want to keep some distance between Asuka and Seth Rollins’ match, as they might both include a Money in the Bank cash-in.

That gives me the following card:

Segment 1: Ricochet vs. Logan Paul
Segment 2: SummerSlam Battle Royal presented by Slim Jim
Segment 3: Asuka vs. Belair vs. Flair
Segment 4:
Segment 5:
Segment 6:
Segment 7:
Segment 8: Roman Reigns vs. Jey Uso

Everything else

I’m going to place GUNTHER’s match in Segment 4 before moving on to the upper card matches later in the night featuring Rollins, Lesnar, and Reigns. Ronda’s match really should come before those three, so I’ll put her in Segment 5.

The only thing left to do is choose between Lesnar and Rollins for Segments 6 and 7. I think Seth and Roman’s matches might both be very long with a bunch of overbooking, so I’ll break that up by sticking a shorter Brock Lesnar match in between them. That means Rollins goes in Segment 6, and Lesnar goes in Segment 7.

Finalized card

So here is my final prediction for the match order at SummerSlam 2023, along with guesses on the bell-to-bell match times:

Segment 1: Ricochet vs. Logan Paul (11 minutes)
Segment 2: SummerSlam Battle Royal presented by Slim Jim (16)
Segment 3: Asuka vs. Belair vs. Flair (15)
Segment 4: GUNTHER vs. Drew McIntyre (16)
Segment 5: Ronda Rousey vs. Shayna Baszler (9)
Segment 6: Seth Rollins vs. Finn Balor (18)
Segment 7: Cody Rhodes vs. Brock Lesnar (10)
Segment 8: Roman Reigns vs. Jey Uso (23)

These times add up to 118 minutes. In order to fit that much match time onto a big stadium show, the main card probably needs to run between 3.5 to 4 hours in length, which could help explain why WWE didn’t want to add any more matches to the lineup.

That’s my prediction for the match order at SummerSlam 2023. What’s yours?