SummerSlam (1988) is within the scope of WikiProject Professional wrestling, an attempt to improve and standardize articles related to
professional wrestling. If you would like to participate, you can edit the article attached to this page, visit the
project to-do page, or visit the
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I don't quite understand why a section is named "Report". The three sections in this article could be individual top-level sections.
"After WrestleMania III" - when was WrestleMania III? That will help me put things in proper date perspective
Is the tagline really notable enough to go into the lead? That seems trivial to me.
"SummerSlam (1988) was the first annual SummerSlam professional wrestling pay-per-view event produced by the World Wrestling Federation (WWF)." - does this mean there were SummerSlams that weren't produced by WWF?
"JYD was disqualified after Jake Roberts attacked Rude" - who is Jake Roberts and why did his actions disqualify JYD?
Long sentences that might need to be broken up: Example (also an example of overly emotional language) "After defeating Crockett in the ratings war, McMahon created the Royal Rumble, an event airing for free on the USA Network in January 1988, which set a ratings record for the network with eight million households tuning in to watch the event. " Example 2 "To keep the WWF from having a pay-per-view market monopoly, Turner began airing monthly WCW pay-per-views, and both companies began bringing in hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue" (much better as two sentences)
Criterion 1a (prose): Almost entirely written from an in-universe perspective. Unfamiliar readers will not understand that this even involves writers and entertainers and is not real. It very difficult to tell what is fictional and what is real. The article indicates that some feuds, for example, are part of a "storyline", but I had no idea what this storyline was. Also, all references to this "storyline" disappear after the "Background" section, so I was left to wonder: Is the storyline just a set up for a fight that is actually real? From Laser brain's comments above, though, and the some of the details of the fight, I suspect that the fight is not real, but this is never made explicitly clear to the reader. I believe that this article should be written using the guidelines of
WP:FICT. Background seems very in-universe. In fictional works, plot sections generally need to be more grounded into reality, and this is essentially a plot summary for this wrestling event. It looks like the section tries to do this in some places but needs more work (especially in the first few paragraphs). The event section has a similar in-universe sound - lots of so-and-so "attacked" someone, which is dramatic word phrasing for a scripted event.
Criterion 1b (comprehensiveness): No information about writing, production, or critical reception. - this is probably not possible
WP:JARGON: It is not clear what was happening in the fight and I soon tired of clicking on every term I didn't know. I wonder if the fight could be described with a little less jargon? The first time I read the article, I ended with the conclusion "they fought in a sort of fistfight manner". That is why I had to reread the article several times. I think that we can be assured that few people as ignorant as I are going to read this article, but certainly some readers will not have the familiarity that this article assumes. In the lead I have questions about what an undercard is and what a storyline feud is (how is that different from a regular fued)? It would also be nice to have more of an explanation of the moves.
That might mean different word choices, it might mean adding in phrases such as "According to the pre-planned story", "The script dictated that", "The writers/developers decided", etc.
Pre-FA review
I'm hoping you'll accept "better late than never" as an excuse...
Overall, the article looks great. Since you're talking about nominating it for Featured Article status, I've got a bunch of minor picky details:
From the lead, "the longest Intercontinental Championship reign in history up to that point" seems redundant. "in history" could be removed to make the sentence flow better.
I like to wikilink "
manager" in wrestling articles because the page explains the purpose of managers and helps take the article out of universe.
From the "Development" section "in history up to that point" is used again. Rephrasing would help eliminate the redundancy.
The article claims that McMahon "planned to air" Survivor Series the same day as Starrcade. This left me wondering if it actually happened or not. Since they did, in fact, air on the same day, "aired" might be a good alternative to "planned to air".
Another word or two might help clarify "closed circuit programming". Were the closed circuit events free?
I wikilinked it. To be honest, I don't understand much about that sort of thing. I assume they weren't free (how else would they make money?), but I've never read anything that said for sure.
I think "the" should be removed from "the Royal Rumble". Although it is sometimes used when referring to the pay-per-view, the same goes for Survivor Series, which doesn't have a "the".
I'm not so sure about this one. After defeating Crockett in the ratings war, McMahon created Royal Rumble, an event airing for... sounds grammatically incorrect to me.
Still in the "Development" section, the article claims that "Turner also began airing monthly pay-per-views". I would remove "also", as it implies that McMahon was airing monthly events.
As a personal preference, I would use "brought in" instead of "began bringing in". Both are grammatically correct, though. Likewise, earlier in the paragraph, I would use "created" instead of "decided to create". Again, it's a personal preference, but I find that it helps tighten up the prose. It might not be quite what you're trying to say, though, so feel free to ignore this suggestion.
Kept "began bringing in" but changed "decided to create" to "created"
Another personal preference: I would use "became" instead of "went on to become" in the second paragraph of the "Development" section.
To help balance the length of the paragraphs in the "Development" section, I recommend splitting the first paragraph at "As the WWF continued" and adding everything after that to the second paragraph.
In the "Background" section, "girls" might not be the best choice of words, as it implies that they were very young. "Ladies", "young women", "women", or something along those lines might be better.
In the second paragraph of the "Background" section, one sentence uses two forms of the verb "to lead": "This led to a series of confrontations leading up to SummerSlam." It would read better if another verb was chosen to avoid the repetition.
The same thing happens in the next paragraph with "returned to wrestling, claiming to return only for the money".
In the "Background" section, the article states that Elizabeth got Hogan "to help save" Savage. "Help" is a little redundant. In the next sentence, it might also be nice to use something like "rescued" so that "save" isn't repeated so close together.
In the final paragraph of the "Background" section, "original" and "originally" are used in consecutive sentences. "Originally" could be removed without changing the meaning.
Is there a reference for the Hogan-Savage pairing being intended to end the singles feuds, or is this just a statement that is proven by the preceding information?
The original plan for SummerSlam was to bring Ric Flair over from the National Wrestling Alliance (NWA) to the WWF. Vince McMahon, the owner of the WWF, wanted Flair (change it to him) to challenge Savage in the main event for the WWF Championship. Flair, however, felt obligated to the NWA and did not leave the promotion (take out leave the promotion)for the WWF. Therefore, Hogan and Savage were paired together to end their feuds with their respective on-screen rivals.
Statement that is proven by the surrounding information.
The original plan for SummerSlam was to bring Ric Flair over from the National Wrestling Alliance (NWA) to the WWF. Vince McMahon, the owner of the WWF, wanted Flair (change it to him) to challenge Savage in the main event for the WWF Championship. Flair, however, felt obligated to the NWA and did not leave the promotion (take out leave the promotion)for the WWF. Therefore, Hogan and Savage were paired together to end their feuds with their respective on-screen rivals.
I'll go through the other sections tomorrow. I know this list looks long, but these are all pretty minor details. I hope you find them helpful.
GaryColemanFan (
talk) 06:26, 16 May 2008 (UTC)reply
Excellent suggestions as always! I'll start working on them later this afternoon. Thanks!
Nikki311 17:15, 16 May 2008 (UTC)reply
Can any picture be provided? And the match notes in the result section should be sourced. KingiMatthew2008 19:32, 16 May 2008 (UTC)reply
The event happened in 1988, so I highly doubt there are any free-use pictures available. I've tried to search for images on the web, but they are all really small and/or blurry, so they wouldn't add much to the article anyway. As for the notes in the results section, they are sourced by the citations in the results section. Moreover, all of that info is sourced in the prose section, as well.
Nikki311 20:36, 16 May 2008 (UTC)reply
I believe it can be a free use picture from any of their articles, possibly just with a caption stating ______ faced ______ in a ______ match for the _______ championship, you know? KingiMatthew2008 20:57, 16 May 2008 (UTC)reply
I don't know. This was twenty years ago. They don't look the same now as they did then...so it would have to be a fair-use image. I really want a picture of Miss Elizabeth distracting Ventura. It can be argued that the moment was the highlight of the pay-per-view, so writing a fair-use rationale should be easy.
Nikki311 22:05, 16 May 2008 (UTC)reply
I found one. What do you think? I've never uploaded or had to write a fair-use rationale before, so hopefully, I did everything correctly.
Nikki311 22:39, 16 May 2008 (UTC)reply
Thanks for the reminder to finish this review. I finished looking through the article and found a few more things:
Near the beginning of the "Background" section, was Beefcake's injury
legitimate or
kayfabe?
In the background section,
disqualified should be wikilinked.
In the first paragraph of the "Event" section, "upperhand" should probably be two words.
"who also escaped an abdominal stretch" sounds kind of awkward.
A wikilink for "draw" might help some readers for the Bulldogs-Rougeaus match.
In the description of the Bolheviks-Powers of Pain match, "however" is used in consecutive sentences. I think it might read better if one was removed.
For the discussion of the Warrior-Honky Tonk Man match, it might be a good idea to clarify that the Ultimate Warrior won the title.
Also in that match description, "who was accompanied by Jimmy Hart" might flow better.
For the Muraco-Bravo match, it might read better if the mention of Frenchy Martin was taken out of the first line. Perhaps "Frenchy Martin, who accompanied Bravo, distracted Muraco, allowing Bravo to perform a side suplex and pin him for the win."?
For the Hart Foundation-Demolition match, "took out" is a little too colloquial. There might also be a better word for "dominated".
The final sentence of the "Event" section is fairly long and would read better if it was split up.
Again, I hope this is useful. Please get in touch if you have any questions, and good luck with the FA nomination.
GaryColemanFan (
talk) 22:58, 21 May 2008 (UTC)reply
Thanks! All taken care of.
Nikki311 03:34, 22 May 2008 (UTC)reply
The lead states that Hogan and Savage were teammates in the main event, then says that they "continued" their feud into Wrestlemania. These two statements are incongruous and lead to confusion. It is stated later on that they started a feud shortly after, not continued one. Done - Reworded
Nikki311 16:53, 26 July 2008 (UTC)reply "As a result, both companies began bringing in hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue." (Development) - Wording; They did not continuously begin to bring in revenue. Done - Reworded.
Nikki311 16:53, 26 July 2008 (UTC)reply "After performing slamming him to the mat, The Ultimate Warrior climbed to the top rope and landed stomach-first on The Honky Tonk Man, who was lying below him, by using his signature move, the Warrior Splash." (event) - The first part of this sentence makes no sense, while it is rather obvious that HTM would be below the Ultimate Warrior if he's jumping from the top rope. It is also mentioned in the lead that Ultimate warrior ended HTM's reign as the longest intercontinental champion in history, but not the body. It should be stated in this section as well. Done - Clarified the first part. The info about HTM's reign is in the article (the first sentence in the background). Do you think it should be listed in the event section too, or would that be too repetitive?
Nikki311 20:03, 26 July 2008 (UTC)reply Under aftermath, the second paragraph is quite thin. Is there a synopsis of what happened with the Ultimate Warrior (as the third champion coming out of this event) in the wake of Summerslam? It strikes me that a newcomer who wins that fast would have gotten a pretty good push. This might be interesting info, if available. Done - Fleshed it out a bit.
Nikki311 01:11, 27 July 2008 (UTC)reply
It is a pretty good article overall. A little bit of prose cleanup, and I think this is a good article. Regards,
Resolute 23:33, 25 July 2008 (UTC)reply
Thanks. I will let you know when I have completed everything.
Nikki311 23:45, 25 July 2008 (UTC)reply
Excellent work. I am now prepared to pass this as a GA. Congratulations!
Resolute 03:19, 27 July 2008 (UTC)reply
Move discussion in progress
There is a move discussion in progress on
Talk:SummerSlam (2003) which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —
RMCD bot 05:16, 29 August 2013 (UTC)reply
SummerSlam (1988) is within the scope of WikiProject Professional wrestling, an attempt to improve and standardize articles related to
professional wrestling. If you would like to participate, you can edit the article attached to this page, visit the
project to-do page, or visit the
project page, where you can join the project and contribute to
discussions.Professional wrestlingWikipedia:WikiProject Professional wrestlingTemplate:WikiProject Professional wrestlingProfessional wrestling articles
I don't quite understand why a section is named "Report". The three sections in this article could be individual top-level sections.
"After WrestleMania III" - when was WrestleMania III? That will help me put things in proper date perspective
Is the tagline really notable enough to go into the lead? That seems trivial to me.
"SummerSlam (1988) was the first annual SummerSlam professional wrestling pay-per-view event produced by the World Wrestling Federation (WWF)." - does this mean there were SummerSlams that weren't produced by WWF?
"JYD was disqualified after Jake Roberts attacked Rude" - who is Jake Roberts and why did his actions disqualify JYD?
Long sentences that might need to be broken up: Example (also an example of overly emotional language) "After defeating Crockett in the ratings war, McMahon created the Royal Rumble, an event airing for free on the USA Network in January 1988, which set a ratings record for the network with eight million households tuning in to watch the event. " Example 2 "To keep the WWF from having a pay-per-view market monopoly, Turner began airing monthly WCW pay-per-views, and both companies began bringing in hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue" (much better as two sentences)
Criterion 1a (prose): Almost entirely written from an in-universe perspective. Unfamiliar readers will not understand that this even involves writers and entertainers and is not real. It very difficult to tell what is fictional and what is real. The article indicates that some feuds, for example, are part of a "storyline", but I had no idea what this storyline was. Also, all references to this "storyline" disappear after the "Background" section, so I was left to wonder: Is the storyline just a set up for a fight that is actually real? From Laser brain's comments above, though, and the some of the details of the fight, I suspect that the fight is not real, but this is never made explicitly clear to the reader. I believe that this article should be written using the guidelines of
WP:FICT. Background seems very in-universe. In fictional works, plot sections generally need to be more grounded into reality, and this is essentially a plot summary for this wrestling event. It looks like the section tries to do this in some places but needs more work (especially in the first few paragraphs). The event section has a similar in-universe sound - lots of so-and-so "attacked" someone, which is dramatic word phrasing for a scripted event.
Criterion 1b (comprehensiveness): No information about writing, production, or critical reception. - this is probably not possible
WP:JARGON: It is not clear what was happening in the fight and I soon tired of clicking on every term I didn't know. I wonder if the fight could be described with a little less jargon? The first time I read the article, I ended with the conclusion "they fought in a sort of fistfight manner". That is why I had to reread the article several times. I think that we can be assured that few people as ignorant as I are going to read this article, but certainly some readers will not have the familiarity that this article assumes. In the lead I have questions about what an undercard is and what a storyline feud is (how is that different from a regular fued)? It would also be nice to have more of an explanation of the moves.
That might mean different word choices, it might mean adding in phrases such as "According to the pre-planned story", "The script dictated that", "The writers/developers decided", etc.
Pre-FA review
I'm hoping you'll accept "better late than never" as an excuse...
Overall, the article looks great. Since you're talking about nominating it for Featured Article status, I've got a bunch of minor picky details:
From the lead, "the longest Intercontinental Championship reign in history up to that point" seems redundant. "in history" could be removed to make the sentence flow better.
I like to wikilink "
manager" in wrestling articles because the page explains the purpose of managers and helps take the article out of universe.
From the "Development" section "in history up to that point" is used again. Rephrasing would help eliminate the redundancy.
The article claims that McMahon "planned to air" Survivor Series the same day as Starrcade. This left me wondering if it actually happened or not. Since they did, in fact, air on the same day, "aired" might be a good alternative to "planned to air".
Another word or two might help clarify "closed circuit programming". Were the closed circuit events free?
I wikilinked it. To be honest, I don't understand much about that sort of thing. I assume they weren't free (how else would they make money?), but I've never read anything that said for sure.
I think "the" should be removed from "the Royal Rumble". Although it is sometimes used when referring to the pay-per-view, the same goes for Survivor Series, which doesn't have a "the".
I'm not so sure about this one. After defeating Crockett in the ratings war, McMahon created Royal Rumble, an event airing for... sounds grammatically incorrect to me.
Still in the "Development" section, the article claims that "Turner also began airing monthly pay-per-views". I would remove "also", as it implies that McMahon was airing monthly events.
As a personal preference, I would use "brought in" instead of "began bringing in". Both are grammatically correct, though. Likewise, earlier in the paragraph, I would use "created" instead of "decided to create". Again, it's a personal preference, but I find that it helps tighten up the prose. It might not be quite what you're trying to say, though, so feel free to ignore this suggestion.
Kept "began bringing in" but changed "decided to create" to "created"
Another personal preference: I would use "became" instead of "went on to become" in the second paragraph of the "Development" section.
To help balance the length of the paragraphs in the "Development" section, I recommend splitting the first paragraph at "As the WWF continued" and adding everything after that to the second paragraph.
In the "Background" section, "girls" might not be the best choice of words, as it implies that they were very young. "Ladies", "young women", "women", or something along those lines might be better.
In the second paragraph of the "Background" section, one sentence uses two forms of the verb "to lead": "This led to a series of confrontations leading up to SummerSlam." It would read better if another verb was chosen to avoid the repetition.
The same thing happens in the next paragraph with "returned to wrestling, claiming to return only for the money".
In the "Background" section, the article states that Elizabeth got Hogan "to help save" Savage. "Help" is a little redundant. In the next sentence, it might also be nice to use something like "rescued" so that "save" isn't repeated so close together.
In the final paragraph of the "Background" section, "original" and "originally" are used in consecutive sentences. "Originally" could be removed without changing the meaning.
Is there a reference for the Hogan-Savage pairing being intended to end the singles feuds, or is this just a statement that is proven by the preceding information?
The original plan for SummerSlam was to bring Ric Flair over from the National Wrestling Alliance (NWA) to the WWF. Vince McMahon, the owner of the WWF, wanted Flair (change it to him) to challenge Savage in the main event for the WWF Championship. Flair, however, felt obligated to the NWA and did not leave the promotion (take out leave the promotion)for the WWF. Therefore, Hogan and Savage were paired together to end their feuds with their respective on-screen rivals.
Statement that is proven by the surrounding information.
The original plan for SummerSlam was to bring Ric Flair over from the National Wrestling Alliance (NWA) to the WWF. Vince McMahon, the owner of the WWF, wanted Flair (change it to him) to challenge Savage in the main event for the WWF Championship. Flair, however, felt obligated to the NWA and did not leave the promotion (take out leave the promotion)for the WWF. Therefore, Hogan and Savage were paired together to end their feuds with their respective on-screen rivals.
I'll go through the other sections tomorrow. I know this list looks long, but these are all pretty minor details. I hope you find them helpful.
GaryColemanFan (
talk) 06:26, 16 May 2008 (UTC)reply
Excellent suggestions as always! I'll start working on them later this afternoon. Thanks!
Nikki311 17:15, 16 May 2008 (UTC)reply
Can any picture be provided? And the match notes in the result section should be sourced. KingiMatthew2008 19:32, 16 May 2008 (UTC)reply
The event happened in 1988, so I highly doubt there are any free-use pictures available. I've tried to search for images on the web, but they are all really small and/or blurry, so they wouldn't add much to the article anyway. As for the notes in the results section, they are sourced by the citations in the results section. Moreover, all of that info is sourced in the prose section, as well.
Nikki311 20:36, 16 May 2008 (UTC)reply
I believe it can be a free use picture from any of their articles, possibly just with a caption stating ______ faced ______ in a ______ match for the _______ championship, you know? KingiMatthew2008 20:57, 16 May 2008 (UTC)reply
I don't know. This was twenty years ago. They don't look the same now as they did then...so it would have to be a fair-use image. I really want a picture of Miss Elizabeth distracting Ventura. It can be argued that the moment was the highlight of the pay-per-view, so writing a fair-use rationale should be easy.
Nikki311 22:05, 16 May 2008 (UTC)reply
I found one. What do you think? I've never uploaded or had to write a fair-use rationale before, so hopefully, I did everything correctly.
Nikki311 22:39, 16 May 2008 (UTC)reply
Thanks for the reminder to finish this review. I finished looking through the article and found a few more things:
Near the beginning of the "Background" section, was Beefcake's injury
legitimate or
kayfabe?
In the background section,
disqualified should be wikilinked.
In the first paragraph of the "Event" section, "upperhand" should probably be two words.
"who also escaped an abdominal stretch" sounds kind of awkward.
A wikilink for "draw" might help some readers for the Bulldogs-Rougeaus match.
In the description of the Bolheviks-Powers of Pain match, "however" is used in consecutive sentences. I think it might read better if one was removed.
For the discussion of the Warrior-Honky Tonk Man match, it might be a good idea to clarify that the Ultimate Warrior won the title.
Also in that match description, "who was accompanied by Jimmy Hart" might flow better.
For the Muraco-Bravo match, it might read better if the mention of Frenchy Martin was taken out of the first line. Perhaps "Frenchy Martin, who accompanied Bravo, distracted Muraco, allowing Bravo to perform a side suplex and pin him for the win."?
For the Hart Foundation-Demolition match, "took out" is a little too colloquial. There might also be a better word for "dominated".
The final sentence of the "Event" section is fairly long and would read better if it was split up.
Again, I hope this is useful. Please get in touch if you have any questions, and good luck with the FA nomination.
GaryColemanFan (
talk) 22:58, 21 May 2008 (UTC)reply
Thanks! All taken care of.
Nikki311 03:34, 22 May 2008 (UTC)reply
The lead states that Hogan and Savage were teammates in the main event, then says that they "continued" their feud into Wrestlemania. These two statements are incongruous and lead to confusion. It is stated later on that they started a feud shortly after, not continued one. Done - Reworded
Nikki311 16:53, 26 July 2008 (UTC)reply "As a result, both companies began bringing in hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue." (Development) - Wording; They did not continuously begin to bring in revenue. Done - Reworded.
Nikki311 16:53, 26 July 2008 (UTC)reply "After performing slamming him to the mat, The Ultimate Warrior climbed to the top rope and landed stomach-first on The Honky Tonk Man, who was lying below him, by using his signature move, the Warrior Splash." (event) - The first part of this sentence makes no sense, while it is rather obvious that HTM would be below the Ultimate Warrior if he's jumping from the top rope. It is also mentioned in the lead that Ultimate warrior ended HTM's reign as the longest intercontinental champion in history, but not the body. It should be stated in this section as well. Done - Clarified the first part. The info about HTM's reign is in the article (the first sentence in the background). Do you think it should be listed in the event section too, or would that be too repetitive?
Nikki311 20:03, 26 July 2008 (UTC)reply Under aftermath, the second paragraph is quite thin. Is there a synopsis of what happened with the Ultimate Warrior (as the third champion coming out of this event) in the wake of Summerslam? It strikes me that a newcomer who wins that fast would have gotten a pretty good push. This might be interesting info, if available. Done - Fleshed it out a bit.
Nikki311 01:11, 27 July 2008 (UTC)reply
It is a pretty good article overall. A little bit of prose cleanup, and I think this is a good article. Regards,
Resolute 23:33, 25 July 2008 (UTC)reply
Thanks. I will let you know when I have completed everything.
Nikki311 23:45, 25 July 2008 (UTC)reply
Excellent work. I am now prepared to pass this as a GA. Congratulations!
Resolute 03:19, 27 July 2008 (UTC)reply
Move discussion in progress
There is a move discussion in progress on
Talk:SummerSlam (2003) which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —
RMCD bot 05:16, 29 August 2013 (UTC)reply