The 2011 SummerSlam was the 24th annual SummerSlam professional wrestling pay-per-view (PPV) event produced by WWE. It was held for wrestlers from the promotion's Raw and SmackDown brand divisions. The event took place on August 14, 2011, at Staples Center in Los Angeles, California for the third consecutive year. It was the final WWE pay-per-view event held before the dissolution of the original brand extension, which was introduced in March 2002, although the brand split would be reintroduced in July 2016.
The card consisted of eight matches, including one on the pre-show. In the main event, WWE Champion CM Punk defeated WWE Champion John Cena to become the Undisputed WWE Champion with Triple H as the special guest referee, after which, Alberto Del Rio cashed in his Money in the Bank briefcase and defeated CM Punk to win the WWE Championship. In another prominent match, Randy Orton defeated Christian in a No Holds Barred match to regain the World Heavyweight Championship. SummerSlam attracted a sellout crowd of 17,404 fans at Staples Center in Los Angeles, grossing more than $1 million, marking the highest grossing SummerSlam held at Staples Center. The event garnered 296,000 pay-per-view buys, down from 350,000 buys the previous year.
Production
Background
SummerSlam is an annual pay-per-view (PPV) produced every August by WWE since 1988—in April 2011, the promotion ceased going by its full name of World Wrestling Entertainment, with "WWE" becoming an orphaned initialism. Dubbed "The Biggest Party of the Summer", it is one of the promotion's original four pay-per-views, along with WrestleMania, SummerSlam, and Survivor Series, referred to as the "Big Four". It has since become considered WWE's second biggest event of the year behind WrestleMania. The 2011 event was the 24th SummerSlam and was scheduled to be held on August 14, 2011, at Staples Center in Los Angeles, California for the third consecutive year. It featured wrestlers from the Raw and SmackDown brand divisions.
Much like the previous year's SummerSlam, WWE promoted the event with its SummerSlam Axxess fan convention, held at the Nokia Plaza in LA Live on August 13 and 14. R&B singer Cee Lo Green performed both "'Bright Lights Bigger City", the official theme song for the event, and his hit "Forget You" during the broadcast. The commentators for this event were Michael Cole, Jerry Lawler and Booker T.
Storylines
The professional wrestling matches at SummerSlam featured professional wrestlers performing as characters in scripted events pre-determined by the hosting promotion, WWE. Storylines between the characters were produced on WWE's weekly television shows Raw and SmackDown with the Raw and SmackDown brands—storyline divisions in which WWE assigned its employees to different programs.
The main feud headed into SummerSlam from the SmackDown brand was between Christian and Randy Orton, over Christian's World Heavyweight Championship. At Extreme Rules in May, Christian defeated Alberto Del Rio in a ladder match to win the vacant World Heavyweight Championship for the first time, only to lose it to Orton on the May 6 episode of SmackDown. After two unsuccessful attempts at regaining the title from Orton at the Over the Limit and Capitol Punishment pay-per-views, Christian finally won the championship for the second time at the Money in the Bank event in July, after he spat in Orton's face, provoking the latter to kick Christian in the groin and get himself disqualified; as per pre-match stipulations enacted by Christian, he won the title. On the July 29 episode of SmackDown, the new Chief Operating Officer of WWE, Triple H, scheduled a title defense by Christian against Orton in a No Holds Barred match at SummerSlam.