The Story Of The Jackass SummerSlam Match That Didn’t Happen

It nearly fell through as soon as plans were put in place, though. The Jackass crew came into WWE to shoot images for Summerslam promotional images when Steve-O started asking random wrestlers to choke him for a laugh.

According to Bryan Alvarez,

“Vince was irate and nearly axed the entire deal, but Shane McMahon, who was the guy pushing hardest for the deal in the first place, talked him out of it and cooler heads prevailed.” 

What didn’t help matters either is that Bam Margera suffered an injury recently and was already planning on dropping out of the match. Wonder where he got that from?

In the end, it wasn’t WWE that reportedly pulled out of the match, but the Jackass crew themselves. 

In June 2007 Chris Benoit murdered his wife and child and killed himself; an event that shook the wrestling world and put it under a microscope by the mainstream press.

WrestleZone reported after the Benoit double murder-suicide became big news, Johnny Knoxville started to get cold feet about working with the company. 

“Knoxville and the rest of the group began distancing themselves from WWE. What started off as a several promised TV and PPV appearances soon scaled back to Jackass only working the SummerSlam PPV.”

According to WrestleZone, once Knoxville pulled out, the match was scrapped as he was the main guy of the group.

However, in a 2008 interview on JackassWorld, Knoxville answered a fan’s question about SummerSlam and said that he couldn’t fit WWE’s demands into his schedule.

The interview is sadly no longer available, but PWInsider noted from the time,

“He said that they didn’t back out.  He said WWE has been good to them and WWE tried to put something together with the crew… He said that he thinks the sides got their signals crossed and that WWE wanted more of a commitment than one night so WWE decided to go in a different direction. He put over WWE and said that there are no ill feelings whatsoever.”

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• Steve-O
• jackass
• SummerSlam
• wwe

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