Renee Young’s eight-year-plus journey with World Wrestling Entertainment has come to an end, and on Saturday night, she was given a special emotional send-off during the WWE SummerSlam 2020 broadcast.
During the WWE SummerSlam Kickoff Show on Saturday, August 23, 2020 from the WWE ThunderDome inside the Amway Center in Orlando, Florida, Young was given the final few moments of the pre-show to acknowledge her WWE departure.
As noted, Young’s final date on the books per her WWE agreement was the WWE SummerSlam 2020 special event on Saturday night. She thanked WWE for “changing her entire life” in the closing few minutes of the official pay-per-view pre-show.
Featured below is a complete text recap of the WWE SummerSlam Kickoff Show from Saturday night. Also below is the full video archive of the WWE SummerSlam 2020 pre-show, which includes the emotional WWE send-off for longtime broadcast team member Renee Young.
WWE SUMMERSLAM 2020 KICKOFF SHOW COVERAGE
The WWE SummerSlam Kickoff Show is officially underway. We shoot inside the Amway Center in Orlando, FL. to a traditional panel style set-up.
On the WWE SummerSlam Kickoff Show panel are Charly Caruso, Renee Young, Peter Rosenberg, Booker T and JBL.
They run down some of the action scheduled for tonight, some video packages air and then they kick it to Sarah Schreiber, who is in the ring with Andrade, Angel Garza and Zelina Vega.
Schreiber interviews the trio, despite Caruso sending it to a “backstage interview with The Street Profits.” Anyways, the three talk about their scheduled Raw Tag-Team Title match against Montez Ford and Angelo Dawkins later in the show this evening.
Back to the panel, the Kickoff Show crew talk more about the Raw Tag-Team Title match scheduled for tonight before switching gears to discuss Jeff Hardy’s Intercontinental Championship victory over AJ Styles on the SummerSlam “go-home” episode of Friday Night SmackDown.
They discuss Hardy’s long road back to the top in WWE, and also touch on the launch of the groundbreaking WWE ThunderDome virtual fan experience, which debuted on the Friday Night SmackDown show earlier this week.
Now the panel kick it to another video package, which shows WWE Hall Of Famer “The World’s Strongest Man” Mark Henry in a Welches Grape Juice segment on WWE’s The Bump along with his children and family inside his home. Henry is shown giving some of his WWE SummerSlam 2020 predictions for tonight.
We return after a couple of additional video packages and commercials for WWE products and shows, and the Kickoff Show panel talks at length about the big showdown tonight between Mandy Rose and Sonya Deville.
It’s interesting watching the panel talk about one of the ladies ending her journey with WWE tonight, knowing Renee Young, one of those hyping that story line, is actually legitimately in that exact position as she reportedly finishes up her eight-year career with WWE with tonight’s SummerSlam duties.
After they finish up the Rose-Deville talk, the panel moves on to another women’s showdown scheduled for tonight — the SmackDown and Raw Women’s Championship bouts pitting Bayley and Sasha Banks against Asuka in separate singles title matches.
A cool video package airs to explain how these two matches came to be heading into The Biggest Party of the Summer. As the video package wraps up, we return to the panel, however before any of the panelists can give their thoughts on the two women’s championship contests scheduled for tonight, they are interrupted by “The Queen of Spades.”
Shayna Baszler comes out with a microphone and reiterates the fact that “she’s got next” regardless of who ends up with what title when all is said-and-done tonight at WWE SummerSlam with the Raw and SmackDown Women’s title bouts. Baszler freaks out Caruso a bit and heads off.
A shook Caruso talks about being intimidated by Baszler before regaining her composure and setting up a video package that tells the story of the recent introduction of RETRIBUTION on Monday Night Raw and Friday Night SmackDown.
The panel returns after the RETRIBUTION video package and talk about the impact the masked group has had on the WWE Universe in the short time that has passed since their arrival.
Booker T claims to be uneducated about the subject and when another panel member brings up him being one of the key members of the WCW Invasion of WWE, he jokingly responds by saying that he was part of the group invading, not one of the people getting invaded. The whole panel had a good laugh at that improvised gem laid out by the Booker-man.
Now we kick it to another video package that tells the story behind one of tonight’s featured attraction matches — the Street Fight pitting “The Monday Night Messiah” Seth Rollins one-on-one against Dominik Mysterio, with Rey Mysterio at ringside.
The video package wraps up and the panel give their thoughts on the Rollins-Mysterio rivalry as well as Dominik vs. Seth in the Street Fight later tonight, which starts with Booker T giving the “shucky ducky, quack quack award” after the pictures of the welts on Dominik’s back following the brutal kendo stick shot attack from “The Monday Night Messiah” during the build-up to tonight’s Street Fight.
Now things are sent down to Byron Saxton, Tom Phillips and Samoa Joe, who are at ringside and are getting prepared to call the action in the lone Kickoff Show match scheduled for tonight’s SummerSlam pre-show.
WWE United States Championship
Apollo Crews (c) vs. MVPWith that said, the theme music of Apollo Crews plays and the WWE United States Champion begins making his way down to the ring for the opening contest inside the squared circle here at WWE SummerSlam 2020 inside the Amway Center in Orlando, FL.
Apollo poses on the top turnbuckle with his title as pyro explodes around him. After that, an “earlier tonight” backstage promo from Apollo airs. The U.S. Champion boasts the additional stipulation added to tonight’s match that calls for fairness to be ensured as MVP will not have any assistance due to Shelton Benjamin and Bobby Lashley being banned from ringside during the match.
MVP’s music hits and out he comes accompanied by Shelton Benjamin and Bobby Lashley, however the duo end up heading to the backstage area before MVP begins his walk down the entrance aisle and to the ring. He enters the ring and poses. We are moments away from championship action here on the WWE SummerSlam 2020 Kickoff Show.
The ThunderDome fans are shown now as the Amway Center fills up with virtual fans in the crowd. The bell sounds and immediately MVP takes Apollo down to the mat with a slick trip and looks for a leg submission. Apollo gets a rope break and they restart standing.
Apollo fares better now, getting in his first offensive flurry of the match only for MVP to kill his momentum dead in its’ tracks by using slick veteran tactics to take advantage of the referee breaking the two to get in a cheap shot that turns the offensive tide in his favor.
MVP gets in some big punches but Apollo speeds up, hitting the ropes and knocking MVP down. He follows up with a nice drop-kick and again as it seems that the U.S. Champion is stringing together an offensive sequence, MVP turns the tables and cuts his offensive efforts short. This time, MVP dumped Apollo out to the floor to regain the offensive driver’s seat in the match.
Back in the ring, Apollo looks to head to the top rope, but MVP crotches him and goes up to the top with him. He executes a nice super-plex on Apollo, with both guys crashing down to the mat with a vengeance. An immediate replay is shown of the super-plex while MVP goes for a pin fall that only gets him a count of two. Now it is Apollo who sends MVP from the ring to the floor with a big clothesline over the top rope. He hits a big dive over the top rope to take out MVP on the floor in a big follow-up high spot.
The referee nearly gets to a count of ten, however Apollo and MVP both dive into the ring just as the ref was passing the count of nine. They trade punches on their knees and fight their way back to their feet, however it is Apollo who fires up and starts putting together multiple-punch combos before hitting two running splashes on MVP in the corner. He hits a spinebuster and follows that up with a standing moonsault for his first close near fall of the bout.
Crews goes for the toss power bomb, MVP tries to reverse it into a Playmaker, but Crews reverses it back and this time he hits the toss power bomb for the pin fall victory. After the match, Lashley and Benjamin hit the ring looking to deliver a post-match attack on the U.S. Champion, however Apollo darts through the ropes and up the ramp, turning to taunt the trio before yelling out “it’s still mine” while proudly hoisting his U.S. Title in the air.
Winner and STILL WWE United States Champion: Apollo Crews
Following the U.S. Title bout, the Kickoff Show returns to the expert pre-show panel, with the panelists sending things to another video package, this time airing the package that tells the story behind one of tonight’s main events — the WWE Championship bout pitting current title-holder Drew McIntyre and his challenger for tonight, Randy Orton.
We return after the video package and JBL puts over Randy Orton as a superb talent and mentions he doesn’t care if he kisses babies and puppies and is a nice guy. Booker T and Rosenberg give their additional thoughts.
Renee Young Gets A Quick Send-Off To End Her WWE Journey
Now Renee Young is given a few kind words from Caruso and her fellow Kickoff Show panelists, as they bring up on the broadcast the fact that tonight marks Young’s final day with WWE.
As noted, Young wraps up her near ten-year journey with the company after the show this evening. Caruso puts over Young, and the others smile as Young makes a few quick comments, thanking WWE for “changing her life” and wrapping up the Kickoff Show with a look at Asuka making her way through the halls backstage at the Amway Center, as she prepares for double-championship-duty tonight.
With that said, that wraps up the 2020 SummerSlam Kickoff Show. It’s now officially time for The Biggest Party of the Summer, as it is now time to send things over to the WWE Network and/or pay-per-view, where the 2020 SummerSlam main show begins … NOW!
REACTION: RENEE YOUNG’S WWE FAREWELL AT SUMMERSLAM
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