High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! SummerSlam is a professional wrestling pay-per-view (PPV) event, produced annually in August by professional wrestling promotion WWE. The inaugural SummerSlam took place on August 29, 1988 at Madison Square Garden in New York, New York and was broadcast via pay-per-view, unlike the Royal Rumble of that year which was broadcast as a television special on USA Network. Dubbed as "The Biggest Event of the Summer",, the event is considered as one of the "Big Four" original pay-per-view events of WWE (along with WrestleMania, Royal Rumble and Survivor Series) and is regarded by WWE as their second biggest event of the year, after WrestleMania .