The Ultimate Warrior successfully defended the WWF Championship against Rick Rude in a Steel Cage match, and Hulk Hogan defeated Earthquake by countout.

Perfect lost his WWF Intercontinental Championship to the Texas Tornado, who was a substitute for Brutus Beefcake, who had been injured in a real-life parasailing accident.

SummerSlam is an annual pay-per-view (PPV) produced every August by the World Wrestling Federation (WWF, now WWE) since 1988.

[6] Paul Roma began feuding with The Rockers (Shawn Michaels and Marty Jannetty) during the July 21, 1990, episode of WWF Superstars.

[7] One week later, Roma and Hercules appeared on the Brother Love Show, an interview segment, and formed a tag team known as Power and Glory.

[6] One month before SummerSlam, on July 4, Beefcake was injured while he was standing on a beach and a female friend's knees hit him in the face while she was parasailing.

At the 1990 Royal Rumble, Sensational Sherri, Randy Savage's valet, appeared on the Brother Love show.

[9] Rhodes and Sapphire faced Savage and Sherri in a mixed tag team match at WrestleMania VI.

[21] Martel was injured prior to the SummerSlam match,[6] so the WWF created a storyline that he was unable to compete because he was participating in a modeling competition in Paris.

[25] The Hart Foundation faced The Rockers on the April 28 episode of Saturday Night's Main Event XXVI.

On the May 5 episode of WWF Superstars, the two men agreed to a match;[29] Brown later stated that his fear of snakes was cured but was quickly proven wrong.

[30] On the July 28 episode of WWF Superstars, a match between Brown and Roberts was scheduled for SummerSlam with the Big Boss Man as a guest referee.

Brown commented that he would bring 200 pounds of Harlem sewer rats to counteract Roberts's boa constrictor, Damian.

[8] Nikolai Volkoff began the year partnered with Boris Zhukov in a pro-Soviet tag team known as The Bolsheviks.

[21] As Hulk Hogan was being interviewed on The Brother Love Show during the May 26 episode of WWF Superstars, he was attacked by Earthquake.

Although his partner was unable to compete, Jannetty controlled the beginning of the match, using hip tosses to throw Roma and Hercules.

With Smash distracted, Hart and Neidhart were able to tackle Crush and pin him to win the match and the WWF Tag Team Championship.

He presented Brother Love the "Greatest American Award" and claimed that the United States had become soft and weak.

[41][43] As the match between Dusty Rhodes and Randy Savage was about to begin, Ted DiBiase revealed that he had purchased Sapphire.

Rhodes made a brief comeback, but Savage was able to pin him after hitting him with Sherri's purse, which was said to be loaded with a heavy object.

Warrior then knocked Rude down three times with clotheslines and threw him onto the ring floor with a gorilla press drop.

Warrior climbed over the cage and dropped to the arena floor to win the match and retain the WWF World Heavyweight Championship.

[49][50] After Michaels took time off to have knee surgery for a legit injury suffered prior to SummerSlam (he noticeably limped to the ring and the pre-match attack where Hercules hit him in the knee with his chain was so that Michaels would not actually have to wrestle), his return saw The Rockers continue to feud with Power and Glory, and the teams faced each other during an elimination match at the 1990 Survivor Series.

Power and Glory's team won the match, during which Roma eliminated Michaels after performing a PowerPlex with Hercules.

During their match on the October 22 episode of Prime Time Wrestling, Ted DiBiase interfered and attacked Rhodes's son, Dustin.

[51] The continued rivalry led to a tag team match at the 1991 Royal Rumble that pitted Dusty and Dustin Rhodes against DiBiase and his bodyguard, Virgil.

[57] After Martel returned from his injury, he was placed in a storyline in which he blinded Jake Roberts by spraying him in the face with cologne on the Brother Love Show.

[60] The Hart Foundation held the WWF Tag Team Championship for almost seven months before dropping the title belts to The Nasty Boys on March 24, 1991, at Wrestlemania VII.

He was eliminated by Slaughter, who was later disqualified when his manager, General Adnan hit Tito Santana with an Iraqi flag.

[65] Tugboat later turned heel and changed his name to Typhoon; he and Earthquake formed a tag team known as The Natural Disasters.