Vengeance (2002) - Aftermath

Aftermath

After winning the WWE Undisputed Championship, The Rock then entered a feud with the number one contender Brock Lesnar for the upcoming PPV SummerSlam. Lesnar went on to win the match and become the youngest WWE Champion in history. It was also the last match for The Rock as an active WWE superstar, and his final reign as WWE Champion until Royal Rumble (2013), prior to being a full-time actor in Hollywood.

Triple H and Shawn Michaels came out the night after Vengeance and what appeared to be a reunion for D-Generation X was instead Triple H nailing a Pedigree on Michaels. This caused Michaels to retaliate and challenge Triple H to a street fight at SummerSlam, marking his first official match since WrestleMania XIV. Michaels won the match, and Triple H attacked him after the match.

A night after Vengeance, Eric Bischoff decided to merge the WWE Intercontinental Championship and the WWE European Championship into one, putting Rob Van Dam and Jeff Hardy against each other in a ladder match. RVD won the match, and the European Championship was retired. A week later, Van Dam lost the Intercontinental Championship to Chris Benoit, who would then jump to SmackDown!. Van Dam used his rematch clause for Summerslam and brought the Intercontinental title back to Raw.

After losing to John Cena, Chris Jericho had to face Edge in a steel cage match on the July 25 episode of SmackDown!. Edge won the match, and Jericho, along with The Un-Americans, moved to the Raw brand. Jericho went on to feud with Ric Flair. Lance Storm and Christian began to feud with Booker T and Goldust, while Test had a one-month feud with The Undertaker. After his cage match win over Chris Jericho, Edge began a two-month long feud with Eddie Guerrero.

After losing the triple threat match to The Rock, Kurt Angle was pinned by Rey Mysterio in a six man tag team match on the August 8 episode of SmackDown!. As a result, on the following episode of SmackDown, he challenged Mysterio to a match at SummerSlam to which Mysterio agreed.