SummerSlam: John Cena vs. Brock Lesnar For The WWE Title Is Official

Two of WWE's biggest names are set to square off on August 17 in Los Angeles.

The main event of WWE SummerSlam is now official: John Cena will defend the WWE World Heavyweight Championship against Brock Lensar at the Staples Center in Los Angeles on August 17th. It's a match that has been rumored for months now, but wasn't discussed by WWE in public because they wanted to keep Lesnar's return a surprise. In Raw's opening segment on Monday, Triple H said that he guaran-damn-teed a new WWE Champion at SummerSlam. We didn't know who the challenger would be, but we found out in the main event. It appeared as if Hunter's first choice was Randy Orton. However, Roman Reigns attacked him and they brawled to the backstage area likely to set up a SummerSlam match between these two. That's when Paul Heyman showed up to tell Triple H that Plan A (Randy Orton) wasn't working and Plan B (Seth Rollins) had troubles with Dean Ambrose, so Hunter had to consider Plan C. Cue Brock Lesnar. When Lesnar and Heyman entered the ring in the main event of Raw they were met by Triple H. Hunter shook each of their hands before leaving. That made the match official. After a ten minute speech that included a video package showing Lesnar's win over The Undertaker at WrestleMania 30, Heyman ended his promo by saying this: "Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Paul Heyman and I'm the one behind the one in 21 and 1. At SummerSlam my client Brock Lesnar will beat John Cena and become the WWE Heavyweight Champion of the World." http://youtu.be/BabUDvpNUbk As we had reported late last week, John Cena was not at Raw. After retaining the WWE Title at Sunday's Battleground PPV, Cena flew from Tampa to New York City to film more scenes for the Judd Apatow movie he's in called Trainwreck. He's expected to miss more WWE live events over the next month just as he has for the last month, but he should be on Raw most weeks. There was no mention by WWE as to why Cena wasn't there because they wanted fans to think he'd show up at the end. He did not. Raw ended with Lesnar staring menacingly into the camera. The last time Cena faced Lesnar was in the main event of Extreme Rules 2012 in a match that was considered one of the year's best. It was Lesnar's first match in WWE in eight years. They had a violent Extreme Rules Match where Lesnar bloodied Cena and dominated the majority of the match, but Cena was able to fight back to win the match. When Cena won the match a lot of fans complained that it was stupid of WWE to have Lesnar lose in his first match in eight years. Over two years later, Lesnar will get his chance to avenge that loss. Since WWE already accidentally leaked a promotional poster weeks ago to Amazon.com and a video package last week, there should be a lot of promotional items released in the coming days promoting the showdown at SummerSlam. Cena vs. Lesnar with the WWE Title on the line is a big deal. It's definitely a match worthy of main eventing one of WWE's most important shows of the year.
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John wrote at WhatCulture from December 2013 to December 2015. It was fun, but it's over for now. Follow him on Twitter @johnreport. You can also send an email to mrjohncanton@gmail.com with any questions or comments as well.