10 Fascinating WWE SummerSlam 2015 Facts
4. Orton Was Tabbed To Fill In For Cena, If Cena Wasn't Medically Cleared
Four weeks before SummerSlam, on Monday Night Raw, John Cena defeated WWE Champion Seth Rollins in a match where only Cena's US title was at stake. This would be the obvious build to Cena challenging for Rollins' belt at SummerSlam, but a rather gruesome occurrence in the Raw match put the SummerSlam bout in jeopardy.
At one point, Rollins hit Cena squarely in the face with a flying knee out of Sagat's Street Fighter moveset, leaving Cena's nose looking like a misshapen bell pepper. The injury put Cena out of action until SummerSlam weekend, though he was cleared with about two weeks to go before the pay-per-view.
The back-up plan if Cena couldn't work SummerSlam was to take Randy Orton (who opened the show with Sheamus) and have him face Rollins instead. Cena wrestled two years earlier with a torn tricep at SummerSlam, so the safe bet was that a broken nose (no matter how grotesque) wasn't going to hold him back either.