4 Ups & 9 Downs From WWE Raw (July 19)

2. Cena Fires Up, Lays Down Challenge

John Cena
WWE.com

The first Monday Night Raw with fans since March 9, 2020 needed to have something electrify the audience from the jump, so WWE went with one of their biggest guns, pulling John Cena into duty.

Cena kicked off Raw with a recounting of his surprise appearance at Money in the Bank Sunday night, and then laid down his challenge to Roman Reigns for the Universal Championship at SummerSlam in Las Vegas. And then he said why: “Because Roman Reigns is an a**hole.”

More to the point, Cena said Reigns was “an arrogant, self-absorbed, overhyped, over-protected, over-exposed gimmick” that’s not as over as he says he is. It was a pretty solid first salvo for a feud that’s going to need to simmer and grow to a boil during the next five weeks. It’ll be interesting to see how things go down on SmackDown on Friday.

And we also got a little banter with Cena and Riddle trading “bros,” which was just a silly but fun close to the segment, giving the current Raw star a bit of a rub.

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Contributor

Scott is a former journalist and longtime wrestling fan who was smart enough to abandon WCW during the Monday Night Wars the same time as the Radicalz. He fondly remembers watching WrestleMania III, IV, V and VI and Saturday Night's Main Event, came back to wrestling during the Attitude Era, and has been a consumer of sports entertainment since then. He's written for WhatCulture for more than a decade, establishing the Ups and Downs articles for WWE Raw and WWE PPVs/PLEs and composing pieces on a variety of topics.