9 Ups And 7 Downs From WWE SummerSlam 2021

by Scott Carlson

1. Cena Steps Up In Defeat

John Cena Roman Reigns
WWE.com

John Cena is a bona fide box office star. He had no obligation to get back in a WWE ring and wrestle. And even if he did, no one would have really blamed him if he played it a bit safe and didn’t take too many big bumps.

But instead, Cena had a barn-burner of a main event with Roman Reigns over the Universal Championship. The match started slowly and methodically, making you wonder if they really were going to play it safe and steer clear of anything too heavy.

After a few minutes though, they started tearing into each other, with Cena pulling out all the stops. The story of the match was John being half a step too slow and having to fight from underneath, relying early on on rollups, trying to surprise Reigns. But once he found his footing, Cena started bringing the fight to Roman.

But it was all for naught, as Reigns kicked out of everything, including a Super Attitude Adjustment, and put Cena down with two Superman Punches and a spear to retain. Really solid match that solidified Reigns’ superiority and showed that Cena still has the goods.

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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.