Brock Lesnar Confirmed for WWE SummerSlam Match

It looks as if WWE Universal Champion Brock Lesnar will make his first title defense since April next month at SummerSlam.

After much speculation on what will become of the championship and the champion in the next couple of months, Dave Meltzer of the Wrestling Observer reports that Lesnar is booked for SummerSlam in Brooklyn. If that's the case, he will most certainly be defending his championship.

This could end up being Lesnar's final WWE bout as he transitions into training for a UFC heavyweight title fight against Daniel Cormier, likely in January. Lesnar appeared last weekend at UFC 226 and physically went in to the octagon following Cormier's victory. What resulted was Lesnar hurling insults and UFC setting up their future championship match in a very pro wrestling-esque way.

Lesnar's opponent for SummerSlam has yet to be decided. At Extreme Rules on Sunday, Roman Reigns and Bobby Lashley will face-off, and there's some thought that the winner of that match could go on to face Lesnar. After all, Reigns and Lashley were the first two competitors announced for what was originally supposed to be a five-way match at Extreme Rules to determined a new number one contender for Lesnar. That match was then scratched.

Lashley and Reigns appear to be the most likely candidates to face Lesnar at SummerSlam, though there's still speculation that Seth Rollins could have an outside shot due to being the hottest babyface name on Monday Night RAW.

One of the motivating factors in bringing Lashley back to WWE was a possible match with Lesnar, as both men have histories as MMA fighters. If Lesnar is down to his last match before leaving for a return to UFC, it'd make sense to do the Lashley bout.

At the same time, Reigns has been built up to eventually defeat Lesnar for several years now. To never actually pull the trigger on that would be an enormous waste of time in some ways, though the storyline hasn't played out as well as WWE had hoped, so scrapping the match might also be looked at as a way of cutting their losses before wasting even more time.

All of this aside, Braun Strowman still holds the Money in the Bank briefcase, and a Strowman/Lesnar bout probably makes the absolute most sense. Strowman could announce in advance that he wants to cash-in for a match with Lesnar at SummerSlam, or he could cash-in as a surprise following the match between Lesnar and whoever challenges him as a way of sending the crowd home happy.

Either way, it would seem we're in for a new Universal champion at SummerSlam, though Lesnar has shocked us before when we thought he would lose. After all, should Lesnar defeat Cormier, there would be a goldmine in being able to promote Lesnar as both the WWE Universal Champion and UFC Heavyweight Champion, simultaneously.