John Cena reflected on his famous WWE Championship match with Brock Lesnar from SummerSlam 2014 while on Notsam Wrestling this week. The match famously saw “The Beast” squash Cena for 16 minutes, nailing him with 16 German suplexes and fully embracing his “Suplex City” in-ring style. The choice to have Cena suffer such a one-sided loss was shocking at the time, but Cena believed it made perfect sense to keep Lesnar’s momentum going months after he broke The Undertaker’s WrestleMania undefeated streak.
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“Brock is one of the most giving performers when it’s his time, and he will make anyone look great. But I remember Brock being like, ‘Hey you know, I had dinner with Steve Austin last night and we came up with this idea where I just start suplexing you and don’t stop. And then beat you.’ I said, ‘Yeah!’ He said, ‘What do you mean?’ I was like, ‘Well, we both collectively agreed that you just beat the (Undertaker’s) streak. We will ruin that if we have a 50-50 match,’” Cena said.
“…It’s not my night. How do you showcase the enormity of that win? How do we not waste The Undertaker’s streak? It’s not just Brock winning a match. It’s all those matches that he had to lead up to losing. If I go out and have a 50-50 match and he just sneaks over, we wasted all of that. But if you take that unbelievable feat with another unbelievable feat, now we have passed that energy. That is how you make someone and that’s how they can make others. And that’s how the business works,” Cena continued. “You have to be able to work together.”
While Lesnar was already a three-time WWE Champion and former UFC Heavyweight Champion by that point, the victories over Undertaker and Cena set the stage for WWE’s main event scene for years to come. Lesnar has been world champion seven times since his return to pro wrestling for a combined 1,156 days.
WWE Night of Champions Full Card (As of Now)
- World Heavyweight Championship: Seth Rollins vs. AJ Styles
- Undisputed WWE Tag Team Championships: Kevin Owens & Sami Zayn vs. Roman Reigns & Solo Sikoa
- WWE Intercontinental Championship: Gunther vs. Mustafa Ali
- Raw Women’s Championship: Bianca Belair vs. Asuka
- Cody Rhodes vs. Brock Lesnar
