John Cena Defeating Seth Rollins at WWE SummerSlam Would Be Panic Move

With John Cena likely to challenge Seth Rollins for the WWE World Heavyweight Championship at SummerSlam, we explain why crowning a new champion would be wrong.

Following Monday night’s win via submission, John Cena is the likely number one contender for Seth Rollins’ WWE World Heavyweight Championship. This is going to infuriate some fans and make others happy.

People who have been following WWE for the past decade know Cena has been the face of the company. He’s always hovered around the title picture, resulting in 15 World Title reigns. This is one behind the all-time leader, Ric Flair, who has 16.

The assumption has been that Cena will at least tie this record, which he may very well do next month at SummerSlam. There’s also multiple issues with the WWE United States Champion doing this.

Rollins had one of the greatest WrestleMania moments of all-time back in March when he cashed in Money in the Bank to be included in the main event for the WWE WHC. He had already been on the rise for the past nine months and this seemed to be the culmination of that. It also seemingly showed that WWE could create new stars.

Rollins has had a decent but unspectacular title reign since then. It’s included cheap title wins, a tug-a-war and a return of a company legend to keep it going. Viewership for Raw have also dipped to some of its worst ever during this time.

Here’s the average viewership for the past five shows:

– June 29, 2015: 3.462 million
– July 6, 2015: 3.647 million
– July 13, 2015: 3.531 million
– July 20, 2015: 3.804 million
– July 27, 2015: 3.672 million

These numbers have become a big topic of conversation. Once Cena got inserted into the title picture nearly two weeks ago, many felt this was a response to it. Fans have seen that whenever things are going “bad,” Vince McMahon inserts “his guy” into the main event. This was done last year when Daniel Bryan had to relinquish the WWE WHC due to injury.

The poor ratings are not Rollins’ fault, though. Fans on social media always complain over Raw being too long, leading to them tuning out. Hour three is often loaded with plenty of “filler matches” that have no significance on pay-per-views, so why should fans bother watching?

The booking of Rollins, as previously mentioned, has also been mediocre. Being defended for months by J&J Security and the way-past-his-prime Kane didn’t help his. They often assisted him in winning matches, retain his title, win MITB, etc. This made the former ROH star look like one of the weakest champions in years.

To go along with that notion, Rollins was mostly dominated by Brock Lesnar during their feud and match. Multiple suplexes, the destruction of a car, Rollins running away—none of it helped.

Everyone wants to see the champion look strong but WWE hasn’t helped him. Proper booking like giving Rollins clean wins on relevant programming would help. If he defeats Cena at SummerSlam, we may have something going here.

If Cena does win at SummerSlam, progress Rollins has made since leaving The Shield would be damaged. The leader of the Cenation’s build of the U.S. Championship would be greatly hurt as well. That’s a whole other topic, though.

Give Rollins a chance with meaningful booking to make him look like the strong WWE World Heavyweight Champion that he should have always been. The win at SummerSlam would do him wonders and we would go from there. Unfortunately, if he loses, it would be a sign of panic that’s not needed.

You can follow Rob Wolkenbrod on Twitter @RealRobWolkey. If you would like to send a report from a live event, email us at trebor5227@yahoo.com.

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