The Last Man Standing

The match

Roman Reigns defends the Undisputed WWE Universal championship in a Last Man Standing match against Brock Lesnar in the main event of tonight’s (Sat., July 30, 2022) WWE SummerSlam pay-per-view (PPV) from Nissan Stadium in Nashville, Tennessee.

The story

About that…

Brock Lesnar and Roman Reigns have been going at it for quite a while now. They’ve been involved in 11 different matches against each other, starting in 2015 and ranging from singles showdowns to triple threat matches to Fatal 4-Ways to appearing in the same Royal Rumbles matches on two separate occasions.

There have been five singles matches:

• WrestleMania 34 (2018): Lesnar def. Reigns to retain the Universal championship
• Greatest Royal Rumble (2018): Lesnar def. Reigns in a Steel Cage match to retain the Universal championship
• SummerSlam (2018): Reigns def. Lesnar to win the Universal championship
• Crown Jewel (2021): Reigns def. Lesnar to retain the Universal championship
• WrestleMania 38 (2022): Reigns def. Lesnar to retain the Universal championship, win the WWE championship

Reigns has the edge, 3-2, and there’s not much reason to think he won’t push that record to 4-2 later on this evening.

I say all this because, well, there’s no real story beyond that. WWE has simply drawn on the history between the two to justify doing this at all. It’s about as transparent as the company has ever been in regards to more or less copping to the fact that the match was booked because they needed a big time main event with big time players in a big time venue. So they made it a Last Man Standing match and have claimed it will be the final meeting between the two.

Yeah, right.

The added flavor, and the thing they spent the past month driving home as the focal point of the promotion, has been Theory hanging around with the Money in the Bank contract and promising to cash it in on whoever emerges victorious. The idea is that the match will be so draining, even the victor will be extremely vulnerable.

The idea, of course, is that you won’t just get to see two top stars fighting over the top title in a gimmick match, but you’re probably seeing a cash-in when it’s over. So buy a ticket! Order the show! Turn on Peacock! Here we go!

Poll time!