As we get closer to SummerSlam and the Brock Lesnar vs. Jon Jones rumors continue to pick up steam, people are wondering if Lesnar will drop the WWE Universal Championship at SummerSlam.
On this week’s episode of Monday Night Raw, they clearly played into the rumors when Paul Heyman announced he and Lesnar would leave WWE if he did not leave SummerSlam with the title. The thing is, that may be a swerve because Lesnar will likely not fight again in the UFC until next year. Per the UFC, he has not entered the USADA drug testing pool and he would need to re-enter the pool so that he can resume his suspension for his drug failure stemming from his fight at UFC 200.
Dave Meltzer reported on MMAFighting.com that although Lesnar is very interested in the fight, he has not agreed to terms. In addition, as we reported on Tuesday night, Lesnar is scheduled for shows in September and the No Mercy pay-per-view. He is also locked in for WrestleMania, which means that he would be appearing on several episodes of Raw leading up to the big show in April. “Brock is 100 percent at Mania,” a WWE source told Meltzer. “Not even a discussion any other way — 100 percent.”
Lesnar would need two months of uninterrupted full-time training to prepare for the fight so he would not fight until June, at the earliest. July would make the most sense since UFC considers International Fight Week (during the first week of July) as their biggest week of the year.
Sports Illustrated’s Justin Barrasso is reporting that Paul Heyman is advocating for WWE to put the title on Samoa Joe. That would make sense since Heyman (along with Joey Mercury) helped to put in the good word for Joe to get into WWE. My gut tells me that WWE realizes that most fans believe that Lesnar will lose at SummerSlam and they will swerve everyone and have him win. If WWE wants him to drop the title before the end of the year then, perhaps, he can lose it to Joe in a one-on-one match at No Mercy in September. Lesnar can take a couple of months off and then return in time for the Royal Rumble as the company starts the build towards WrestleMania.
There’s been a ton of breaking news in the last 24 hours. Catch up by clicking on some of the links below:
- John Cena comments on the scary bump he took on Smackdown Live
- Austin Aries’ hilarious reaction to Shinsuke Nakamura’s botched spot on SmackDown Live
- Is Enzo Amore on his way out of WWE?
- Karen Jarrett comments on the incident with Braun Strowman
- Daniel Bryan says “Smacking Talk” has already been shut down
