John Cena made a momentous return to WWE TV last week, but he was nowhere to be seen on RAW.
At least he wasn’t while the cameras were rolling. The 16-time champion would make his presence felt after the show to send the crowd home happy.
Cena and Riddle formed a tag team, hot on the heels of their brief interaction last week on RAW, and defeated MACE and T-BAR two-on-two in the dark match main event that went just over 10 minutes.
The finish to the match saw Cena deliver an Attitude Adjustment to MACE and get the pin to win.
Riddle worked most of the match for his team, but Cena got the hot tag to a huge ovation and hit his signature moves. After the match, Cena and Riddle had a “Bro Off” like they did on RAW last week, then hit the turnbuckles to pose together.
Cena was the only one of the four men not to appear on the TV broadcast. The other dark main event participants pulled double duty tonight as Riddle lost a match to John Morrison on RAW, while MACE and T-BAR took a loss to Mustafa Ali and Mansoor.
Since returning, Cena has set his sights on Universal champion Roman Reigns, but he has been appearing on both RAW and SmackDown seemingly in a bid to appease both the USA Network and FOX, WWE’s TV partners for RAW and SmackDown respectively.
The pair are tentatively set to face off at SummerSlam even though Reigns has denied Cena’s challenge on TV.
The working main event for SummerSlam in a fully-packed Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas is Cena vs Reigns and interestingly, Cena is scheduled for some SmackDown shows in September after SummerSlam, indicating that he’ll be sticking around for a while after his match.
Finn Balor, who recently made his return to SmackDown too, is also in line to face Reigns and The Tribal Chief accepted his challenge last week.
Elsewhere on the SummerSlam card, Goldberg will take on Bobby Lashley for the WWE title, Edge and Seth Rolins are on a collision course in addition to the expected return of Becky Lynch.