2 Highs and 3 Lows from Roman Reigns' previous WWE SummerSlam appearances

Since making his WWE main-roster debut in November 2012, Roman Reigns has appeared at five SummerSlam events.

In 2013, he featured alongside Seth Rollins at ringside to support Dean Ambrose during his United States Championship kickoff show match against Rob Van Dam, while he went one-on-one with Randy Orton at the 2014 event.

“The Big Dog” reunited with fellow Shield member Ambrose in 2015 to face Bray Wyatt and Luke Harper in a tag match, and then his scheduled encounter with Rusev in 2016 was over before it even began.

His latest SummerSlam appearance came in the main event of the 2017 show when he suffered a pinfall loss against Brock Lesnar in a Fatal 4-Way match for the Universal Championship.

Overall, it’s been a mixed few years for Reigns when it comes to SummerSlam, so we decided to take an in-depth look at where things have gone right and wrong for the four-time WrestleMania headliner at WWE’s “Biggest Party of The Summer”.

#5 Low: Demoted to being a kickoff show sidekick (2013)

Roman Reigns was a spectator at SummerSlam 2013

Roman Reigns, Seth Rollins and Dean Ambrose made an instant impact following their main-roster call-ups in November 2012, and it didn’t take long before all three members of The Shield had championship gold around their waist.

However, after their triple title triumph in May 2013 at Extreme Rules, Ambrose rarely defended his United States Championship and Reigns & Rollins’ Tag Team Championship reign wasn’t being featured as prominently as expected on WWE programming in the months that followed.

This was best summed up in August 2013 at SummerSlam when, despite being tag champs at the time, Reigns and Rollins weren’t even booked in a match, and they were forced to watch on from ringside as Ambrose faced Rob Van Dam during the pre-show broadcast.

After a hugely impressive match against The Usos at the previous month’s PPV, Money In The Bank, the 2013 SummerSlam event should have been a big night for Reigns. In the end, he was merely a kickoff show sidekick.

#4 High: First big statement victory as a singles guy (2014)

Following The Shield’s demise in June 2014, Roman Reigns was involved in multi-man World Heavyweight Championship matches at Battleground and Money In The Bank but it never looked like he was a serious contender to win the title.

Then, in the build-up to SummerSlam, WWE continued the rivalry between The Shield and Evolution by having Reigns feud with Randy Orton.

At this point, fans hadn’t yet turned against the man we now know as “The Big Dog” and he was still getting positive reactions as a babyface, so there was a huge cheer from the crowd when he hit Orton with a spear before getting the 1-2-3.

The victory was the biggest of Reigns’ career up until that point and it was made all the more impressive by the fact that he kicked out of an RKO.

#3 Low: Underwhelming feud with Bray Wyatt (2015)

Bray Wyatt feuded with Roman Reigns during the second half of 2015

One year on from a huge milestone moment in his career, Roman Reigns had become a love-to-hate babyface who had the weight of the WWE Universe on his shoulders during his mid-2015 rivalry with Bray Wyatt.

Due to Bray’s rambling promos and Reigns’ unconvincing good-guy persona, the feud failed to recreate the Wyatt Family vs. Shield magic that worked so well in 2014, even with the addition of Luke Harper and Dean Ambrose to the storyline in the build-up to SummerSlam.

Reigns’ match at that year’s “Biggest Party of The Summer”, in which he teamed with Ambrose to defeat Wyatt and Harper, was of high quality but the four-month storyline was very repetitive and nowhere near as interesting as expected.

The rivalry stepped up a gear when Braun Strowman made his debut as a Wyatt Family member, but that didn’t happen until the night after SummerSlam.

#2 Low: Rusev match doesn’t even happen (2016)

Rusev vs. Roman Reigns never officially got started

After losing out to Finn Balor in a Universal Championship #1 contender match before SummerSlam 2016, Roman Reigns set his sights on Rusev’s United States Championship.

However, the one-on-one title match between the two men at that year’s SummerSlam ended up being cancelled when Rusev attacked Reigns before the bell even rang, and “The Bulgarian Brute” was declared unfit to compete after being struck with a chair.

Granted, this was merely an angle to set up two more PPV matches, but it still has to be considered a low point because the scheduled match didn’t even happen.

#1 High: Match of the Year candidate (2017)

In 2017, Brock Lesnar successfully defended his Universal Championship in a Fatal 4-Way match in the main event of SummerSlam against Roman Reigns, Samoa Joe and Braun Strowman.

It genuinely looked throughout the 20-minute match as if any one of the four men could walk away with the title, especially as it appeared at the time that Lesnar was going back to UFC (doesn’t that sound familiar?!).

In the end, “The Beast” pinned “The Big Dog” following an F5 to retain the Universal Championship and, one year on, he still has hold of the title.

Some might say that this should be considered another low point of Reigns’ appearances at SummerSlam – he took the pinfall, after all – but it’s not every day you get to be involved in a Match of the Year contender, so we’re classing this as a high point.

Edited by Arvind Sriram