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The First Hell In A Cell at SummerSlam Since 2008 May Be Brock Lesnar's Last Match

By Franz Irorita Men's Journal

Paul Heyman hired five men to dress up as police officers and stand between Brock Lesnar and Oba Femi during last night's Monday Night Raw. It went about as well as you would expect.

Last night's show from the American Airlines Center in Dallas opened with Lesnar and Heyman flanked by what Heyman presented as a detail from the Dallas Police Department, there, he explained, because of Femi. The advocate laid out his case at length. Femi had turned down a guaranteed championship match to chase Lesnar instead, and Heyman had some things to say about that.

"That is stalker level," Heyman said, before calling Femi the biggest dummy he had ever met for relinquishing his title opportunity to chase Lesnar instead, and comparing him to a psycho ex-girlfriend. He claimed to have called in a favor with a Dallas judge, a friend of his father, and produced a restraining order barring Femi from coming within 100 feet of Lesnar. In a nice touch, he said he had taken one out against his own client too. Lesnar shot him a look.

Then, Femi's music hit anyway.

The Ruler Cleared the Ring and Made Lesnar Run

Femi walked down the ramp, stepped through the ropes, and gave Heyman one chance to explain himself. Heyman told the officers to do their job. He and Lesnar then promptly exited the ring, leaving five men in uniforms between them and The Ruler.

Femi went through all of them, capping it with a tossing spinebuster that sent the last one over the top rope into the floor. With the ring cleared, he turned on The Beast, who has used the ensuing chaos to escape the ring. Femi calls out Brock for running away. Lesnar used to run the place, Femi said. Now, all he does is run away.

He had an answer for the "dummy" line, too. If he had chased a title instead, Femi said, Lesnar would have found a way to cost him the match anyway.

Backstage, Raw General Manager Adam Pearce confirmed what the crowd had already worked out: there was no judge, no restraining order, no real officers. Femi said he knew. He said it told him Heyman was scared. The no-touch clause in the SummerSlam contract, at least, is real, which means these two are not supposed to touch each other again until the Cell comes down, with or without a restraining order.

How These Two Got Here, And Who Actually Asked For The Cell

The Hell in a Cell match was set two weeks ago, and it's unclear who is the hunter and who is the hunted in this scenario.

Femi opened the June 29 Raw as the newly crowned 2026 King of the Ring, weighing which champion to challenge at SummerSlam. Lesnar interrupted, needled him for the trash talk he had done in Lesnar's absence, said "talk s--- get hit," and dropped him with a low blow and an F5. Femi got up and challenged Lesnar to a match at SummerSlam. Lesnar accepted, then raised it: inside Hell in a Cell, in his own state of Minnesota.

Femi took the deal and gave up his King of the Ring title shot to do it, telling Pearce the championships would still be there later. That left Roman Reigns free to defend the World Heavyweight Championship against Seth Rollins instead, and Dave Meltzer has since reported that WWE is deliberately holding Femi vs. Reigns back for WrestleMania 43, on the logic that a coronation only counts if it happens on the biggest show of the year.

This is the rubber match. Femi beat Lesnar at WrestleMania 42. Lesnar pinned Femi at Clash in Italy. The current record is 1-1, so everything gets settled at SummerSlam.

Will Oba Femi Retire Brock Lesnar Twice?

Oba Femi beating Brock Lesnar at SummerSlam is the logical outcome, storyline-wise, and this would lead to Lesnar retiring a second time this year, if the rumors are true.

When Femi beat him at WrestleMania 42, Lesnar sat in the middle of the ring, took off his gloves and boots, left them on the mat, and embraced Heyman while the building gave him a standing ovation. At the time, it was understood as a retirement. The next night on Raw, WWE aired a career retrospective, and Heyman spoke about him in the past tense. Weeks later, Heyman put it bluntly on television: Brock Lesnar retired on me.

Wrestling Inc. reported that the belief backstage was that Lesnar was genuinely finished and that the gesture was a real goodbye rather than an angle. But The Beast Incarnate was back within weeks, attacking Femi on Raw, and then beating him in Italy to even the score.

Rumors of Lesnar's impending retirement are still alive, with many fans originally calling the bluff at WrestleMania, believing that Brock Lesnar would not be retiring anywhere else aside from Minnesota. Meltzer has said on Wrestling Observer Radio that the plan is for Lesnar to retire at SummerSlam, while noting that WWE has used the word "retired" very loosely throughout this story, and that a last match tends to last only until the next one.

Femi ended Lesnar's career once already, or appeared to, at WrestleMania. If Lesnar walks out of U.S. Bank Stadium and does not come back, Femi will have ended it twice, and this time on Lesnar's own terms.

The Cell Has Not Hung Over SummerSlam Since Undertaker Defeated Edge

It's been 18 years since the Cell was lowered at The Biggest Party of the Summer.

The last time was August 17, 2008, at Conseco Fieldhouse in Indianapolis, and it was the blow-off to one of the nastiest feuds of the era. Edge had spent a year tormenting The Undertaker, culminating in a stipulation match that banished the Deadman from WWE entirely. Then-General Manager Vickie Guerrero reinstated him. Then, she signed him into a Cell Match with her on-screen husband, Edge.

The Undertaker won it with a Tombstone, and then refused to leave it there. On his way out, he spotted Edge still twitching on the titantron, walked back, set up a ladder, chokeslammed Edge off it through the canvas, and posed over the hole while flames poured out of the ring. Jim Ross told the audience that Edge had been sent to hell. Edge was then written off television for a while.

That is the standard this match inherits, and the connection runs deeper than the date. The Hell In A Cell match stipulation is most closely associated with The Undertaker by fans. But even though the Deadman owns the Cell, Brock Lesnar has defeated him twice inside it.

Brock Lesnar is entering SummerSlam with a clean 2-0 record in Hell in a Cell matches. He looks to add Femi to his list of victims.

Although he has never lost inside the structure, Lesnar's record across twelve SummerSlams sits at 6-6, and the recent ledger is grim. He has lost his last four SummerSlam matches: Roman Reigns in 2018, Seth Rollins in 2019, Reigns again in 2022, and Cody Rhodes in 2023. He hasn't won in SummerSlam since 2017.

Lesnar is undefeated in the Cell, but is entering SummerSlam with a losing streak.

It will also be the first Hell in a Cell match of any kind since Bad Blood in October 2024, when CM Punk closed out his trilogy with Drew McIntyre. WWE has kept the structure in storage since retiring the standalone event, which is exactly why bringing it back for this means something.

This story was originally published by Men's Journal on Jul 14, 2026, where it first appeared in the Entertainment section. Add Men's Journal as a Preferred Source by clicking here.

2026 The Arena Group Holdings, Inc. All rights reserved.

This story was originally published July 14, 2026 at 10:24 AM.

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