WWE SummerSlam 2026 Has a Credibility Problem, and Oba Femi Is Proof

WWE SummerSlam 2026 is three weeks away, and the two-night show at U.S. Bank Stadium already has a credibility problem. It starts with Oba Femi.

Femi won King of the Ring at Night of Champions, beating Jey Uso in the final to lock in a WWE World Championship match of his own choosing at SummerSlam. That felt like the entire point of reviving the tournament. Then Brock Lesnar interrupted Femi’s celebration on Raw, hit him with an F5, and challenged him to a Hell in a Cell match instead. Femi accepted on the spot, telling general manager Adam Pearce that his guaranteed title shot “is always going to be there.”

That is a problem, and it has nothing to do with whether Femi beats Lesnar inside the cell.

Challenging for AIWF Canadian Heavyweight Championship July 18 in New Brunswick versus Wesley Pipes. https://t.co/QxzIBKRyh6 pic.twitter.com/Gh39gjHcry

— Genesis Johnny North (@northgenesis) July 2, 2026

King of the Ring exists for one reason. It hands a wrestler a guaranteed title opportunity at the second biggest show of the year. Nobody wins the Royal Rumble and then decides to wrestle somebody else at WrestleMania instead. The prize is the entire point of watching. When the winner of your marquee tournament shrugs off the actual prize for a random grudge match, you have told the audience that the tournament, and by extension the championship attached to it, does not really matter.

It is a bad-faith booking. Whatever stipulation WWE sets up with a satisfying conclusion attached to it can now be undone the very next night because a bigger name walked through the curtain. That kills two things at once. It kills the value of the championships and the audience’s belief that the creative will actually follow through on its promises.

Support the Ringside Report Network

Up to 40% Off Great Gifts

It gets more complicated once you factor in who is holding the title Femi walked away from.

Sami Zayn’s Title Reign Is More Deserved Than the Backlash Suggests

Sami Zayn has been the Undisputed WWE Champion for a little over a week, and the reaction has been split down the middle since his hand got raised in Saudi Arabia. A chunk of the fanbase decided almost immediately that Zayn does not look like a champion, which is a strange complaint given how many recent titleholders have not fit the traditional mold. Rey Mysterio held this title. AJ Styles held this title. Kofi Kingston held this title. Nobody demanded a body-fat percentage requirement for any of them.

Zayn belongs somewhere in that Kofi Kingston range of WWE Champions. He is not walking into the conversation with Hogan, Austin, Bret Hart, or Shawn Michaels, and he is not walking into it with Cody Rhodes or Roman Reigns either. But he is a well-liked, well-traveled company guy who has earned a run with the belt, and the timing behind it was defensible even if the presentation around it was clumsy.

The presentation is the actual issue. Zayn’s title win doubled as an unofficial heel turn for part of the audience, built around a “ride or die” callout to the Saudi crowd that plays very differently once the show lands in North America. That is not necessarily a mistake. There is a version of this story where WWE leans all the way into it: Zayn as a conquering hero in Saudi Arabia and Canada, and a target for heat everywhere else, not unlike how Gunther built his reputation as the Ring General by being unlikable on purpose in exactly the right rooms.

Whether WWE actually commits to that version is the real question, because the machine behind this title picture is pointed at Cody Rhodes, not Sami Zayn.

Cody earned his rematch by beating Jey Uso on SmackDown, setting up a title match on the July 6 Raw in Chicago, the same building where CM Punk is expected to make his return. Breaking up a long Cody title reign for eight days, only to hand it right back a week later, follows the same pattern WWE used when Drew McIntyre briefly took the belt off Cody. It creates the illusion of change without any of the risk. Cody stays “champion forever” in spirit, even during the weeks he is not holding the physical title.

If Cody does get the title back in Chicago, the more interesting story is what happens next. Punk’s return sets up a three-way conversation between Cody, Punk, and Zayn heading into SummerSlam, and there is a real path where Zayn gets squeezed out of the biggest match of the summer despite being the guy who is currently walking around with the title. Punk’s presence has been polarizing before, and there is no reason to expect that changes now that he is walking back into a Cody Rhodes story.

Gunther’s Retirement Résumé Keeps Growing

While the WWE Championship picture sorts itself out, Gunther has quietly built one of the strangest résumés in the company. He beat Goldberg in Goldberg’s final match. He beat AJ Styles and John Cena during their respective retirement tours. Pat McAfee has not wrestled again since Gunther beat him, which retroactively puts McAfee on that same list whether WWE ever calls it that or not.

Now reports point toward Nick Aldis, the SmackDown general manager, getting a match with Gunther at SummerSlam after their backstage altercation cost Aldis his job on Raw. On paper, this makes no sense as a spot for Gunther, a former record-setting Intercontinental Champion who should be building toward world title programs, not adding an authority figure’s in-ring debut to a legends’ graveyard. But it says something about how WWE currently views Gunther that they keep feeding him opponents whose careers effectively end the moment the match is over, the same way Brock Lesnar’s shock return last year reshuffled an entire card overnight.

Roman and Seth Get Their Last Dance

The cleanest story on the WWE SummerSlam 2026 card belongs to Roman Reigns and Seth Rollins. Rollins framed this as potentially the last time the two of them lock up, invoking the years they spent coming up together before a new generation started crowding them out. Roman accepted, and the framing writes itself: a guy trying to prove he can still finish the job in front of his family, against a guy who has, by his own count, always found a way to beat Roman before.

This is also the payoff to a story WWE nearly told differently. Before Jey Uso’s arc took its current shape, there was a version of the King of the Ring season where Seth won the tournament and challenged Roman directly, with no Brock Lesnar detour required. Instead, Femi won it, then gave it away, and WWE landed back on Roman-Seth anyway. Sometimes the machine reaches the same destination no matter how many wrong turns it takes.

AEW’s Forbidden Door Delivered, Even If the Concept Is Fading

AEW’s side of the summer has been just as loaded. Forbidden Door landed at the SAP Center with Will Ospreay beating Swerve Strickland in the Owen Hart Cup final, a bloody, physical main event that will be in the 2026 Match of the Year conversation from the moment the calendar turns to December. Ospreay is in the middle of a run that is genuinely hard to find a comparison for right now. Strickland matched him beat for beat and still looked like a made star in defeat, which is its own kind of compliment.

The undercard held up, too. Mercedes Moné and Mayu Iwatani closed out the Owen Hart Cup women’s bracket, Kenny Omega had an excellent match with Zack Sabre Jr., and the twelve-man Death’s Door cage match delivered the kind of chaos that cage matches are supposed to deliver, right down to Kevin Knight flying off the top of the structure. That match also legitimately injured Mark Briscoe, who has been out of action since his AEW World Championship match with MJF the following week on Dynamite. It is a reminder that the style AEW’s midcard wrestlers come with carries a real cost.

The larger question is whether Forbidden Door still means what it used to. The show is billed around AEW crossing over with New Japan, CMLL, and Stardom, but increasingly it plays like the promotion’s regular pay-per-view with a handful of guest stars sprinkled in rather than a genuine crossover event. AEW has leaned into adding pay-per-views rather than trimming them, so do not expect the concept to disappear. Whether it needs a fresh name at some point is a fair question.

#AEWDynamite Beach Break
8/7c, TBS & HBO Max
This Wednesday, 7/8
AEW World Title@The_MJF vs @KennyOmegamanX
Omega made a deal with the Devil. If he can't defeat MJF for the AEW World Championship, he can never challenge for the title again.
Omega vs MJF, THIS WEDNESDAY! pic.twitter.com/SS1CWBTKJi

— All Elite Wrestling (@AEW) July 4, 2026

Kenny Omega’s Win-or-Else Match With MJF

The stakes heading into AEW’s Beach Break edition of Dynamite could not be higher. MJF offered Omega a shot at the AEW World Championship on one condition: lose, and Omega can never challenge for that title again, the same stipulation that has already ended Cody Rhodes and Hangman Page’s runs at the top of the company. Omega accepted anyway, even after Will Ospreay pulled him aside and asked whether he truly believed he could win.

Whichever way the match goes, the follow-up plan matters more. A time-limit draw between Omega and MJF would set up a rematch at AEW Redemption, the promotion’s Montreal pay-per-view, and there is a strong case for folding Andrade into that match as a third man. Andrade turned on MJF and the Don Callis Family at Forbidden Door, and the “How You Know” chant that followed him onto Dynamite this week is the loudest reaction he has gotten in his entire AEW run. A wrestler does not usually pick up a signature crowd catchphrase by accident. It tends to show up right as a push is about to accelerate.

The chaos on AEW Collision this week reinforced how deep the promotion’s roster war has gotten. Jay White made his in-ring return alongside the Bang Bang Gang and Adam Copeland, only for Jon Moxley’s Death Riders and the rival faction known as the Dogs to run in together and lay everyone out after the bell. It does not clarify who is aligned with whom going into Redemption, but it confirms the Death Riders are still very much the heels of this story, regardless of Ospreay’s complicated history with the group.

Beyond the top of the card, AEW has quietly built a list of wrestlers who look like legitimate future world champions. Mark Briscoe was proving that case in real time before his injury. Kyle Fletcher belongs in that conversation. Andrade has an argument now that his promos finally match his in-ring work. Brody King has the look and the ability, though the promotion has stopped and started his push often enough that it is fair to wonder whether the direction exists yet.

What This Means for WWE SummerSlam 2026

Put it all together and WWE SummerSlam 2026 is shaping up as a show built on one very good story (Roman and Seth), one legitimately dangerous story (Brock and Oba), one messy story (Zayn, Cody, and Punk), and at least one championship match (Liv Morgan defending against Iyo Sky) that got here almost by accident after the King and Queen of the Ring tournament failed to deliver on its own premise.

None of that means SummerSlam will be bad. WWE has a habit of putting on a good show even when the road to get there is a mess. But the credibility damage from the Oba Femi angle does not just disappear because the eventual matches turn out fine. The next time WWE runs a King of the Ring, or sets up any stipulation with a payoff attached, the audience now has a very recent, very specific reason to assume the promise is negotiable.

The next few weeks will decide how much of this holds together. Chicago Raw settles the Zayn-Cody rematch and likely confirms whether Punk is fully back in the fold. AEW’s Beach Break edition of Dynamite settles whether Omega ever gets another crack at the AEW World Championship. And WWE SummerSlam 2026 arrives on August 1 and 2 at U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis, carrying a lot of promise, and a credibility problem it created for itself in the span of one Raw episode.

https://t.co/9wINvYGN1i

— Genesis Johnny North (@northgenesis) June 21, 2026