Ottawa got four-plus hours of Raw and SmackDown this week, and it ended with the crowd booing the exit music. The Kevin Owens Sami Zayn rivalry hijacked SmackDown’s main event triple threat for the third time in two years, and once again, nobody won. Gunther, CM Punk, and Finn Balor set up a legitimate number-one-contender’s match for Punk’s WWE Championship. Kevin Owens interfered his way into it after an emotional pre-match promo about coming up short. And Sami Zayn ended the show in Toronto holding the title belt over four bodies, with no referee, no bell, and no winner.
That’s not a hot take from the nosebleeds. That’s what actually happened in the building, live, in front of a paying crowd that had already sat through a full Raw taping before SmackDown even started.
🎯 Key Takeaways
- No finish, again: The Gunther-Punk-Balor-Owens triple threat for the number-one contendership ended with Sami Zayn clearing the ring with the title belt and no bell rung.
- Kevin Owens is chasing, not challenging: Owens opened the show with a promo about losing in Toronto with his mother in attendance, then got screwed out of the main event by Sami Zayn a second time.
- The live crowd got nothing: No post-show angle, no dark match beatdown, and wrestlers visibly dropping character and walking to the back the second the TV cameras cut.
- This is a pattern, not an accident: Both the Raw and SmackDown main events this week ended without a clean finish.
Kevin Owens Sami Zayn
What Actually Happened in the Triple Threat
SmackDown opened with Kevin Owens cutting a genuinely strong promo about losing his WWE Championship match in Toronto last week, with his mother healthy enough to finally watch him challenge for the title in person. Sami Zayn was the reason he came up short. Then Nick Aldis booked a triple threat between Gunther, CM Punk, and Finn Balor to determine the number-one contender, and it built into something that felt like an actual main event — three former world champions, decades of combined history, a match that meant something.
Then the interference started because it’s a WWE triple threat, and interference in a no-disqualification match has been the default since the format was introduced. Sami Zayn took out one referee before Finn Balor could get a pin. A second referee got knocked down after Kevin Owens hit Gunther with a Stunner.
CM Punk came out, furious, still holding his own championship belt. Sami ran from Punk, Punk collided with Owens, and in the chaos, Sami Zayn grabbed the title belt and levelled everyone in the ring — Owens, Balor, and Gunther. The broadcast cut to black with Zayn standing tall. In the arena, there was no bell. No official had counted a pin. Gunther clutched his ribs and wandered to the back. Owens stayed at ringside and cut a “thank you, Ottawa” promo. And the show was simply over.
“There was no bell to tell you it was over. It was an insult to pro wrestling. It was an insult to the crowd.”
— Dave Simon, Wrestling Uncensored, on the SmackDown non-finish in Ottawa
Kevin Owens Sami Zayn: A Feud That Won’t Resolve
Here’s the part that should worry WWE creative more than a botched live finish: the actual story engine of this match was Kevin Owens chasing Sami Zayn, and it still hasn’t paid off. Owens has now been cost a title opportunity by Zayn in back-to-back weeks — first in Toronto, now in Ottawa — and both times the story ends with Owens standing in the wreckage while somebody else, this time literally, walks off with the belt. Punk’s promo work against Owens has already been running thin, and now the actual matches built around that dynamic are refusing to land a finish too.
At some point the “Kevin Owens gets screwed” well runs dry, and WWE is drawing from it every single week.
None of this makes Kevin Owens look bad. If anything, a clean pinfall loss here and there would help him — a wrestler who occasionally loses clean and keeps his heat is more credible than one who’s protected by chaos finishes every time out. Owens hitting a Stunner on Gunther, only to have it wiped out by a ref bump he didn’t cause, doesn’t make Owens a bigger star. It just delays the moment where the story actually resolves.
WWE’s Real Problem Isn’t One Match — It’s Every Match
The Kevin Owens Sami Zayn non-finish wasn’t an isolated incident. Both the Raw and SmackDown main events this same week ended without a decisive finish. That’s not bad luck, that’s a booking philosophy, and it’s the wrong one. A triple threat under no-disqualification rules can absolutely produce chaos — that’s baked into the format — but chaos still needs a landing spot. Have Kevin Owens hit a Stunner into a Sami Zayn belt shot into a Gunther powerbomb for the pin.
Have Sami and Gunther get themselves counted out together in a schmoz finish. Book a five-minute restart as a hot tag match right there in the arena so the live crowd, who paid full price and sat through four-plus hours of TV, get an actual conclusion. There are a dozen ways to protect everyone involved while still telling the live audience that the show is over. WWE chose the one option that does none of that.
It got worse once the cameras cut. There used to be a tradition of the post-show dark match — the stars of the show coming back out for one more angle just for the ticket-buyers, the kind of thing that used to close out a SmackDown taping in this same building. Instead, the wrestlers just walked to the back. No finisher on Sami Zayn to send the crowd home happy. No handshake-turned-shove between allies.
Just four guys clocking out mid-angle while the house lights stayed down and the crowd booed into the dark. If a company is going to kill the illusion of kayfabe entirely, fine — but you can’t do that in front of the people who are still inside the building believing in the show they paid for.
Reality Check: WWE Doesn’t Trust Its Own Finishes
The Reality: A promotion with this much star power in one triple threat — Gunther, CM Punk, Finn Balor, and Kevin Owens, with Sami Zayn as the wrecking ball — should never need to lean on a finishless finish to generate a talking point. The match had real stakes: a title shot for the top championship in the company. WWE flinched anyway, for the second consecutive week, on two separate shows. That’s not booking a swerve. That’s booking scared. If SmackDown really is the stronger roster right now, as this same crowd made clear all night, then it deserves booking that trusts its own talent to close a show.
To be fair to WWE, the surrounding card gave the live crowd plenty to be genuinely excited about — that’s what made the ending sting more, not less. Randy Orton and Cody Rhodes turned in one of the more personal confrontations of the night, and there’s real juice left in the Kevin Owens/Sami Zayn dynamic if WWE is patient enough to actually pay it off instead of running it back a third time with the same non-finish. This roster doesn’t have a talent problem. It has a finish problem, and it’s happening on both shows every single week until someone in charge decides it’s no longer acceptable.
Kevin Owens Sami Zayn Triple Threat FAQ
Who won the SmackDown triple threat between Gunther, CM Punk, and Finn Balor?
Nobody. Sami Zayn interfered, took out two referees, and cleared the ring with the WWE Championship belt after CM Punk and Kevin Owens got drawn into the chaos. The show ended without a bell being rung or a winner declared, live in the arena in Ottawa.
Why did Kevin Owens get involved in the triple threat?
Owens opened the show explaining he’d lost his WWE Championship opportunity in Toronto the week before, largely due to Sami Zayn. He got involved in the SmackDown main event chasing Zayn, and was again cost the moment when Zayn hit him with the title belt during the finish.
Is the Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn rivalry building to a match?
It’s been building for weeks without a resolution. Zayn has now cost Owens a title opportunity in back-to-back weeks across two different cities, which sets up an obvious blow-off match if WWE chooses to finally pay it off.
Did WWE explain the non-finish on SmackDown?
Not as of this writing. There was no post-match segment, no on-camera referee explanation, and no announced restart. The live crowd was left to assume the show had simply ended.
Has WWE had other non-finish main events recently?
Yes. The same week’s Raw main event also ended without a clean, decisive finish, making it two shows in a row without a resolved top-of-card match.
