WWE Night of Champions Predictions + AEW Forbidden Door Picks: King of the Ring, a Title Shock & a Bloodline Turn

This is the kind of wrestling weekend that clears the calendar. Two major shows, two companies, two completely different problems to solve.

Saturday afternoon delivers WWE Night of Champions from Saudi Arabia. It’s the show with the strange “afternoon of champions” start time, so we’re watching a card full of gold change hands while the sun is still up.

Then, Sunday night, AEW rolls into San Jose for Forbidden Door. That’s the annual cross-promotional collision with New Japan, CMLL, and Stardom all thrown into the blender.

Here are the honest WWE Night of Champions predictions and Forbidden Door calls. This is the reasoning that actually matters, not the hype.

WWE Night of Champions: a King, a Queen, and a title up for grabs

Let’s start with the obvious one and then complicate it, because that’s the only honest way to do this. The King of the Ring final is Jey Uso versus Oba Femi, and Jey is winning.

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That’s not a hot take. It’s just where the road clearly leads. Look at the support structure around each man.

Oba Femi has zero friends. Jey Uso has a brother in Jimmy, a cousin in Jacob Fatu, and another cousin in Roman Reigns, with Solo Sikoa floating somewhere in the periphery. When the finish gets messy, and it will, Oba Femi is standing alone against a family tree. That’s the whole story.

The looming question is Brock Lesnar. The popular read is that Brock costs Oba Femi the match to extend a feud, with both at one win apiece. Sure, it adds a layer.

But here’s the thing. You don’t actually need him for this. Oba Femi already cut the promo, telling Brock he’ll be ready whenever he shows up. The story is built.

Brock has a finite number of dates, and they’re expensive. Why burn one on a Saudi run-in that accomplishes what Jacob Fatu and Jimmy Uso could accomplish for a fraction of the cost?

Oba Femi can lose clean at Night of Champions and still walk into a blockbuster trilogy match with Brock at SummerSlam. It’s complicated, and the smart booking move is restraint. But WWE loves a spectacle on a Saudi stage, so don’t be shocked if the F5 shows up anyway.

The WWE Championship triple threat: the case for Sami Zayn

Cody Rhodes defends the WWE Championship against Gunther and Sami Zayn, and the conventional pick is that Cody retains. He’s the bigger name, he’s the draw, and he doesn’t lose much. Fair enough.

But there’s a real argument that this is Sami Zayn’s moment, and it’s worth laying out because it’s the most interesting outcome on the board.

Sami has never been WWE Champion. Every opponent reminds him of it. Gunther stood in the ring and called him a non-entity. The commentary keeps hammering the point.

When a company spends that much airtime telling you a guy has never won the big one, they’re usually building toward the day he finally does.

He’s the only Arabic speaker on the roster, the show is in Saudi Arabia, he’s massively over there, and he’s come up short for a title in that building before. The setting writes itself.

From an elevation standpoint, Sami needs it more than the other two combined. Gunther has banked huge wins. Cody has banked huge wins. You’d be hard-pressed to name Sami’s last truly defining victory. He didn’t even win his way into this title shot; he backed into it as a referee.

Picture the chessboard after Saturday. Jey Uso walks out as King of the Ring with a guaranteed SummerSlam title shot. If Sami is champion, that SummerSlam main event becomes Jey Uso versus Sami Zayn, and the whole thing is still drenched in Bloodline history.

Sami doesn’t need a year-long reign. Give him a summer run and end the “never been champion” drumbeat. Let Cody chase a marquee non-title match at SummerSlam, because Cody Rhodes will be champion again. He’s Cody. That’s a guarantee, just not necessarily right now.

Gunther is the dark horse in the conversation. There’s a school of thought that the man WWE has been pushing as the heir apparent, while the legends retire, actually needs the belt more than Sami does. But the cleaner story, the one with a place and a reason, points to Sami.

The Bloodline is turning heel, whether the crowd has noticed or not

Here’s the read that ties the whole WWE landscape together. The Bloodline is being slowly, deliberately turned heel, and the audience just hasn’t fully caught up yet.

Watch the behavior, not the reaction. Roman Reigns is barking at catering, ordering his cousins around, flying private, and treating everyone beneath him with open contempt.

The group runs three-on-one beatdowns on babyfaces and forces people to bend the knee. That’s not babyface conduct.

The “DX did wild stuff and got cheered” comparison only goes so far. DX humiliated a commentator. They didn’t beat down good guys and strong-arm them into joining up. Positioning matters, and the Bloodline is being positioned as villains.

The mechanism for the turn might be Jey Uso winning King of the Ring. A loud chunk of the audience is going to reject “Jey Uso, again.” He shouldn’t have won the Royal Rumble, and now he’s right back in the title picture.

The “is it 2021 again?” fatigue is real, and that irritation is exactly the point. Fans will boo because they’re sick of it, then tune in anyway to watch the Bloodline get what’s coming. That’s the long con.

If you want the deeper background on how this character pivot has been seeded, we broke down Jey Uso’s heel turn in detail, and it’s only accelerated since.

Then there’s Solo Sikoa, and the logic here is airtight. Solo got deserted on SmackDown. Tama Tonga and Tonga Loa walked out on him because they’re tired of him poking the Bloodline bear and don’t want the retaliation landing on them.

Solo tried to recruit LA Knight with the old “enemy of my enemy” pitch, but was turned down. He tried to get Royce Keys backstage and was turned down again.

Now here’s the wrestling math: either Tama Tonga and Tonga Loa are the heels, or Solo is. And later that same night, those two run into Finn Balor, a stone-cold babyface. Instead of an old Bullet Club reunion, they threaten him.

You don’t threaten a babyface unless you’re a heel. And if a heel tag team abandons a man, that man becomes a babyface by default.

Solo Sikoa quietly turned good guy, and most people watching didn’t clock it yet. That’s hard wrestling logic, and it’s hard to refute.

The rest of the Night of Champions card

Trick Williams defends against Ricky Saints, and Trick retains. Ricky Saints is a good wrestler, but “Who Are You?” chants tell the story.

The crowd hasn’t been given a reason to invest, which means he hasn’t been built into a credible champion yet. Trick is established. This isn’t his night to lose it.

The Bron Breakker versus Seth Rollins steel cage match is the rubber match in a one-and-one series, and this is where the picks split. The escape-victory crowd likes Bron Breakker.

The counter-argument is that WWE is clearly gearing Seth Rollins toward something big. A Roman Reigns program at SummerSlam has been simmering, and you want him walking out of here with momentum.

Even if you’d rather give Seth the win, Saturday Night’s Main Event at Madison Square Garden in July offers another runway to build him up, so Bron escaping isn’t crazy. Seth is one of the biggest stars in the company, though, and betting on the established main-eventer is rarely the wrong call.

Tiffany Stratton defends against Jade Cargill, and the history is brutal. Tiffany never beats Jade. Jade always gets the better of her, including on the most recent SmackDown.

There’s a sentimental case for this being the night Tiffany finally breaks through, but recent results suggest otherwise. When you can’t beat someone’s lieutenant, you’re not beating the boss, and a title change to Jade Cargill is squarely in play.

The Queen of the Ring final is Iyo Sky against Liv Morgan, and Iyo is the pick. That sets up the SummerSlam rematch everyone can already see coming, like it or not. “Terrible” and “they won’t do it” are not the same thing in WWE.

#ForbiddenDoor
8e/5p HBO Max PPV
TOMORROW
Steel Cage Match@The_MJF/@TheDonCallis Family vs Konosuke Takeshita/@SussexCoChicken/@DarbyAllin/@OrangeCassidy/@KORCombat/@RoderickStrong
If Briscoe's team wins, he gets an AEW World Title Shot!
6-on-6 in a STEEL CAGE, TOMORROW! pic.twitter.com/Hcw4bJYGIN

— All Elite Wrestling (@AEW) June 27, 2026

AEW Forbidden Door: a great card with a few too many obvious endings

Forbidden Door from San Jose is loaded with talent, and that’s both the strength and the small frustration. A lot of the marquee winners feel pre-determined because everyone has to land in the right spot heading into All In.

That’s just the nature of the run-up to the biggest show of the year, and last year’s Forbidden Door preview ran into the same booking reality. Still, predictable doesn’t mean bad. It means the matches have to carry it, and this roster can.

The main event is a 12-man steel cage match with a somewhat convoluted stipulation. If Team Briscoe wins, Mark Briscoe earns an AEW World Title shot against MJF down the line. If MJF’s side wins, Briscoe hasn’t earned it. Not “never,” just not yet.

Team Briscoe (Mark Briscoe, Darby Allin, Orange Cassidy, and Konosuke Takeshita among them) is winning. We’ll get that MJF and Briscoe match eventually, possibly at the Montreal show. Don’t overthink the cage; the result is obvious.

The more interesting thread on the heel side is the Don Callis Family, and specifically Kevin Knight. Pairing Callis with Knight might be the best fit Callis has had.

Callis usually speaks for the Japanese stars and Andrade. With Knight, he gets to bounce off an English-speaking partner with real charisma, a belt, and a voice. The chemistry there is the most promising thing in that whole faction.

The rest of the team (MJF, Kyle Fletcher, Kazuchika Okada, and Andrade El Idolo) is stacked. But Knight is the one with a star-making gear, and Callis is the manager tasked with finding it.

Owen Hart Cup finals and the matches are actually worth the price

The men’s Owen Hart Cup final is Will Ospreay versus Swerve Strickland, and it’s probably the best match on the show on paper. Ospreay wins.

The women’s final is Mercedes Moné against Maya World, and Mercedes takes it. Maya World making the final at 23 is already a career milestone, but Mercedes Moné is the one who should be chasing the women’s title at All In against the reigning champion.

That sets up Moné versus Thekla at the big one, which is the right move. Thekla has injected genuine life into that title since taking it, and she’s one of the best characters in the company right now.

Then there’s the one match on this show that isn’t about positioning: Kenny Omega versus Zack Sabre Jr. This is the dream match, the one to set the recorder for, and it has every chance of being a classic. Kenny wins.

The only worry is pacing. If they go wham-bam with an out-of-nowhere finish, it’ll deflate. But if they build it limb by limb the way these two can, it could steal the night from Ospreay and Swerve.

Kenny Omega’s recent run has the feel of a man going hard at the tail end, killer match after killer match. A short, Daniel Bryan-style title run capped by dropping the belt to Ospreay at Wembley would be a storybook finish.

Maybe too storybook. That’s the fun debate heading into the Montreal pay-per-view. Is the simple, satisfying ending the right one, or does the bigger heat come from MJF spoiling it?

Elsewhere on the card, Jon Moxley defends the Continental Championship against Bandido. Moxley retains, and the only knock is the lack of heat between two non-villains.

Shota Umino defends the IWGP Global Heavyweight Championship against PAC, and Umino holds. AEW isn’t putting one of New Japan’s belts on PAC in a one-off.

Cope and Christian retain the tag titles against David Finlay and Clark Connors. The real prize is a future Cope-and-Christian-versus-Young-Bucks showdown in Montreal. The Bucks win their three-way against Místico & Máscara Dorada and Shingo Takagi & Titán, setting it up.

Thekla retains the Women’s World Title over Stardom’s Starlight Kid. Megan Bayne and her partner keep the women’s tag titles over Thunder Rosa and company. Skye Blue advances in the TBS title survival ladder on the pre-show.

None of those are upsets waiting to happen. But Forbidden Door has never needed upsets to be a good night of wrestling, as the cross-promotional spectacle of past Forbidden Door cards has proven.

The big picture

Step back, and the throughline is clear. WWE is using Saudi Arabia to crown a King and Queen, quietly tilt the Bloodline toward villainy, and possibly hand Sami Zayn the moment he’s been chasing for a decade. All of it sets the SummerSlam table.

AEW is using Forbidden Door to lock in its biggest names for All In. It’s trusting that Kenny Omega, Zack Sabre Jr., Will Ospreay, and Swerve Strickland can carry a show when the results aren’t exactly a mystery.

New Japan, meanwhile, keeps quietly rebuilding after losing its foreign-born cornerstones (Okada, Omega, Ospreay) to AEW. These crossover dates are as much a lifeline as a showcase.

Both shows have a reason to exist beyond the gold being defended, and that’s more than you can say for a lot of pay-per-views.

For context on how the bracket season usually shakes out, our King of the Ring coverage is a useful primer. And we measured these exact picks against last year’s Night of Champions predictions to keep ourselves honest.

The Predictions at a Glance

Want the full breakdown with every pick, every hot take, and every tangent? Dave and Johnny go match-by-match on Wrestling Uncensored Episode 786. And Dave and Ben are live this afternoon at 4 p.m. Eastern for the Night of Champions Live Reaction show, right here on the Ringside Report Network, the Combat Sports Authority.