3 Ups & 6 Downs From WWE Night Of Champions 2026 (Results & Review)

1. 10th Time’s The Charm

Heading into the main event, it was going to take something truly spectacular and special to salvage Night of Champions.

WWE broke the glass and hit the button: Sami Zayn is your new Undisputed WWE Champion. This is not a drill.

Zayn defeated Cody Rhodes and Gunther in a fantastic match that was wrestled at a blistering pace with constant shifts in control and a great series of near-falls. Sami was the clear fan favorite in Saudi Arabia, though Cody had his fans, too. Gunther was universally reviled, and he reveled in that, repeatedly treating Zayn like an afterthought.

Sami and Cody blocked each other from pinning Gunther by pulling out the referee, which the announcers noted was “perfectly legal.” Their exchanges were strong throughout the match, with Gunther interjecting at key moments. There was a nice shout-out to Kevin Owens when Sami tried to flatten Cody with a package piledriver on one announce desk, but he got backdropped through another instead.

Despite Zayn slowly turning heel during the course of 2026, WWE didn’t get cute with it Saturday, and that was a smart move, because the fans wouldn’t have received it well anyway. Better to let him shine as a situational babyface because of locale, and then they can always have Sami cut increasingly obnoxious promos in the states to ramp up the heel overtones.

This was easily the best match and moment of the night, and probably WWE’s best match since CM Punk and Roman Reigns closed out WrestleMania 42. Was it enough to salvage Night of Champions? That’s tough to say. But man, what a way to wash over a lot of the previous two hours and send the fans home happy.