4 Ups & 7 Downs From WWE Raw (6 Jul - Results & Review)

1. About That Booking…

WWE potentially booked themselves into a corner at Night of Champions by having Sami Zayn win the Undisputed WWE Championship when they had no intention of him walking into SummerSlam with the title.

Having Cody Rhodes beat him for the title so quickly risked alienating the American Nightmare with fans, considering Sami’s long journey to finally capture the title. It would have been the third time in the past year that Rhodes lost the title, only to win it back from the same person who beat him (John Cena and Drew McIntyre were the others).

Instead, Cody gained sympathy after being attacked by Gunther to open the show. Sami got to play the disingenuous “last real good guy” reacting to Rhodes being declared unable to compete. And then CM Punk played the returning hometown hero, leaning on the lore of a summertime world title match in Chicago and daring fans to believe that lightning could strike twice.

Punk taking the title off Zayn as an unannounced challenger fit his comments on the Raw after WrestleMania 42, when he said that he just had to “stay ready, because you never know when a championship opportunity is just gonna fall out of the sky.”

And for Sami, losing his prized title after a nonstop, over-the-top celebration in a match where he couldn’t adequately prepare will only fuel his paranoia, potentially sending him over the edge into full-blown heel.

Lastly, this arrives at a world title scene that involves Punk as champion, Cody as the former champ looking for revenge at SummerSlam, Zayn as another former champ buzzing around, and Gunther as an assassin on the side looking to fight his way back into the title picture. That’s about the best that the WWE Championship scene has looked in quite some time.