WWE is bringing back Night of Champions. Reports circulated about the retired pay-per-view name being resurrected for a future premium live event earlier this week, and the news was made official by WWE this past Thursday. The company announced that WWE Night of Champions would emanate from Saudi Arabia on May 27th, replacing the previously scheduled WWE King and Queen of the Ring. There is no word on if this change is simply altering the show’s title or if it will scrap the King of the Ring and Queen of the Ring tournaments from the event entirely.
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Like the royal tournament, WWE Night of Champions is a gimmick show in and of itself: all championships are defended. The pay-per-view ran in that format from 2008 until 2015 and was rebranded as WWE Clash of Champions upon the brand split in 2016, as the show was now exclusive to the Monday Night Raw roster and would not have any WWE SmackDown prizes defended on it.
With that logic in mind, bringing back “Night” rather than “Clash” indicates that WWE plans to have all of its main roster championships defended inside the Jeddah Super Dome. Barring any title changes before then, that means Undisputed WWE Universal Champion Roman Reigns, Raw Women’s Champion Bianca Belair, SmackDown Women’s Champion Rhea Ripley, WWE Intercontinental Champion Gunther, WWE United States Champion Austin Theory, WWE Women’s Tag Team Champions Raquel Rodriguez and Liv Morgan, and Undisputed WWE Tag Team Champions Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn would all be competing.
If past regulations persist, that might not be possible. In the eight times that WWE has ventured to Saudi Arabia for a premium live event, Sami Zayn has never traveled. That is due to to Zayn being of Syrian descent, which is a country that Saudi Arabia has strained relations with. Lines are blurred on whether Zayn is outright banned from competing on the Saudi Arabia shows, if WWE does not book him to avoid potential issues, or if Zayn himself is declining to participate. The current Undisputed Tag Team Champion has said in the past that he is unsure of any regulations put in place and does not have interest in figuring them out.
“I don’t know. I don’t know the specifics on this,” Zayn said in September 2020. “To this day I didn’t really ask because I wasn’t really keen on going anyway. I just wasn’t invited to go and I never really dug into it too much because I wasn’t keen on going, to begin with.”
In the past, WWE has found ways to write Zayn out of storylines ahead of the Saudi shows. That said, this is the first time that his presence is required, if the same WWE Night of Champions rules are in effect and Zayn is still a titleholder come May.
There are four possible outcomes to this situation. The likeliest is that the “all titles are on the line” stipulation will not be enforced and the Undisputed WWE Tag Team Champions will not be defended. The alternative to having Zayn off the show would be that Zayn and Owens lose their gold at some point before WWE Night of Champions. The options for getting the current tag champions on the show would be to either have Owens defend in a 1-on-2 handicap match or bad blood is put to the side and Zayn is able and willing to wrestle on the show.
Even with a handicap defense on the table, it is one of the more unlikelier options. Owens has only wrestled at one Saudi Arabia show, that being the very first one, WWE Greatest Royal Rumble in 2018. He was scheduled to wrestle Kofi Kingston for the WWE Championship at WWE Super ShowDown in 2019, but declined to participate in support of Zayn.
Stay tuned to ComicBook.com for updates on Sami Zayn’s WWE Night of Champions status.
