Oba Femi won a title shot at WWE “SummerSlam” with his win in the King of the Ring tournament last month.
Only to then give up the title shot to accept a challenge from Brock Lesnar for a Hell in a Cell match at “SummerSlam,” which makes sense, in this sense, in that “SummerSlam” is being staged in Minneapolis, which is Lesnar’s billed hometown – and the feeling is, this one could be Lesnar’s legit retirement match.
Spoiler: nobody ever really legit retires from pro wrestling.
Femi-Lesnar also makes sense against the backdrop of the two having split two matches in 2026, which outright begs for a rubber match to see who will ultimately come out on top.
I have to be the one to ask: if the booking for “SummerSlam” was going to be Oba Femi-Brock Lesnar all along, which seems almost certainly to be the case, why have Femi win the King of the Ring tournament, which was billed as a tournament to determine a world title contender for “SummerSlam”?
Either have somebody else win King of the Ring, or set the stip such that, OK, the winner gets a “future title shot” – not specifically tied to “SummerSlam” or any other upcoming show.
WWE isn’t alone in not knowing how to book things from one day to the next.
AEW built a month-long program around Mark Briscoe trying to get a world title match out of the champ, Maxwell Jacob Friedman, with Tony Khan, in storyline, agreeing to grant Briscoe a chance at a title shot if he could get a team together that could defeat a team captained by MJF at the “Forbidden Door” pay-per-view on Sunday.
Naturally, that happened – Briscoe’s team won.
The Mark Briscoe-MJF match has already happened; on Wednesday, three short days later, MJF beat Briscoe, and the world title picture quickly moved on to having Kenny Omega, who challenged MJF in a title match at the “Dynasty” pay-per-view in April, emerge as the next challenger, with the match scheduled for next week’s “Dynamite.”
The stipulation there: if Omega loses, he can never again challenge for the AEW world title, which is the same dumb stip that Khan used early on (in 2019) with Cody Rhodes losing a title match, and forever after being relegated to the TNT title side of the singles ledger, and more recently, with “Hangman” Adam Page.
Dave Meltzer, at least, thinks the use of the stipulation in next week’s MJF-Kenny Omega match is a sign that Omega is going to pull the upset, setting up a Kenny Omega-Will Ospreay main event at “All In” next month.
Unless Khan pulls a WWE and decides to ignore his own storyline stipulation, which seems to be what bookers are more likely than not to do these days.
News and notes: Ticket sales for local AEW, WWE shows
That left 876 tickets still available – and the ratio of tickets sold to the tickets available is 63.2 percent.
The Berglund Center has a capacity for basketball and ice hockey at 8,600, so, even if AEW gets to close to sellout at its setup, that’s still barely a quarter of what they could get in the building.
AEW’s last show at the Berglund Center, show date: Aug. 9, 2025, had ticket distribution at 3,251.
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WWE, which is set to return to The Scope in Norfolk on Monday, Aug. 10, for a live broadcast of “Raw,” has advance sales, per WrestleTix, at 5,591, against a 7,157-fan setup (78.1 percent).
Of note: WWE had 8,700 on hand for its last visit to The Scope, on Sept. 12, 2025.
The Scope can hold 12,600 for basketball and end-stage concerts.
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Chris Graham
