When Kevin Owens defeated CM Punk in their No Disqualification match on Friday Night SmackDown last week, it was pretty clear what was going to happen from there. His old friend, Sami Zayn, is the current WWE champion and where else would he go next other than challenging for that title?
Sure enough, he came to this week’s show to interrupt Zayn’s promo time to talk about what comes next. He’s always said Sami is one of the best to ever do it and no matter how he won the belt, he deserves to be champion.
He deserves the respect of the fans and his contemporaries. The guys who say he looks like a bum and is a mid-card guy? They aren’t half as good on their best day as Zayn is on his worst day.
“I mean this from the bottom of my heart: I’m proud of you.”
But the wrong he needs to make right is that he had so much of his career taken from him, 17 months, and all he cared about was getting back to being in the ring. When he got the chance, he was so close to becoming champion but it didn’t happen because of Zayn.
So there’s only one way this can go from here.
“I don’t want to take the title from you. I need to take this title from you.”
Johnny Gargano got in the way, running interference for Zayn. That’s all he was, though: a distraction. Owens beat him up and stopped just long enough to make himself as clear as day: Zayn’s run is on borrowed time and he will be the one to end it.
Get complete SmackDown results and coverage of this week’s entire episode right here.
