AEW's Tony Schiavone Comments On Sami Zayn Losing WWE Championship To CM Punk On Raw

It took only nine days for Sami Zayn's Undisputed WWE Championship run to come to an end, with Zayn getting defeated by CM Punk this past Monday night on "Raw" to conclude one of the shortest World Title reigns in WWE history. The match had originally called for Zayn to defend the championship against Cody Rhodes before Rhodes was taken out of the match thanks to an attack by GUNTHER. It's a change that has some people wondering if something is up, and on the latest episode of "What Happened When," AEW announcer Tony Schiavone speculated that the title change pointed to one particular scenario.

"That tells me they didn't want to switch the title from Cody to CM Punk," Schiavone said.

That explanation lines up with WWE's reported SummerSlam plans, as Rhodes and Punk had been rumored to be opponents at the show prior to "Raw," and many continue to believe the match will serve as one of SummerSlam's marquee matches. This would leave Zayn without a clear direction for WWE's summer extravaganza, though the former champion's fiery post show promo would suggest that at least one rematch with Punk may be in order first. 

Schiavone appeared to have some sympathy for Zayn's situation, but also offered some encouraging words for Zayn, including noting that its short length would do little to diminish the fact that Zayn finally accomplished his goal of becoming a World Champion.

"Well, I'm glad they gave Sami the title for at least 9 days," Schiavone said. "Cause once you've won the championship, they can never take away the fact that you won the championship away from you."

If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit "What Happened When" and provide a h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription

Let's start with the obvious here; Tony Schiavone certainly does seem to be onto something when he suggests WWE wanted to put the title on CM Punk, but didn't want him to defeat Cody Rhodes to do so. On the surface, it seems understandable if you want to have Punk vs. Rhodes at SummerSlam with Punk as the champion. But when you think about it further, why exactly did Punk need to be champion going into SummerSlam? I'm admittedly not a genius, but it would seem to me that a Punk vs. Rhodes match, which has yet to occur properly since Punk returned to WWE in 2023, would be a pretty big match regardless of whether Punk, Rhodes, or neither was a champion. So them taking the title off of Rhodes just to put it on Sami Zayn, only for him to then drop it to CM Punk, seems pretty convoluted, unnecessary, and nonsensical, when they could've accomplished most of what they wanted by just having Rhodes keep the title and Punk return to confront him and set up the match.

As a result, this has me going all Brian Windhorst and asking myself "why would they do that?" And I only have one logical answer; these are the booking decisions of a scared, indecisive creative team that is currently in "let's do stuff and see what happens" mode. Why else would you do this? If you wanted to do Rhodes vs. Punk, just keep Rhodes as champion and build the match that way. Instead, all they've done is make things messy, and given the more conspiratorial fans out there more reason to think that there was something to the rumors Punk was unhappy with WWE, and this is an attempt to placate him. It also doesn't help Zayn at all. Schiavone is right that Zayn got his World Title run and it can't be taken away, but this also once again shines a light on the fact that WWE sees Zayn as a guy, and will never take a serious chance with him. And by the way, they opened the door to do just that here as well; Zayn easily could've held the title for another month, and then dropped it to Punk so WWE could later build to Rhodes vs. Punk if they wanted. They didn't. Why not? Cause this is a promotion hesitant to actually stick to something, and is instead just flailing and doing whatever, hoping something lands. Alas, that's the kind of behavior that generally leads to nothing landing.