SummerSlam 2026 Night One is done, and the scoreboard is easy to read: six matches, two championships defended, and not a single title changed hands. Our Night One predictions went five from six. That flatters us, because five of those picks were favourites and the one match we lost was the only upset of the night.
Night One At A Glance
| # | Match Result | Finish | Time | Odds | Our pick |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Liv Morgan (c) def. Iyo Sky — Women’s World Championship | Pinfall | 13:35 | 1.73 | ✔ Morgan |
| 2 | LA Knight, Solo Sikoa & Royce Keys def. The Bloodline | Pinfall | 11:00 | 1.33 | ✘ Bloodline |
| 3 | Gunther def. Nick Aldis | Submission | 11:40 | 1.07 | ✔ Gunther |
| 4 | Fatal Influence def. The Bella Twins & Paige | Pinfall | 7:30 | 1.50 | ✔ Fatal Influence |
| 5 | CM Punk (c) def. Cody Rhodes — Undisputed WWE Championship | Pinfall | 30:10 | 1.22 | ✔ Punk |
| 6 | Oba Femi def. Brock Lesnar — Hell in a Cell | Pinfall | 11:40 | 1.04 | ✔ Femi |
Liv Morgan def. Iyo Sky — Women’s World Championship
We picked: Liv Morgan (1.73). Result: correct.
The opener, and widely rated one of the best women’s matches WWE has produced this year. Raquel Rodriguez and Roxanne Perez tried to involve themselves midway through and Sky wiped them out with a moonsault to the floor, after which the two wrestled several more minutes on even terms. The finish was Morgan’s alone: flying codebreaker into Ob-Liv-ion, no assist, at the 100-day mark of a reign criticised for leaning on the Judgment Day.
This was our least comfortable pick, with money moving toward Sky for a fortnight. A second Sky win would have closed the door on a rematch rather than opened one, leaving a babyface champion with no heel challenger available — Rodriguez is off with the Women’s Intercontinental Title, Rhea Ripley is waiting on Sunday’s interim winner. Morgan keeps the unfinished Stephanie Vaquer story where it was.
LA Knight, Solo Sikoa & Royce Keys def. The Bloodline
We picked: The Bloodline (1.33). Result: wrong, and wrong twice over.
We had the Bloodline winning off a betrayal, with Royce Keys turning rather than Solo Sikoa. Nobody turned. Keys took Jacob Fatu out of the equation, Sikoa hit Jimmy Uso with the Samoan Spike, and Knight capitalised on the chaos to pin Jey Uso with the BFT.
The error was assuming the match needed a swerve to justify its place. Its job was to complete Sikoa’s babyface turn through action rather than promos: handed every chance to betray, he set up the win for the man who spent the build refusing to trust him. Knight, short of significant victories lately, accepted the embrace afterwards, though not immediately.
Gunther def. Nick Aldis
We picked: Gunther (1.07). Result: correct.
Aldis walked out to “Morning Glory” by Oasis, billed as The National Treasure, wrestling his first WWE match with his wife Mickie James and their son at ringside. He showed a full kit: an early delayed vertical suplex, a backbreaker, a superplex off the top, a running powerslam in the British Bulldog mould for a nearfall, back-to-back flying elbows, and two goes at the King’s Lynn Cloverleaf — Gunther had to reach the ropes to survive the first. Aldis also countered a sleeper into one of his own.
Gunther taunted James at ringside, escaped the second Cloverleaf and hit a powerbomb. He applied the sleeper; Aldis escaped it, and Gunther locked in another immediately. That was the one Aldis tapped to. The crowd chanted “you still got it” and gave him a standing ovation.
We wrote that WWE had run this template before — Gunther beat Pat McAfee at Backlash 2025 in the same “non-wrestler demands satisfaction” story — and would run it to the same ending. It did. Aldis has since returned to the general manager’s desk and the match is reported as a one-off.
Fatal Influence def. The Bella Twins & Paige
We picked: Fatal Influence (1.50). Result: correct, and the aftermath was the point.
The shortest match of the night at 7:30. Lainey Reid knocked Nikki and Paige off the apron to cut the ring in half, Jacy Jayne announced to camera that this is why they are taking over the division, and Paige took the fall. The Bellas then turned on her and beat her down.
Our line was that a split was on the table, with Paige the outlier in a trio built around the sisters. That happened, but not in the obvious direction: a woman pinned and then attacked by her own partners collects sympathy, not heat. The heels here are Nikki and Brie. Paige, who returned at WrestleMania 42 and won the tag titles, ends the night with neither gold nor allies.
One complication: Brie was seen favouring her shoulder late in the match, and Triple H confirmed at the post-show press conference that she was taken to hospital for assessment.
CM Punk def. Cody Rhodes — Undisputed WWE Championship
We picked: CM Punk (1.22). Result: correct on the winner, wrong on the turn.
Thirty minutes and ten seconds, the longest match of the weekend so far, and a good one on its own terms. Punk hit four GTS across the bout. Rhodes springboarded off the ropes and wiped out referee Charles Robinson, then landed a Cross Rhodes that put the champion on the floor. With the official down, Randy Orton returned, delivered an RKO to Rhodes and left — no music, no promo, roughly five seconds on screen after three and a half months away. Punk then hit another GTS and pinned Rhodes himself.
We predicted Punk would retain and turn heel, on the basis that the crowd’s rejection of his reign was too pointed to leave unaddressed. Half landed, and the finish explains the other half: Punk did not steal the win off the RKO, he added his own finisher first. That is a deliberate choice to keep the victory clean, not a company laying track for a turn.
Orton’s usage is the debatable call. Five seconds in the co-main after that long away reads as waste — unless the appearance exists to be referenced later. “I cost you SummerSlam” is a line he can now open with, and he spent nothing to earn it.
Oba Femi def. Brock Lesnar — Hell in a Cell
We picked: Oba Femi (1.04). Result: correct on the winner, wrong on the story.
Lesnar’s tenth SummerSlam main event, a record, and his third Hell in a Cell after two against The Undertaker — the first at a SummerSlam since 2008. He reached for The Undertaker’s tombstone piledriver, a move that is not his, and delivered it onto exposed boards. Femi kicked out at two and put him away with a powerbomb, handing Lesnar his first loss inside the structure and taking the trilogy 2-1.
The intent is clear: Lesnar went to a borrowed weapon and it still was not enough, while Femi needed nothing exotic. That is the character in one sequence, a man who answers your best with a plain throw because in his hands a plain throw is a finish. The risk is that a powerbomb is a signature for half the roster, and the sequence can just as easily read as Lesnar running out of gas.
Our main call here was Paul Heyman. We wrote that a betrayal would protect Lesnar from a clean home-state loss and give Femi the mouthpiece he lacks. It did not happen in any form. Lesnar instead raised Femi’s hand and told the crowd he was the past and Femi the future — no retirement announcement, so the door stays open.
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