Oba Femi, Iyo Sky win WWE King and Queen of the Ring

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — Night of Champions, one of the WWE’s most storied Premium Live Events, took place in front of a sold out crowd of 27,000+ at the Kingdom Arena in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. 

The WWE has been showing the first hour of its PLE’s live on ESPN TV since WrestleMania, so for NOC, they decided to go all in with the closing of the King and Queen of the Ring tournaments, showing both matches in the free first hour. 

Despite the highly debated decisions on who made it to the finals, the WWE still delivered two fine matches, and the WWE’s newest royalty has now been crowned. 

King of the Ring: Oba Femi defeats Jey Uso

Coming into the finals match between Oba Femi and Jey Uso, it was very clear who should win. That would be Oba Femi, the newest WWE megastar and the man who temporarily retired Brock Lesnar after destroying him at WrestleMania. Because of Brock Lesnar though, and the threat that he posed to interfere and cost Femi this finals match, many believed that Jey Uso could pull off the impossible and knock Oba off. 

However, this match would end up being clean from beginning to end. While Jey did push Oba to his limits, using a “stick and move” approach as Corey Graves called it, targeting Femi’s mid-range area with suicide dives and spears, ‘The Ruler’ weathered the storm, and used his brute force to turn the tides, eventually hitting the ‘Fall From Grace’ and pinning Jey in the middle of the ring. 

I recently critiqued the WWE for frequently going with the easy or telegraphed decisions. In this case, that would have been Brock attacking Oba, allowing Jey to capitalize and win, but in the process setting up Oba vs Brock at SummerSlam. They didn’t though, and allowed Oba to face adversity in this match, (maybe a little more than I would’ve liked) overcome it, and still come out with the crown on his head. 

Now, we will see where the WWE goes with this. People have speculated that Oba will still face Brock at SummerSlam for night one, but also challenge one of the World Champions on night two. This would be a tall, but fitting challenge for the King, but either way, the WWE made the right call with Oba becoming the 25th King of the RIng. 

Queen of the Ring: Iyo Sky defeats Liv Morgan

If this match wasn’t predictable before the Night of Champions card started, then it definitely was predictable after Danhausen cursed Liv Morgan right before she made her way to the ring. 

The match itself was hard hitting, with Morgan, the aggressor, stomping and pouncing on Iyo with every opportunity she got. Iyo used her high-flying attack as usual to neutralize Morgan, featuring a beautiful moonsault off the ropes to Morgan outside of the ring.

Late in the match, Iyo landed awkwardly and buckled her knee, which Morgan again capitalized on, locking in the Boston Crab that she used to beat Charlotte in the semifinals. Iyo’s knee failed on her numerous times, however there came a point where Iyo overpowered the injury, countering Morgan and hit a Spanish Fly from the top rope, before mounting the ropes for the ‘Over the Sky Moonsault’, and pinning Morgan, 1…2…3. 

After the match, Queen Iyo announced that she would take on Liv Morgan again at SummerSlam for the title. 

I wish the WWE would’ve at least teased a match between Iyo and Rhea Ripley, or run a promo where Iyo considered choosing Rhea. Still, this can happen later when it needs to. Now though, we see the downfall of having a champion in the tournament, especially if they don’t win. Liv didn’t lose in the semifinal, and put someone over in the process, there were no Judgement Day shenanigans used to push forward that storyline, no, she just lost clean to an Injured Iyo. Maybe Danhausen cursing Morgan was an attempt to justify her loss, but that would be a very lazy one. 

Regardless, we’ll see what happens next, but Iyo Sky looked great in victory, and she deserves this title as much as anyone, especially after she was left off of the WrestleMania card in April.