Jim Cornette is not letting WWE slide on the way it moved Oba Femi from King of the Ring winner to another Brock Lesnar fight.
Oba won the 2026 King of the Ring tournament, which should have meant one thing: he gets to pick a championship match at SummerSlam. That was the whole setup. Then RAW came around, Brock Lesnar showed up, dropped Oba with a low blow and an F5, and suddenly the King of the Ring prize felt like it got tossed out the window so WWE could get to Brock vs. Oba again.
Jim Cornette went off on his YouTube channel, saying WWE basically answered everyone’s questions by ignoring its own rules and booking whatever it wanted anyway.
“Well, we got a lot of our questions answered, Brian, on this episode of Raw because we were questioning, well, wait a minute, Oba, what champion is he going to challenge? Because how did Brock figure into this? And where the f*** is this guy going? And they answered all our questions. They just came out and said, ‘We’re just going to book the s*** we want to book regardless of what we’ve f**ing said before.’ And now Oba is not going to challenge for a title because he’s going to fight Brock again. And Roman Reigns and Seth Rollins because they’ve been mad at each other for 14 years have finally decided this is the time they’re going to settle it. Did—this is confusing or is it just me?”
That was Cornette’s biggest issue. It was not about Oba or Brock being in a big SummerSlam match. He likes the names involved. His problem was that WWE built King of the Ring around a clear title-shot stipulation, then immediately swerved away from it without making the road there feel earned. He said that the whole thing felt thrown together, saying there had to be a cleaner way to get Brock and Oba back in the ring.
“Well, why don’t we do them one at a time? It’s not just you with the Brock and Oba thing. And obviously you’ll break it down, but you know, I like them being involved and everything, but the way this was set up, even if you get past the idea of, okay, they just decided we’ll book whatever we want and just get to where we wanted to go anyway. The way this was done just seemed lazy. I mean, maybe it’s just me. It just there had to be a better way to set up this match at SummerSlam than what they did on this show.”
The segment itself had all the big ingredients WWE wanted. Oba came out as King of the Ring, Brock interrupted with Paul Heyman, Lesnar attacked him, and Oba got back up to fire back. Then things escalated into a SummerSlam match, with Brock raising the stakes by making it Hell in a Cell.
On paper, that sounds huge. Cornette’s issue is that it also made the King of the Ring setup feel like background noise. Oba was supposed to be choosing between championship opportunities, and instead the whole thing turned into a shortcut to another Brock Lesnar fight. Cornette said that kind of move felt beneath WWE’s usual standard, because WWE storylines are at least supposed to explain themselves.
“So they just… okay, we’ll just do this now instead. I… I… I think it’s, as you maybe mentioned, lazy, lazy booking. But also it’s just—they don’t normally… this s*** for the WWE is supposed to make sense. This has been all over the place and I think they’re making it up kind of as they go along. Do you agree with me about Brock? Is something fishy here?”
That last part is where Cornette really landed. To him, the whole situation with Oba, Brock, Roman Reigns, and Seth Rollins feels scattered, like WWE is adjusting on the fly instead of following a tight plan. That is a strong criticism considering Dave Meltzer previously reported WWE’s plan was always for Oba to win King of the Ring, turn down the Roman Reigns title shot, and face Brock instead.
Either way, Cornette clearly thinks the execution missed. WWE may be positioning Oba Femi as a monster by putting him inside Hell in a Cell with Brock Lesnar, but Cornette believes the company got there by stomping all over its own tournament rules. Now Oba has the crown, Brock has the fight, and fans are left debating whether WWE just made The Ruler look like a bigger star or made King of the Ring feel pointless in the process.
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