CM Punk captured the Undisputed WWE Championship upon his return to RAW on July 6, 2026, in his hometown of Chicago. He replaced Cody Rhodes and defeated Sami Zayn for the title.

However, Nic Nemeth pitched an alternative scenario where LA Knight should have replaced Rhodes to beat Sami Zayn for the WWE Title. Speaking on the “Busted Open Radio” podcast, Nemeth said,

“It goes to show you can have moments like that [Punk winning], and if they wanted that [Knight winning instead of Punk], what a great alternative. Say that’s not Chicago, say it’s not Punk coming back. He’s not back for another month or whatever the hell’s going on. And you get like [a situation where you say], ‘Well, sorry Cody can’t wrestle tonight, but LA Knight can,’ I got shivers on my arm.”

“[Fans would think] ‘Man, they’re finally pulling the trigger and you know why they’re pulling the trigger? Because we said so. We were behind him; we were told to leave; we were told to not cheer for him anymore. But we won’t stop, and now he’s getting a chance. It’s like either this is the big ‘F you’ from WWE to be saying we are not going with LA Knight, or this is his moment to be crowned and we go to the top from here. Holy sh*t. Let’s go.’”

WWE Hall Of Famer Comments On Knight’s Best Chance Of Succeeding

Speaking on the “Busted Open Radio” podcast, Bully Ray offered his thoughts on how WWE should book Knight’s current run. The Hall of Famer said,

“If Seth is going to win and defeat Roman, and Roman is going to leave, and now it’s going to be LA Knight and Seth, and they used last week as a planting of the seed to see how it would go, and then last night was the follow-up as far as crowd investment, I would not be shocked to see them use Seth Rollins as your champion to get LA Knight over.”

“Both of them face-to-face, I think LA Knight has the best chance of succeeding, chasing Seth Rollins.”