Sami Zayn and Kevin Owens at WWE Elimination Chamber 2025 – WWE
We are nearing the one year anniversary of the 2025 WWE Elimination Chamber Premium Live Event, and looking back on it, the show was quite a significant one. Jade Cargill made her long-awaited return to get revenge on Naomi. John Cena booked his place in the main event of WrestleMania 41 by winning the men’s Chamber match, only to shock the world and turn heel for the first time in over 20 years, kicking off a run that had a lot of promise but was completely wiped from people’s memories by the end of the summer. Then of course, there’s this match.
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The story of Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn has been told by so many people at this point that it’s difficult to add anything new, but the story for this match taking place was a dark one. Owens had completely snapped by the end of 2024, taking out his frustrations on anyone who he felt wronged him. He put Randy Orton on the shelf with a Package Piledriver, he forced Cody Rhodes to leave WWE Saturday Night’s Main Event on a stretcher after delivering the same move, and when Zayn refused to help Owens become the Undisputed WWE Champion at the Royal Rumble, he was given a Package Piledriver for his troubles and taken out of action.
Owens had reached a point of no return mentally and Zayn was really the only person who could talk some sense into him. The only problem was that Zayn wasn’t looking to talk, he was looking for a fight, something WWE couldn’t grant him as Zayn was not medically cleared to compete due to his neck problems flaring up as a result of the Package Piledriver. However, that wasn’t going to stop Zayn from getting his way, and when Owens also wanted a fight, the only solution WWE management could come up with was wash their hands of the whole thing and book an Unsanctioned Match for Elimination Chamber. Both men could take each other to the edge of the earth and WWE management would be able to say “We have nothing to do with this.”
With the 2026 event just round the corner, we’ve been taking a look at some of the biggest matches in the history of the Elimination Chamber event, as well as some moments that relate to the road to WrestleMania 42, and we just had to shine a spotlight on this match. At the time of writing, it is the final chapter in the long and complicated story between Owens and Zayn, and due to injuries it might actually stay that way. Regardless of that fact, let’s travel back 12 months and shine a spotlight on the Unsanctioned Match between Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn from WWE Elimination Chamber 2025.
Read more: Why John Cena’s WWE Retirement Tour Was So Disappointing
Hate With A Capital H
Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn at WWE Elimination Chamber 2025 – WWE
With the benefit of hindsight, there is an extra layer of emotion surrounding this match. I don’t know if Kevin Owens knew that he would be taken out of action indefinitely a few weeks later, but given the look on his face when making his entrance I don’t think that knowledge could be ruled out. Even Zayn looks both angry and concerned for what’s about to happen, and what did happen was an all out war.
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Due to the fact that we now live in a world where companies like AEW produce Unsanctioned Matches that look less like matches and more like horror movies at times, it was interesting to see how WWE would make this match feel different to a standard Hardcore/Street Fight/No Disqualification stipulation. The turnbuckles have been covered, the lights have been dimmed, the referee has no company logo or stripes, it does look genuinely different. But the thing that separates this from other plunder matches is the performances as these two wrestle with hate in their hearts.
It’s always great to see heel get what’s coming to them, and fans in Toronto got to see that up close as Owens and Zayn brawled all the way through the former SkyDome. Zayn is conscious to not have too much control as he consistently sells the neck to great effect, even flexing his fingers every time he takes a bump, which looks extra scary when he takes a fall through a pair of stacked tables on the outside that had been set up earlier.
Both men have been known to make even the most basic weapon bumps look incredibly nasty, and after going to town on each other with steel chairs, Owens and Zayn take turns bumping on a chair that’s been set up right to the disgust of the fans. The fans are even more shocked when Owens delivers a Fisherman’s Buster through a table off the top rope, to the point where even the commentators are begging for the men to stop. Things only escalate as Zayn, with a great piece of visual storytelling, sees Owens has placed a barbed wire chair under the ring, coming back in the ring with the look of “Really? You were going to use this on me?” Zayn blasts Owens with his chair and then delivers a Blue Thunder Bomb on it for a very close near fall.
In the end, Zayn’s neck simply can’t take anymore as Owens recovers and delivers multiple Powerbombs on the apron to the shock of all the officials who have came out to try and stop the match. Two referees, a sea of broken chairs and tables, and a battered Zayn are left in the ring as Owens mercifully gets the three count. There is a stunned silence over the crowd for the result, but that’s a testament to how good this was, and it earned all of the five star reviews it would get in the immediate aftermath.
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A Perfect Send Off?
Kevin Owens on WWE SmackDown – WWE
The post-match angle for this match saw Randy Orton make his return to WWE after being taken out by Kevin Owens with a Package Piledriver, setting up an eventual showdown at WrestleMania 41, but that never happened. Instead, two weeks before WrestleMania, Owens announced that he had to step away from wrestling in order to have neck surgery, something he had been putting off for some time, and he has not been back in the ring since.
I don’t think I’m alone in saying that it would be amazing to see Owens back in a WWE ring in the near future, and if the neck surgery has put the rest of his career on a shortened timer then it would be great to see him do everything he wants to do in the business before he hangs his boots up. Having said that, I also don’t think I’m alone in saying that this match with Sami Zayn is the most fitting way Owens could end his career.
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Owens and Zayn have basically been linked since the start of their careers. If you think of one, you automatically think of the other, it’s that simple. They have shared the ring hundreds and hundreds of times since they first crossed paths on the Quebec indie circuit in 2003, and while they might disagree with this sentiment if you told them this, Owens and Zayn are arguably the two best Canadian exports with no relation to the Hart family. To have their story, their journey as friends, foes, blood brothers, borderline life partners, to have that end against one another in the biggest possible venue in their home country, and for it to be one of the best matches of that particular year, it doesn’t really get any better than that.
The Rogers Centre, or the SkyDome, has hosted two WrestleManias, but this was a match that probably felt like the main event of a WrestleMania to Owens and Zayn. Them slamming each other into a barbed wire chair in the same building that The Ultimate Warrior won the WWE Championship from Hulk Hogan, the same building where Hulkamania ran wild once more against The Rock is the kind of stuff that puts a smile on your face because you know back in 2003, they never dreamed their story could reach this level.
Sometimes you just need to know when to walk away, and yes, I really do want to see Owens wrestle again, as do many others. But this match is as good of a final match setting as Owens will ever get in his career. The only thing that could possibly top it is if they headlined WrestleMania against each other in Montreal but I don’t see that happening unfortunately. I don’t know if this was the final chapter of Kevin Owens’ career, but if it was, what an ending.
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Read the original article on Wrestling Inc.