25 Worst Wrestling Moments Of 2025
8. Cody Rhodes Vs John Cena
There was a temptation to put all the blame for two of the biggest stars in all of wrestling soiling the sheets on the 'Grandest Stage' on the rapper doing a slow-motion run-in at the end, but what market leader facilitates something as unrewarding as that?
Travis Scott - despite his original enthusiasm - wasn't cut out for WWE, but those making decisions within WWE were stupid to place so many eggs in his basket to begin with. His lame interference buried the lede too. Cody Rhodes and newly-turned heel John Cena wrestled a chronically boring match that temporarily damaged the reputations of both men and did more to harm audience trust in the creative process than anything else this year.
Ponderously slow and without a narrative thread beyond Cena's kicks and punches being somehow enough to keep the prime-era 'American Nightmare' down, this was a flashback to darker days where the fiction was impossible to surrender to. The reality of the situation setting in got worse as the contest wore on. The furness atmosphere at the start of the match had completely subsided by the end, and the looping rendition of Scott's FE!N was more fever dream than dream match.
The two minutes it took him to get to the ring didn't help, but it could have been two seconds and the lack of The Rock and/or a satisfying conclusion to the match wasn't going to make up for the scale of the misfire. A quality SummerSlam rematch almost did, but the 'Show Of Shows' encounter was an unquestionable artistic low in the careers of both.