4 Ups & 5 Downs From WWE SummerSlam 2025 - Sunday (Results & Review)

by Scott Carlson

1. Cena Turns Back The Clock

WWE SummerSlam 2025 John Cena Cody Rhodes
WWE

Whatever you think of John Cena’s abrupt about-face on SmackDown, abandoning his heel turn suddenly, he and Cody Rhodes redeemed themselves from WrestleMania 41 on Sunday night.

Cena turned in his best singles performance in probably seven years, battling Cody for more than 35 minutes in a finisher-kickout-heavy match that saw both men unload their entire arsenal on the other several times, to no avail. Rhodes even broke out the dreaded piledriver, which Wade Barrett noted is technically banned in WWE, and used the turnbuckle assembly to batter Cena multiple times. Cena hit more than a half-dozen Attitude Adjustments, including through the Spanish announce desk, on the ramp, and off the top rope, but none of them kept Cody down.

Despite being comprised mainly of both men swinging for the fences, the match didn’t drag. It probably went a good five to 10 minutes past its peak, but the drama never really subsided.

For Cena, this felt like a return to form, as if being unshackled from a dismal heel run emboldened him to just go for broke with some of the spots. The match probably wouldn’t chart against Cena’s best stuff from his full-time run, but it vastly surpassed everything he’s done since the pandemic.

And for Cody, the match felt like a passing of the torch moment, with Super Cena finally being felled after a superhuman effort from Rhodes. Now, Cody can move forward with the title, and Cena can continue his farewell tour.

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Scott is a former journalist and longtime wrestling fan who was smart enough to abandon WCW during the Monday Night Wars the same time as the Radicalz. He fondly remembers watching WrestleMania III, IV, V and VI and Saturday Night's Main Event, came back to wrestling during the Attitude Era, and has been a consumer of sports entertainment since then. He's written for WhatCulture for more than a decade, establishing the Ups and Downs articles for WWE Raw and WWE PPVs/PLEs and composing pieces on a variety of topics.