8 Ups & 7 Downs From WWE Royal Rumble 2025

4. Letting Air Out Of The Balloon

WWE Royal Rumble 2025 CM Punk Roman Reigns Seth Rollins
WWE

There will be praise for the action on the floor at the end of the men’s Royal Rumble match between three former world champions, but it’s difficult to convey how shocking and frustrating it felt in the moment.

Down to the final six, Seth Rollins and Roman Reigns battled for a while before getting tied up in the ropes, only for CM Punk to toss both at once, and then for Logan Paul to jettison Punk, leaving a final three of Paul, John Cena, and Jey Uso. It was quite the jolt.

The build to the Rumble centered on several wrestlers having strong cases for needing to win the match to chart a path to WrestleMania. Punk, Roman, Rollins, and Sami Zayn were all among that group, and they were dismissed in rapid succession, leaving Jey, who had just wrestled for a world title a few weeks ago, Paul, a part-timer in his first match since SummerSlam, and Cena, who then felt like the obvious winner given the other two.

Keep in mind that this came just a bit after the “epic” staredown between Cena, Roman, and Punk, which seemed to be setting the stage for a star-studded finale of the Rumble. Instead, the energy circled around wanting to get rid of Logan and then wanting to “yeet” with Jey.

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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.