8 Worst Wrestling Matches Of 2025 (According To The Internet)

5. John Cena vs. R-Truth (WWE SmackDown - 20 June)

WWE Wrestlepalooza 2025 Brock Lesnar John Cena
WWE.com

Rating: 2.68/10

The debacle that was the John Cena heel turn collided with the debacle that was the R-Truth drama for a double debacle dud with a weird story and a bad finish 

Buried deep in the guts of Cena's ill-advised villainous 17th run as WWE Champion, the match was supposed to take a different tone to the Saturday Night's Main Event squash that had happened just over a month earlier thanks to Ron Killings' release, rehiring and rebooting as a serious version of himself.

There had been little thought into why or how Killings had undergone the metamorphosis beyond a haircut, and evidently that half-baked mentality went into the layout of this TV brawl. He gained an advantage at first, Cena recovered, Truth recovered from that, Cena grabbed his belt, used in plain sight, got disqualified, and that was that.  

The truth then revealed itself - Killings was a prop.

Cena was set to defend the WWE Championship against CM Punk eight days later, and the contest was little more than an extended angle to set-up a subversion of Punk's iconic "Pipe Bomb" promo with 'The Champ' on the microphone this time around. Back in 2011 as Punk sat cross-legged on the stage, Truth had been the forgotten third man. 14 years later and he was occupying the exact same spot. In looking for additional criticisms of why this match rated so poorly, Cena loudly called half of the match with the cameras on him - and that was nothing new either. 

Contributor
Contributor

Michael is a writer, editor, podcaster and presenter for WhatCulture Wrestling, and has been with the organisation over 8 years. He primarily produces written, audio and video content on WWE and AEW, but also provides knowledge and insights on all aspects of the wrestling industry thanks to a passion for it dating back over 35 years. As one third of "The Dadley Boyz" Michael has contributed to the huge rise in popularity of the WhatCulture Wrestling Podcast and its accompanying YouTube channel, earning it top spot in the UK's wrestling podcast charts with well over 62,000,000 total downloads. Within the podcasting space, he also co-hosts Benno & Hamflett, In Your House! and Podcast Horseman: The BoJack Horseman Podcast. He has been featured as a wrestling analyst for the Tampa Bay Times, Fightful, POST Wrestling, GRAPPL, GCP, Poisonrana and Sports Guys Talking Wrestling, and has covered milestone events in New York, Dallas, Las Vegas, Philadelphia, London and Cardiff. Michael's background in media stretches beyond wrestling coverage, with a degree in Journalism from the University Of Sunderland (2:1) and a series of published articles in sports, music and culture magazines The Crack, A Love Supreme and Pilot. When not offering his voice up for daily wrestling podcasts, he can be found losing it singing far too loud watching his favourite bands play live. Follow him on X/Twitter - @MichaelHamflett