Cody Rhodes Wins Undisputed WWE Championship At SummerSlam 2025 (WWE News)
John Cena is no longer going to ruin professional wrestling...
At night two of WWE SummerSlam 2025, Cody Rhodes dethroned John Cena to recapture the WWE Undisputed Championship and underscore his status as one of the absolute best wrestlers in the world.
The Street Fight lasted 37 minutes and 33 seconds; Cody's victory in it brings to a formal end the storyline in which Cena had threatened to ruin professional wrestling and retire with the title, severing its "lineage". A tearful Cody and Cena embraced in the aftermath, confirming that Cena's abrupt babyface turn on the go-home edition of SmackDown was no ruse nor swerve.
Opinion - The Time Was Then
The John Cena heel turn did not work; as of Friday's SmackDown, even WWE themselves seemed to agree with the general consensus viewpoint. Cena expressed his regret over throwing his legacy away for a shock TV moment and bemoaned the Rock and Travis Scott for failing to follow through on the incident. (Neither man was explicitly named).
Some suspected this was a ruse, but it wasn't. The awful "You people" promos, the cowardly heel tropes, Cena's patchwork quilt of clichés - it's over.
In something approaching a miracle match - highly excessive, but very effective and well-received - at SummerSlam, the 'Super Cena' of old returned and absorbed a preposterous degree of punishment before going out like a babyface. Cena threatened to use the title belt as a weapon, in a callback to the WrestleMania 41 main event, but refused. This PLE main event was, incidentally, antithetical to the disastrous April 20 headliner. As bleak as that was for WWE, this could scarcely have gone any better - at least until the post-match angle, in which Brock Lesnar made his shocking return to WWE and all but overshadowed the title change and, indeed, the entire weekend.