Every WWE King Of The Ring Winner Ranked From Worst To Best

8. Cody Rhodes (2025)

WWE Night Of Champions 2025 Cody Rhodes King Of The Ring
WWE.com

There might be some recency bias with this entry.

The most recent King of the Ring was a former Undisputed WWE Champion, having just lost his title at WrestleMania 41 earlier that year. But Cody Rhodes needed to find a way back to John Cena after the Never Seen 17 absconded with his World title.

Rhodes prevailed in Saudi Arabia, then used his title shot to appeal to Cena’s better angels, begging for John to abandon his ill-fated heel turn and just wrestle an honorable match for the world title at SummerSlam.

Mercifully, that’s what fans got, as Cena ditched the worst heel turn in history and fought Cody fairly, with Rhodes coming out on top and capturing his second WWE World championship. The American Nightmare would briefly lose his title to Drew McIntyre, but he regained it ahead of WrestleMania 42, where he successfully defended the title against the same man he beat in the King of the Ring tournament: Randy Orton.

In the grand scheme of things, Rhodes didn’t really “need” the KOTR victory, but since it carried a World title shot, and since Cody really is “QB1,” that almost automatically elevates the tournament win.

Contributor
Contributor

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.