WWE SummerSlam 2025: 10 Things That Must Happen
2. CM Punk Comes Agonisingly Close
It's scary to think that it's been almost 2 years since CM Punk shockingly returned to WWE at Survivor Series 2023. In that time, he's had several big time matches, been struck down by a pesky injury, revived the Hell In A Cell concept with Drew McIntyre, headlined WrestleMania and even rekindled his iconic feud opposite John Cena one last time. Punk has covered a ton of ground, basically.
Logically, he will win either the WWE or World Heavyweight Titles at some point, but there's a counter argument to that. Some playing devil's advocate may suggest that Punk doesn't need one of the top belts at this stage in the game. Fair, but he'll still probably get a run with one before too long. SummerSlam 2025 is bizarrely too soon for it.
Time to explain: Gunther just regained the title from Jey Uso on the 9 June Raw, and he looked like one of the most dangerous men walking the planet whilst doing it. After that, the Austrian got distracted by Goldberg's retirement match at Saturday Night's Main Event. Following his win there, Gunther is right back on track and should hit a back-to-back-to-back-to-back series of genuine classics for Triple H on PLE.
Enough messing around. At SummerSlam, Punk should come eerily close to dethroning Gunther but just come up short. Continuing to build and build and build towards his eventual WWE/World Title win during WrestleMania 42 season sounds like the way to go with CM. He'd garner a ton of sympathy if he tearfully plunged head first into a 'I don't have too many chances left' story during the hottest period of the year.
Waiting games suck, but this one is essential for Punk's long-term babyface success and for Gunther's shorter-term title reign.