Personally, if I were running WWE I would’ve driven a dump truck full of money up to Kurt Angle’s house and begged him to come back for one last match. Angle was Cena’s first match on the main roster, so it would’ve made a nice bookend to his career and made up for Angle’s disappointing retirement match against Baron Corbin.
I hope LA Knight beats GUNTHER on SmackDown and then beats Cena at Saturday Night’s Main Event. He needs the rub much more than GUNTHER does.
Le sigh.
GUNTHER did not need this win. I had no idea that he had never suffered a non-title loss on the main roster, but it doesn’t surprise me! This could have really been a big break for LA Knight!
The winner of tomorrow night’s NXT Title match between Ricky Starks and Oba Femi will take on Cody Rhodes on Saturday Night’s Main Event. And Bayley will go up against Sol Ruca.
I fear LA Knight may have just been written off of television for awhile.
In the main event of tonight’s RAW (12/8/25), he got Stomped by the Mystery Guy, speared by Bron Breakker, Tsunamied twice by Bronson Reed, and then backstage, he caught a further beating ending in a Tsunami onto a car roof.
Oh, my God.
GUNTHER just made John Cena tap out in his last match.
Oh, somewhere in this favored land
The sun is shining bright
The band is playing somewhere
And somewhere hearts are light
And somewhere men are laughing
And somewhere children shout
But there is no joy in DC -
Mighty Cena has tapped out.
That match was a work of art. Lots of great back-and-forth, both men at their absolute finest, it felt like it could go either way until the very end. I liked the way Cena just sort of casually tapped out as if to say “I’m too old for this”. Cena goes out on his back like an old-school legend. GUNTHER is now solidly established as the top heel of this generation. You couldn’t ask for a better retirement match.
Overall this was the best SNME they’ve done since the revival. They did a great job building up the NXT guys as future greats. I wish they hadn’t ended Cody/Femi on a schmozz, and the curtain call at the end of the women’s match was a little on-the-nose, but it didn’t detract from the solid match quality. The tag team match was great. The segment with Miz and R-Truth and Joe Hendry was fun. The way they kept muting the audio every few seconds when the crowd was chanting “FUCK YOU GUNTHER” was cringe as hell, seeing how this was a Peacock exclusive and didn’t air on broadcast TV so there shouldn’t have been any need to censor it. I was half-expecting the bit at the end to turn into some kind of Authority heel turn, but Trips showing Cena a montage of his career set to “I Lived” was actually pretty heartfelt and wholesome.
Anyway, I’m boycotting the Royal Rumble next month, because fuck Saudi Arabia. Here’s the card for Wrestle Kingdom!
- IWGP World Championship / IWGP Global Championship, winner-takes-all: Konosuke Takeshita (World) vs. Yota Tsuji (Global)
- IWGP Women’s Championship / STRONG Women’s Championship, winner-takes-all: Saya Kamitami (STRONG) vs. Syuri (IWGP)
- NEVER Openweight Championship: EVIL (c) vs. Aaron Wolf
- IWGP Tag Team Championship: Knockout Brothers (Oskar & Yuto-Ice) (c) vs. The Mighty Don’t Kneel (Zack Sabre Jr. & Ryohei Oiwa)
- Tag team battle royal for the NEVER Openweight Six-Man Tag Championship: Toru Yano, Master Wato, & YOH (c) vs. TBA
- #1 contender for the IWGP Jr. Heavyweight Championship: El Desperado vs. Kosei Fujita vs. Taiji Ishimori vs. SHO
- Hiroshi Tanahashi vs. Kazuchika Okada (Tanahashi’s retirement match)
- Kaisei Takechi vs. TBA
I think Tanahashi/Okada is main eventing, and it ought to be a fight for the ages. The two winner-take-all matches ought to be good as well, and NJPW ranbos (ranbo is what they call a battle royal) are always goofy fun, ESPECIALLY when Toru Yano is involved. Kaisei Takechi is apparently a boy band singer who’s started dipping his toe into wrestling lately, mostly in comedy promotion DDT, so I guess he’s the Japanese equivalent of Logan Paul, and it’ll be interesting to see what he’s capable of.
Cody Rhodes attacked Drew McIntyre at his house.
The masked man turned out to be Austin Theory. Ho-hum.
In other news, Bleacher Report gives John Cena’s retirement tour an F grade.
I can’t remember WWE doing a masked man / mystery box angle where the eventual reveal WASN’T an underwhelming letdown. The leader of RETRIBUTION was Mustafa Ali. Erick Rowan’s monster in a box was a toy spider. The Higher Power was Vince McMahon in a robe. The hacker protecting Otis’ reputation was Mustafa Ali. The blackmail evidence being held over Kurt Angle’s head was that Jason Jordan was his son. They completely forgot about the “lockbox” of evidence Shane McMahon had against his dad. Kaitlyn’s secret admirer was AJ Lee. Vince’s hired gun to keep Kofi Kingston from getting a world title match was Mustafa Ali. (A LOT of these involved Mustafa Ali for some reason).
I’m 99% sure they always start these angles with no idea of where they want to go with it and then just pull something out of their ass.
Some more underwhelming letdowns:
–The Giant Egg was just some guy in a turkey suit
–The Undertaker’s Stalker was DDP
–Kane’s “unmasking”
–the time they “unmasked” VADER
–the mystery tag team partner was Savio Vega
–the secret RAW general manager is Hornswoggle(also the reveal that he was Vince’s illegitimate son)
WCW had The Black Scorpion playing magic tricks and menacing Sting. He was originally played by Al Perez, with obvious dark skin. They parted ways with Perez and later revealed TBS to be Ric Flair, who was much paler and couldn’t keep all his blond hair under the mask. Flair has eaten so much crap on behalf of his employers.
Some pleasant news today: The original La Parka tweeted out a thank-you to WWE Hall of Famer, “The Enforcer” Arn Anderson, for protecting the luchadores against some of the backstage racism in WCW back in the day.
I’ve always known Double A was a stand-up guy.
Last night on NXT, Thea Hail pinned Blake Monroe and won the women’s North American Championship… on accident, because Blake got the wind knocked out of her and didn’t kick out at 2 like she was supposed to.
Here’s a link to the championship match in its entirety. Notice the moments of confusion at the end.
Spoiler for next week’s Smackdown, which was taped tonight due to the holiday;
Drew McIntyre’s title match against Cody Rhodes, scheduled for the January 9th episode in Berlin, will be a Three Stages of Hell match - best of three falls in which each fall has a different stipulation.