WWE crowned a King and Queen at Night of Champions, but now it's Wrestling Inc.'s turn to crown the PLE's biggest winners and losers! Your usual guide through this process, the incomparable Ross W. Berman IV, is dealing with an illness, currently, which means you all have to deal with WINC's lead news editor,Miles Schneiderman, who would like to be the first to apologize in advance.
Remember, if you want to know all the details of everything that happened at Night of Champions, our results page has you covered. If you want to know what we thought about the show, you've got our loves and our hates for that. And even if you just want to know how we see everything playing out after the event, you can check out Where Do We Go From Here? Continue in this column, however, if you're interested in the Biggest Winners and Biggest Losers from WWE Night of Champions 2025.
Not just because he won King of the Ring, adding to his already stacked list of WWE accolades, but because Rhodes taking the WWE Championship back from JohnCena at SummerSlam now officially seems like a foregone conclusion. However you feel about Cena's heel turn and title run, I guarantee you there's only about a month left of it; the WWE Championship has yet to change hands at a non-WrestleMania event since Paul Levesque took over as CCO, but since Cena's last ride ends when the calendar hits 2026, it's SummerSlam or never.
I'm not really banking on WWE's latest tease of a potential Cody heel turn they've been teasing it for at least a year now and it keeps not happening. I don't know where his character goes as champion after he reclaims the belt, I just know he's going to. Which, good for you,Cody. The Travis Scott run-in would have been a real sour way to end things.
I know she's checking all the main roster boxes the moment she hits them, but Roxy should probably have reconsidered checking the "can't even help my teammate cheat to win" box quite so early. When the WINC staff made picks for this event, almost all of us went for Rhea Ripley, but a couple people picked Raquel Rodriguez, because they were thinking logically. With Liv Morgan injured, the word has been that Perez is going to replace her as Rodriguez' partner, potentially grandfathering her into a women's tag title reign. WWE has been building to this by having Perez help Judgment Day members, including Rodriguez, win matches. If she'd helped Rodriguez win here, that would have been a natural way to officially kick off their new alliance, all while giving Rodriguez a singles PLE win she desperately needed.
Those of us who picked Ripley, on the other hand, were not thinking logically.We were thinking "Triple H loves him some Rhea Ripley," and we were right. It's not the best look for Rodriguez, but it's an actively terrible look for Perez, who now appears so ineffective she couldn't turn the tide in a two-on-one fight where she had the advantage in a situation where there were no rules. Why would anyone want to team with her and regularly go up against two people when she can't even make a difference against one?
This is the easiest layup of the column, for obvious reasons. When you find yourself wrestling in Saudi Arabia (one of like four shows on the calendar WWE actually cares about) after not making a PLE since WrestleMania 40, you're a winner that's just the rules. Not only that, but Kross was given the chance to shine as a very threatening heel throughout his match with SamiZayn, who pulled out the victory at the very end while Michael Cole used the word "miracle" on the call. So yeah, back on PLE, match with a big star, and you get to make it look like that big star was only barely able to beat you? That's not bad work for a Saturday.
I have no idea if Kross will continue with this momentum or even if he should, but I'm happy for him that what has been about a year of obvious frustration and hard work paid off for him at this event.
Speaking of people who have been laboring in frustration for little while, how about Solo Sikoa finally getting a shot with a midcard singles title? Nobody at Night of Champions needed a win more than Solo after main-eventing SummerSlam 2024 against CodyRhodes (while dealing with a vocal fanbase insisting he didn't deserve it) and finally losing the Ula Fala back to Roman Reigns at the start of 2025, Solo had plummeted down the card, suffering loss after loss, missing WrestleMania, and generally being seeing as holding back the more talent wrestler in his orbit,Jacob Fatu. A loss and/or a bad performance here might have meant the end for him, despite the fact that like Kross, he's been doing wildly entertaining promo work in the past several months.
Solo responded beautifully, working his ass off in a really good match with Fatu Solo's best match in a while and more importantly, coming away with the men's United States Championship. If you're upset by the way it went down because you don't like interference finishes, I'm very sorry but that is just American wrestling in 2025, despite what AEW fans will try to tell you after 15 people interfere in the All In main event. That's the world we live in, and if I have to live in a version of that world, I'd rather live in the one where Solo gets rewarded for all the good work he's done and the improvements he's made.
It's not like there was a ever a big chance Asuka was winning this one, but if you're still holding out hope for Cargill after what has been a considerably rocky start to her WWE career coming off her dominant run in AEW, it's probably nice to see her win Queen of the Ring and set herself up for what could very well be a WWE Women's Championship victory at SummerSlam. Tiffany Stratton's reign will probably have about run its course by August (I was expecting it to end at WrestleMania, personally) and to me it makes all the sense in the world to crown Jade ... and then immediately have Naomi cash in and beat her. Then you can have Jade chase Naomi for a while, eventually get the title back, and presumably wrestle Bianca Belair for it at WrestleMania 42. That's a pretty good ROI if you bought Jade stock in 2023.
Is it slightly concerning that WWE doesn't trust Cargill to go more than eight minutes with a veteran like Asuka in a Queen of the Ring final on a PLE? No it's actually very concerning. But WWE has never shied away from strapping up people they didn't necessarily trust in the ring, so it remains likely that 2025/2026 is Cargill's year.
Personally, I don't care that CM Punk decided to wrestle in Saudi Arabia.It does not personally offend me, just as the concept of the Saudi shows in general do not personally offend me. That said, it isextremely funny that Punk used up most if not all of his credibility, especially with a certain kind of fan, so he could work one last match with Cena that nobody is going to remember in a few months.
Maybe they would have, if the match had been given a proper finish. Until all the interference started (once again, this is wrestling in 2025) things between Punk and Cena were actually going pretty well. But then all the nonsense started to happen, and Seth Rollins and his gang came out, and SamiZayn came out and Penta came out and the match suddenly, tragically became about everything around Punk and Cena, not about Punk and Cena themselves. CM Punk came back to WWE, agreed to work a Saudi show, let Cena drop a pipebomb promo on him, transformed into "the Doctor of Punkanomics" in response, flew across the world in the middle of an international crisis, and apologized to Saudi fans for an old tweet, all so he could wrestle a match that was a cautionary tale before it had even ended. Looking back, it just seems like a massive waste of time that will be best remembered for Punk solidifying his reputation as a sell-out though he a did admittedly drop some bars on "SmackDown."
