WWE Saturday Night's Main Event returned on, well, Saturday.
The show was headlined by the final match of WWE Hall of Famer Goldberg, who faced World Heavyweight Champion Gunther in a match that you can read all about over on our results page. We've also thoroughly gone over what we loved and hated from the 40th edition of Saturday Night's Main Event. It's time to talk about who looked good and who looked bad in Atlanta on Saturday.
Some of these losses are freak accidents, like former World Heavyweight Champion Seth Rollins, and some of these losses were a little more avoidable, like making Goldberg go long enough to warrant a commercial break. There were also undeniable winners, like Gunther.
Without further ado, let's break down the winners and losers from Saturday's show.
WWE just had to counterprogram AEW All In 2025. They only had one match they could think of: Goldberg vs. Gunther, and then they realized that they needed more matches to round out the card. They put Seth Rollins and LA Knight together because they know that those two are incapable of having an unwatchable match, and for the most part they did, and then Seth Rollins flipped out of a back body drop and landed wrong on his knee.
It's something of a tradition at this point: the company needs Rollins for one reason or another, and his knee gives out. It happened in 2015, amidst a lengthy title reign that put a lot of wear and tear on his joints. Then in 2024, he needed to go away to repair his thoroughly ravaged knee, after a lengthy title reign that put a lot of wear and tear on his joints. Now here we are in 2025, and Rollins' knee has once again failed him. Not only did the injury bring his match with Knight to an abrupt end, but it also threw off Goldberg's final match, which we'll talk more about later.
The news also comes at the worst time for Rollins's fledgling stable. While Bron Breakker and Bronson Reed will likely do the heavy lifting, it means that Rollins will have to merely hang out in the background, mugging and dancing like a crazed lawn ornament. I'm also not certain the World Heavyweight Title scene has enough legitimate contenders without Rollins. It just feels like everyone loses from this injury.
SummerSlam is known as the "Biggest Part of the Summer," and that will be no truer for anyone more than Randy Orton and Drew McIntyre. I've said it before, but WWE is a celebrity fantasy camp at its core. It is a place where the Travises Scott and Pats McAfee of the world can live out their childhood dreams of being WWE superstars. In the TKO era, there is no better "get" than someone like Jelly Roll. McIntyre and Orton are going to basically spend the summer cutting promos on whatever people watch these days; "The Today Show," I guess, and smoking whatever kind of party favors to which someone like Jelly Roll has access.
As long as Jelly Roll hits his mark and doesn't embarrass himself, the match will likely end up heralded as one of the best of the summer. Orton and McIntyre can't have a bad match, and Logan Paul is utterly driven to deliver in big match situations, much to the chagrin of viewers like me. There is no way this match isn't a spectacle. Even if Jelly Roll completely sh**s the bed, it will still be a very watchable trainwreck. It's going to be very good to be Drew McIntyre and Randy Orton this summer.
There's an old saying, "To be the man, you've got to beat the man." The man who said that idiom has soiled himself and his reputation repeatedly but that doesn't make it any less true. If you want to be The Guy, then there are just some guys you gotta beat.
Gunther beat Goldberg. Yes, there were some shenanigans, but Gunther beat Goldberg, and Goldberg finally seems ready to hang up his boots. You don't get to beat Goldberg anymore, and Gunther beat Goldberg. Goldberg, who has seemingly been unable to retire, who has passed the torch to Brock Lesnar only to take the torch back and just kinda hang out, lighting cigars with it and not letting go of his legacy, and Gunther beat Goldberg. Despite NBC and Peacock cutting off the feed, Goldberg retired at the end of the night. This was the last time anyone ever beat Goldberg, and Gunther beat Goldberg.
At this rate, he might retire John Cena in the same year that he retired Goldberg. He is, quite simply, the moment. Cody Rhodes might be the face of the company, but Gunther beat Goldberg. John Cena might be holding the flagship title, but Gunther beat Goldberg. It might be a while before the World Heavyweight Title closes a show, but that doesn't matter because Gunther beat Goldberg.
While No Malice was proving that guys in their 50s can still go, Bill Goldberg was forced to compete in a lengthy, bloated match that did not play to his strengths. It wasn't a "bad" match between Goldberg and Gunther, but there's something wrong with Goldberg wrestling through a commercial break. There's a certain air of "that's it?" to the end of Goldberg's legendary career.
Goldberg retiring on a show that only exists to steal oxygen from the 7-hour AEW All In PPV just feels like a mistake, especially now that all has been said and done, and Goldberg's retirement feels like an afterthought. The retirement of a WWE Hall of Famer probably shouldn't have had me thinking "Oh yeah, I guess this is happening today, too," and yet here we are.I love Goldberg. I love Gunther. I love that "Oz" star Chuck Zito got to be part of Goldberg's entourage while wearing a t-shirt his own picture on it. It was still very hard to care. It was a long weekend of wrestling. Goldberg could've let Lesnar retire him in 2017. He could've let Reigns retire him in 2022. He instead went out on a show that felt like a hangover to most fans.
