WWE Crown Jewel 2025: Biggest Winners & Losers
WWE Crown Jewel has come and gone, and while the stars of WWE make their way back to the United States, it's time to decide which of them came off looking triumphant and which of them came off looking, well, less-than. It's time for Winners and Losers.
As always, wrestling is an art form built on winning and losing, so I will be avoiding going over the results of the show. Our dedicated live results staff already took care of them anyway. We've also broken down what we loved and hated. It's now time to discuss the winning moments of the show, like how John Cena's finisher spamming led to a genuinely touching moment or how Stephanie Vaquer made a name for herself. We will also discuss how Cody Rhodes is stuck in a holding pattern, and how Seth Rollins is trapped right in there with him.
Enough bloviating, let's get to the Winners and Losers from the 2025 edition of WWE Crown Jewel from Perth, Australia.
Winner: John Cena and the Memory of Bray Wyatt
John Cena's retirement tour is back on the right track. Since SummerSlam, all of his matches have had the grandiosity that was initially expected of his curtain call. His match with AJ Styles was full of tributes to their previous foes, with Cena busting out Big Show's chokeslam, Undertaker's Tombstone Piledrivers, and a number of other moves, while Styles pulled out moves like James Storm's Last Call. But when Cena drilled Styles into the mat with Bray Wyatt's Sister Abigail, the WWE Universe -almost reflexively- pulled out their phones and held up the trademark "fireflies" that have come to represent the spirit of the late WWE Champion. Cena appeared genuinely emotional by the moment, and rightly so.
A wrestler can plan as many moves and shoutouts and swerves and nearfalls as they want, but the kind of spontaneous, genuine connection that occurred between performer and audience in that moment is the kind of magic that this retirement tour has been missing. It was a truly touching moment, and should the rest of this retirement run s*** the bed, Cena and fans will still be able to point to that one moment and say it was "special," and for that reason, Cena came out of Crown Jewel a big winner.
The match was so good that I might have to touch on the man on the other end of the pinfall.
Loser: AJ Styles (and kinda John Cena)
AJ Styles will retire in 2026, but if I'm being blunt, I really have no clue how he could have a better final match than the one he had with John Cena at Crown Jewel. I'm sure there will be plenty of good moments and matches as AJ Styles takes that final run, but there will be a smidge of "But remember that match with Cena?" that haunts each and every match. AJ Styles going out against one of WWE's franchise faces, dressed in his original TNA gear, after clawing his way up from cult favorite to bona fide WWE Superstar, would've been a pretty spectacular curtain call.
For that matter, I'm not sure that Cena will have a better final match than the homage-stuffed finisher-fest that he had with Styles. Cena will likely retire by putting over Gunther, paving the way for the next generation. While Styles's opponent hasn't been named, he'll likely go out doing much of the same.
There's an old meme from The Onion, "Holy S***, There Still 50 Minutes Left In Movie," and that is the kind of vibe that both Cena and Styles's retirement runs are risking at the moment. Unless WWE has Christopher Daniels and Samoa Joe ready to give Styles one more classic, I'm just not sure that there's anything left in the chamber for his final stretch, other than a whole lot of "remember when?"
Winner: Stephanie Vaquer
Only four people have won the Crown Jewel Title: Cody Rhodes, Seth Rollins, Liv Morgan, and Stephanie Vaquer. Three of those names are tentpole attractions in WWE and the fourth is Stephanie Vaquer. If that doesn't give you an idea of the company WWE sees Vaquer in, I don't know what will.
Far beyond "strapping a rocket" to Vaquer, WWE has strapped the former CMLL star to a lightning bolt, as she ascends to the top of the main roster with a swiftness that has simply not been seen since NXT became the WWE developmental program. The only other person who has come as far as quickly as Vaquer is Tiffany Stratton, and that's exactly who Vaquer beat to win the 2025 Women's Crown Jewel Title, so that kind of ties up that loose end. Vaquer is simply "That Girl" right now, and the fact that she flattened Stratton in the quickest match of the show just goes to show how few obstacles are in her way. NXT Women's North American Champion, NXT Women's Champion, Women's World Champion, and now Crown Jewel Champion, it truly feels like Vaquer is just getting started, and she's already reached the same echelon to which it has taken other stars decades to climb.
Loser: Cody Rhodes (and for that matter Seth Rollins)
There's not much left for Cody Rhodes to do. He and Randy Orton are teasing an inevitable confrontation, but the fact of the matter is, since beating John Cena at SummerSlam, Cody Rhodes has been waiting for someone to beat him. There's nothing technically wrong with being a dominant champion, waiting for a worthy competitor, and it's a reality of any non-scripted sport, but this is scripted entertainment, and -to quote Tom Petty- "The waiting is the hardest part."
Rollins is in a similar situation, though we all know his eventual downfall will come at the hands of CM Punk. It doesn't change the fact that Rollins is also stuck in an all-too-familiar holding pattern. I know that part of the charm of his Money In The Bank cash-in was celebrating 10 years of Seth Rollins being, well, Seth Rollins, but that doesn't change the fact that WWE has basically been "The Seth Rollins Show" for the better part of 10 years, and it's in holding patterns like this when his schtick starts wearing extra-thin.
Both champions are stuck in the MLB playoff/NFL season oblivion, where WWE is afraid to do anything, lest the regular public be elsewhere, watching real sports, and thus the aforementioned holding patterns. The two men had a great match on Saturday, but there are only so many insane moves one can do to hide the fact that they aren't going anywhere until probably April.