WWE Backlash 2025: The biggest winners and losers

John Cena wrestled with his final repulsion.

WWE brought the Postrest Tourmania event to St. Louis on Saturday, and the show may have marked the final match between longtime rivals John Cena and Randy Orton. Cena came to the top and pinned Orton after a long main event and continued his reign as the indisputable WWE champion. But there’s plenty of results page for what happened with the backlash, and for that. We’re also already breaking down what we loved and what we hated. Well, it’s time to talk about the winners and losers of Saturday’s Big Show.

Again, the results page can be found by real literal winners and losers, but this piece focuses on who looks good, looks good, and who stole victory from defeat.

Let’s start with the most obvious one.

John Cena read all of your tweets saying he was “washing.” Saturday’s main event was a return to form in “Big Matchjon.” The nearly 30-minute match was a complete 180-degree switch-up from a terrible slow display with Cody Rhodes at WrestleMania 41 a few weeks ago. After taking a terrible hot match against Austin Theory at WrestleMania 39, John Cena returns to Cana with Cena, when he wrestled in a momentary, instantaneous wrestling session. Nostalgia can be quite toxic, but it was good to see two rivals having their final epic.

The match was overbooked a bit due to some preferences, but does not change the fact that Cena managed to insist on his splitting final run.

Drew McIntyre and the priest of Damien are too good to be a third-wheeled La Knight feud with Jacob Fatu and the whole pedigree, as there is no better way to put it. In an awkwardly packed match, McIntyre and the priest fought each other, while Fatu and Knight were built on the actual points of the match.

I love Jeff Cobb’s pedigree. I don’t even dislike the style conflict, La Night, the most incredible guy in wrestling, and La Night, the most realistic thing in wrestling now. I don’t even seem to make sure my priest and McIntyre is guaranteed. It was a fatal four-way match that played like two intersecting brawls without enough connective tissue to really include the priest and McIntyre.

I have no worries about the exciting, deadly four-way. It feels like the two former world heavyweight champions have nothing to do right now, and it sticks out like a painful thumb.

It looks like it’s a coast run of the stars yesterday, but like John Cena, the women’s division is focused firmly on the future. Following Tiffany Stratton’s victory over Charlotte Flair at WrestleMania, WWE Women’s Intercontinental champion Laila Valkyria lost Becky Lynch on Saturday, again showing the future of the women’s division is now.

Maybe it’s because I still remember the advantage of the four horses, but there’s something refreshing about the fact that it’s so successful on the main roster, with regard to stars like Valkyria, Stratton and other WWE NXT staples. If former WWE NXT champions like Ilja Dragunov and Carmelo Hayes fail to splash over the main roster, bookings in the women’s division feel like a direct responsibility.

It’s great to see the last generation keep a new generation so at hand, especially after all the rumours that Becky Lynch is like a politician. The fact that a huge generational battle took place for a female IC title feels like a title victory, just like Valkyria.

WWE has essentially become Pat McAfee’s fantasy camp. He can give commentary. He wrests in a war game. He can go for 14 minutes against the former world heavyweight champion. Other celebrities like Logan Paul and Bad Bunny have shown aptitude for wrestling, but McAfee has a slightly bumped presence in the ring and a loose OAF outside of it. But because WWE is his show now.

He appears to go back and forth like he likes. When he appears, something big goes on about him coming back. He’s like if Jim Ross and Hulk Hogan had a baby, then the baby was somehow more stupid than the baby.

I don’t think he was concerned about the long, narrow squash match. It’s not just how much time McAfee spent in the ring, but he was presented as a threat at all. This victory did little to help Gunther, especially considering the real heat gained from beating the media character. The whole thing felt like one of the martial arts demonstrations that Stephen Segal was doing. Pat McAfee is WWE’s Stephen Segal and anyone with a problem with their best finds a new show.