The 2025 NXT Year End Awards were announced yesterday, with Je’Von Evans and Sol Ruca the big winners this year.
There were a total of six awards handed out.
Je’Von Evans won the Men’s Superstar of the Year while Sol Ruca won the Women’s Superstar of the Year. Sol Ruca and Zaria won Tag Team of the Year and the match between Oba Femi vs Trick Williams vs Je’Von Evans for the NXT title at Stand and Deliver won Match of the Year. Tatum Paxley winning the NXT Women’s title at Halloween Havoc won the Moment of the Year and Stand and Deliver won PLE of the Year.
Raw on Netflix on December 22 failed to crack the top 10 global chart again and also hit record low viewers as it did not hit the top 10 in any country where Netflix streams.
This was a taped episode of Raw and strong showings from Stranger Things, Emily in Paris, Man vs Baby, and others pumped up the list as where the #10 spot had 3,200,000 global views, around a million more than Raw usually gets.
The exact number of viewers for this particular episode will be released when Netflix does its bi-annual data dump of figures next month.
A video on TikTok of a little kid receiving a John Cena action figure went viral with over 21 million views due to the kid’s cute reaction.
When the little boy ripped the wrapping paper to reveal the Cena figure, he went absolutely ballistic, screaming and doing the “You Can’t See Me” hand motion repeatedly as the adults in the background laughed.
The video was recorded by TikTok user jaeeoneee from Los Angeles.
“Merry xmas!! @John Cena he loves you,” he wrote, with a crying emoji and the salute.
The video received 3.2 million likes, had 11,500 comments posted, and was bookmarked 159,000 times.
AEW star Alex Windsor will be making her Stardom debut at the New Year Dream 2026 event set for Saturday, January 3.
Windsor, who last week defeated Mercedes Mone to win the RevPro Undisputed British Women’s title, will team up with Starlight Kid and Mei Seira to take on Saori Anou, Natsupoi and Anne Kanaya in the day match and then joins Kikyo Furusawa against Konami and Fukijen Death for the night match.
The shows will be held at Shinjuku FACE in Tokyo, Japan and will stream on Stardom World at 1PM and 6:30PM JST.
Popular WWE French commentary duo Christophe Agius and Philippe Chéreau will no longer be calling future shows together and this week’s Raw was the final time they did commentary for a WWE show, for now.
The two men, who are treated like gods by WWE fans in France and as evident by their appearances at recent French PLEs, have to split up because of contractual obligations which are preventing Chéreau from continuing his work on Netflix.
Starting tomorrow, WWE programming moves to Netflix in France and Chéreau also does commentary for other sports on stations owned by Mediawan, which complicates things legally.
Agius will continue doing commentary but for the first time in 25 years, he will not have his “television dad” with him by his side.
The two shared a very emotional farewell message following the last Raw, with Chéreau saying it was very tough to film.
“There won’t be a next episode for me, maybe one day, but not now,” Chéreau said. “Would have loved to, should have made it, but so it goes.”
Sheamus has undergone shoulder surgery in Birmingham, Alabama yesterday at the Andrews Sports Medicine & Orthopaedic Center and is expected to be out of action for the next several months.
The news was revealed by his wife Isabella in a post on social media, who joked that when she told her husband she wanted to go on one last trip before the end of 2025, going to Birmingham, Alabama was not what she meant.
“From the Eiffel Tower in Paris to the Trevi Fountain in Rome to La Sagrada Família in Barcelona to… the Birmingham Surgery Center in Alabama — I’m honestly just happy to travel with him,” Isabella wrote.
The former champion has not wrestled since the November 17 episode of Raw, a special episode which was John Cena’s final Raw. Sheamus teamed with Rey Mysterio and Cena to take on The Judgment Day in a six-man tag match on the show.
Two current AEW stars who have a long and storied history with New Japan Pro-Wrestling will be in attendance at Wrestle Kingdom 20 this weekend to say goodbye to Hiroshi Tanahashi.
Tanahashi will be wrestling his final match, headlining the event against AEW’s Kazuchika Okada, another star who made his name in New Japan.
Kenny Omega and Will Ospreay, both men who held NJPW’s top titles in the past, are making the trip to the Tokyo Dome to be part of Tanahashi’s retirement ceremony, joining 50,000 other fans who have sold out the stadium.
The announcement was made by NJPW via a post on social media.
Two former Imperium members will be colliding in a one-on-one match at an upcoming non-televised live event in Germany.
The WWE Deutschland X account wrote that former WWE World Heavyweight champion and the man who made John Cena tap, Gunther, will be taking on El Grande Americano on January 13 in Mannheim.
Americano is currently portrayed by Ludwig Kaiser, Gunther’s former long-time associate.
The two have not crossed paths since splitting from Imperium.
In an interview on Q101 Lounge with Case Lowe, AEW President Tony Khan discussed having positive interactions with Cody Rhodes ever since he left AEW and also addressed Rhodes’ comment in a previous interview where he said he felt disrespected in AEW.
Khan said he does not agree with Cody’s assessment that he was disrespected in AEW but he wants to give him the benefit of the doubt because he has also heard Cody saying good things about AEW.
“And for somebody that doesn’t work here and that’s involved in the competitive promotion, he’s usually pretty gracious with the things he says,” Khan noted. “I’ve seen him since he’s been gone. And it’s always been very positive and good. I have only good things to say about him and his contributions here.”
The real reasons why Cody and Brandi Rhodes left AEW remain a mystery and both Rhodes and Khan have kept their word on not speaking about it in interviews.
Rhodes, a founding member of AEW, left the company in February 2022, joined WWE, and as they say, the rest is history.
Khan spent an hour with Lowe during the interview, discussing a variety of other subjects including his MVP Jon Moxley, Continental Classic tournament, booking, and more.
Shayna Baszler sat down with Chris Van Vliet at West Coast Creative Studio in Hollywood, California to discuss her WWE release and still doing some work for the company as a coach, if a return as a wrestler is still possible, her dominant main roster call-up and feud with Becky Lynch, being Ronda Rousey’s final WWE opponent and a possible Rousey return, her love of WarHammer 40K, and more!
So are you working for WWE?
“I’m not officially hired, but I have a good relationship with them. I’m officially guest coaching when the opportunity comes. I don’t hate it. I actually like it a lot more than I thought I would. So how that all came about is that Daniel Bryan, it was during COVID, and Daniel Bryan was always the guy sitting in Gorilla. It’s kind of like, I don’t know if it’s still the same way now, but it’s kind of like only the top guys can sit back on a headset in Gorilla. There’s just too much, it’s not enough room, so you don’t want to crowd the place. But he was talking to me about, if you ever get a chance to sit in the truck or sit on a headset, it completely changed my wrestling. I feel like my wrestling went to another level, because you get to see what they look for, and how they call things, and the time it takes. So you feel weird making a face for too long, but they have just TV stuff.”
Do you feel like your career as a WWE Superstar is over?
“Never say never in this business. I mean, weirder things have happened, right? If I get over with something crazy on the Indies or something, and I get an offer. It’s a strange question, because I don’t know that I’m ever going to be someone that’s like, Yeah, I’m ready to be done. I’ll always feel like I can go.”
Did that match with Becky Lynch still feel like WrestleMania?
“So I remember pulling up to the PC that day for my WrestleMania match, and sitting in my car, I parked outside, and sitting in my car and being kind of down. This is my WrestleMania match. I have three nieces, a set of twins and then an older one. And at the time, they were five and seven years old, and the twins, five-year-olds, were still at a stage where they believed wrestling. They watched me fight, so I don’t know that they knew that it was any different at that time. I had gotten them all tickets, and they were going to come and sit in the friends and family section at freaking WrestleMania. They love wrestling. They believe it. I’m going to have a title match at WrestleMania. They were going to be there and see this. Anybody that’s seen WrestleMania, could you imagine being five and being a super fan and your aunt that you think is a hero is wrestling, and you’re gonna see this huge thing. And then they couldn’t. I remember being pretty down about that. I am proud of the match that we had. I wish I could have that match with Becky in front of a WrestleMania crowd, because energy changes everything. And definitely the energy, WrestleMania, it definitely would have changed stuff. But I do feel a sort of pride in the fact that we did that, because it was at a time when nothing else was going on in the world. There was no sports, even TV stopped shooting stuff for a while.”
Did you know that match at SummerSlam was going to be Ronda’s last?
“So I knew, because I’m very close with her. That was the last date on her contract, because she had planned to have another baby, and that was the plan. I mean, Ronda loves nothing more now than being a mom, and so I knew for a while. For so long we wanted to start that story. I think if we would have had longer, I think that would have benefited us a lot, because I think we did a great job with the time that we had. But we were begging for this tag team to start, because we knew it started with us being this tag team. Starts with us being this tag team. And I think, to my understanding, Vince, it might not be true, but somebody had told me that he didn’t believe that the crowd knew that Ronda and I were friends. So if you go back and watch, me and Ronda tried to create these moments for crowd reactions, so that he could see that people know, like when she showed up as a surprise in the Rumble, and then I came out at number 30 that year, I did my thing, cleaned house, and then it was me and her, and it was just me and her and the crowd [cheered]. Then, you know, Charlotte came and took it away. We were like, Oh, for sure, he’s got to know now. Then we had another one where we had a tag match, but we were on opposing teams, and we were like, All right, we’re not going to touch because we don’t want to give that away, but let’s have this moment. And the crowd came for that as well. We’re like, God, he’s got to know. I think I was just in a different place at the time. She was like, top of the card, Ronda Rousey, and I was doing my own thing on the mid-card at the time. So I don’t think he saw our paths crossing, really, but we were begging for it like forever to start this. That’s the reason Ronda started wrestling, I think, is we want to do this fun story. But it didn’t work out that way. And like I said, I think we did a good job with the time that we did have.”
Do you think Ronda is done?
“I never think Ronda is done. She’s a crazy person. I don’t know. She loves being a mom. It would take a bit, but CM Punk came back. Ronda Rousey can come back.”
Dave Meltzer of the Wrestling Observer is reporting that Dominik Mysterio does not need surgery and will be out for a couple of more weeks after suffering a shoulder injury at the AAA Guerra de Titanes event.
The AAA Mega and WWE Intercontinental champion was said to be out “indefinitely” during commentary while Liv Morgan also said that he was taking some time off during a backstage segment.
Mysterio suffered the injury when he took a DDT from his father in the main event of the show during the closing moments of the match.
Meltzer noted that Mysterio is looking up to four weeks out and should be back in time for the Royal Rumble, avoiding surgery which would have put him out of action for up to six months and having to surrender both titles.
Court documents published by POSTWrestling.com show that Endeavor’s Mark Shapiro, who is now President of TKO Group, predicted exactly what was going to happen when Vince McMahon resigned, returned, and then sold the company to them.
The documents involve chat transcripts between McMahon and various Endeavor members and are part of a shareholder lawsuit against McMahon and TKO.
“Nick and Stephanie are going to take over the WWE for the next nine months,” Shapiro wrote hours after McMahon ‘retired’ in July 2022.
“At the end of the nine months Vince be back with a new board or he will take the company private or he will sell it/coming to us,” he continued, adding “The courtship is on.”
“Let’s go,” replied Andrew Schleimer, who is now the CFO of TKO Group.
McMahon returned in January, three months earlier than Shapiro’s prediction, with a new board, and then started the strategic review of the company, eventually coming to an agreement with Endeavor to sell the company to them.
Documents also show that McMahon and Endeavor chief Ari Emanuel were in constant communication throughout the months he was away from WWE.
Nikki Bella paid tribute to her former fiancé John Cena last night on Raw in her triple threat against Stephanie Vaquer and Raquel Rodriguez.
During the match, the Hall of Famer locked Rodriguez in the STF, a move which Cena knows too well, as fans starting chanting “Thank you Cena.”
Bella, now a heel, responded to the chants by yelling, “No, thank me!”
Following the broadcast, Bella took to X to explain the new name of the move.
“You all kept wanting a tribute from me geeezz so here ya all go,” Bella wrote. “But… that’s the Fearless Lock.”
Cena and Bella dated for several years and were supposed to get married after Cena proposed to her in the middle of the ring at WrestleMania. Things quickly went south after that though and the two split up, with both stars finding love with other individuals.
NIKKI BELLA HIT A STF AND GOT “THANK U CENA” CHANTS.
Penta returned on Raw last night to save Rey Mysterio from an attack from The Vision after Mysterio wrestled Austin Theory during the show.
The Mexican fan favorite has been out of action for five weeks after suffering a shoulder injury during The Last Time Is Now tournament in his match against Solo Sikoa. The match was called off and Sikoa got the victory when Penta landed bad on his shoulder following a hurricanrana off the security barricade.
Penta was supposed to reunite with his brother Rey Fenix at the AAA Guerra de Titanes earlier this month but was not cleared in time. He was replaced by Rey Mysterio and Penta made an appearance at the end of the show.
The Usos are once again on the top of the mountain of the tag team division on Raw as the brothers became the new WWE World Tag Team champions after they beat AJ Styles and Dragon Lee on last night’s broadcast.
The win came after Jimmy and Jey delivered their 1D finisher on Dragon Lee for the pinfall victory. This is the ninth time that The Usos have held tag team titles in WWE, making them one of the most decorated tag teams in the history of pro wrestling.
The two also hold the record for most days with the tag team titles, an astonishing 622 days, a reign which came to an end at WrestleMania 39 at the hands of Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn.
The Usos reunited as a tag team last month after Jey suffered some losses as a singles competitor.
WWE Vice President of Global Talent Development, William Regal, wrote a long post on social media telling wrestlers to avoid doing spots where they land on their neck.
Regal wrote that he usually stays off social media but he was alerted to something which alarmed him, and while not mentioning anyone, guesses are that it comes following the video of Kyle Fletcher getting dumped on his neck by Jon Moxley at Worlds End.
The former on-screen NXT General Manager recounted how he broke his neck twice, once in the ring and once in a car wreck, and that is also after he was properly thought how to bridge and not land on the top of his head.
“Stop it now if you want a decent quality of life after wrestling because that part of your life will be over before you know it and wrestling done right is hard enough but broken necks or death are not something you should think is tough or cool,” Regal wrote. “It’s idiotic thinking.”
Several wrestlers who have neck issues re-posted Regal’s full message, agreeing with him, but knowing full well that their peers will probably not listen at all.
WWE returns with live television tonight with Monday Night Raw streaming worldwide on Netflix starting at 8PM ET. It’s the final live WWE broadcast of 2025 as NXT tomorrow is also taped.
Two title matches have been announced for the show, including Stephanie Vaquer defending the WWE Women’s World title against Nikki Bella and Raquel Rodriguez in a three-way and the team of AJ Styles and Dragon Lee defend the WWE World Tag Team titles against The Usos.
Plus, Hall of Famer Rey Mysterio battles Austin Theory and The Vision kicks off the broadcast.
The Kia Center in Orlando, Florida hosts the show and tickets remain available at Ticketmaster.com starting from $56.70.
Saraya reflected on the eight-year anniversary from that night in Uniondale, New York when they told her that her in-ring career was done following another neck injury.
The former champ was on the receiving end of a kick to the back from the then Sasha Banks, leaving her motionless in the ring. The match was stopped and Saraya, who had just returned from neck surgery after 17 months out, was told that it was a wrap on her wrestling days.
“8 years yesterday from when I thought my career was over during a Uniondale house show. What a ride it’s been since,” the Brit wrote in a social media post.
“Grateful for my health, family, friends and fans. You truly keep me going! My noodle neck is as strong as ever haha. Can’t wait for what 2026 has in store,” she added.
The WWE medical team never wanted to clear her and after a stint as General Manager of Smackdown, her contract was not renewed and left the promotion after 11 years.
Saraya joined AEW in September 2022 and made her in-ring return at Full Gear two months later, defeating Britt Baker. In March of this year, Saraya announced that she was departing AEW.
In an interview published yesterday by Mostly Sports with Brandon Walker, new AEW champion MJF spoke of his admiration for John Cena and said that if there was a different world, a match between the two would have absolutely happened.
“Unfortunately, it’s not this one,” MJF said.
The two crossed paths before, mainly in Hollywood, and MJF described Cena as an incredible guy who also watches their product.
“He’s seen my stuff. He was very complimentary. Obviously, I’m super complimentary to him,” he continued.
MJF added that before CM Punk, his favorite wrestler growing up as a kid was Cena and had his fathead on the wall in his room.
“So, I’d wake up, salute the OG, and then get ready for school,” he said.
WWE Superstar Nikki Bella will serve as Grand Marshal for the 53rd annual Vrbo Fiesta Bowl Parade presented by Lerner & Rowe, taking place Saturday, January 3, 2026, at 10AM in Central Phoenix.
The Vrbo Fiesta Bowl Parade Grand Marshal honors an individual or group whose actions align with the Fiesta Sports Foundation’s commitment to driving economic growth, championing charitable causes and executing innovative experiences.
“Nikki Bella embodies strength, resilience, entertainment and heart – all qualities that resonate deeply with our community and with what this parade represents,” said Fiesta Sports Foundation Executive Director & CEO Erik Moses. “Her Arizona upbringing and extraordinary career make her an inspiring choice to lead this year’s celebration, and we look forward to welcoming fans as she brings her superstar energy to Central Phoenix.”
“Being named Grand Marshal of the Fiesta Bowl Parade is such an incredible honor – and being able to celebrate with the state that helped shape who I am makes it even more special,” Bella said. “I am so excited to join everyone in Arizona to create lifelong memories at the Parade and into the CFP Semifinal at the Vrbo Fiesta Bowl festivities.”
Bella joins a list of previous Fiesta Bowl Parade grand marshals including Charles Barkley, Jerry Colangelo, Alice Cooper, Richard Jefferson, Randy Johnson, Al McCoy, Jake Plummer, Anthony Robles, Kerri Strug, Diana Taurasi and more.
“Nikki’s rise from Scottsdale to the global stage is a powerful inspiration for women everywhere and we are thrilled to have such a proud Arizonan leading our Vrbo Fiesta Bowl Parade presented by Lerner & Rowe,” said Fiesta Sports Foundation Board Chair Judy Bernas. “This year’s Fiesta Bowl Parade is one of our most vibrant celebrations yet, bringing the best of Arizona to life for fans lining the streets and those watching from home.”
