John Cena said that his final match will be in mid-December, confirming rumors that he will bow out at the proposed Saturday Night’s Main Event in Boston on December 13.
WWE has not announced SNME for that day yet but a previous news report in Boston said that the show will happen at the TD Garden, just 36 miles away from his old stomping grounds of West Newbury, Massachusetts.
“My last match will be in mid-December. We’re still trying to find a place to do it,” Cena said without giving away too much.
He added that they’re halfway through the 36 dates he had with WWE this year.
“And gosh, it’s been a lot of compelling TV. And I don’t want to spoil it for anybody, but I think we’re just getting started,” he continued.
Cena was speaking to New York Posts’ Page Six during the media tour for his latest movie Heads of State.
An ill-timed tweet by AEW President Tony Khan boasting about the growth the company having compared to previous quarters and quoting the 25-54 demo which is not usually used by AEW ended up the butt of jokes after the Dynamite 300 rating came out yesterday night.
Khan provided a graph showing the growth of 25-54 and P2 – which is viewership – compared to past quarters. The thing is, AEW always went by the 18-49 number and always disregarded the overall viewership, saying that the 18-49 is what really matters.
While AEW has seemingly put an end to the tailspin that they found themselves into over the past several months, the difference in viewership of Dynamite 100, 200, and 300 is anything but growth.
Dynamite 100, which aired on September 1, 2021 drew 1,047,000 viewers and a 0.37 rating in 18-49. That was followed by Dynamite 200 on August 2, 2023 which did 894,000 viewers and a 0.31 rating in 18-49. Dynamite 300 on July 2, 2025 drew just 584,000 viewers and a 0.16 rating in 18-49, not counting any viewers on Max.
Dynamite’s last time with over a million viewers was on February 2023.
Three more matches were announced for the upcoming TNA Slammiversary pay-per-view which takes place on Sunday, July 20.
The TNA Knockouts Tag Team titles will be on the line as champions Ash and Heather by Elegance defend against the returning Cassie Lee and Jessica McKay of The IInspiration.
Also added to the card are Cedric Alexander taking on Mustafa Ali and Tessa Blanchard vs Indi Hartwell.
This brings a total of seven matches, with probably one or two more to be added as the show gets closer.
Tickets have started picking up although there are only around 3,000 sold in an arena which typically holds 16,000. The show will be held at the UBS Arena in Belmont Park, New York with tickets starting from $47.65.
Fanatics announced an Evolution Superstore is opening in Atlanta for the WWE takeover weekend between July 11-13.
Located at The Center at 190 Marietta Street NW, the store will also have the usual photo experience.
Tickets are now on sale for meet and greets with Bayley, Blake Monroe, Charlotte Flair, Damian Priest, Ethan Page, Giulia, Iyo Sky, Jacob Fatu, Jade Cargill, JC Mateo, Jimmy Uso, Joe Hendry, Jordynne Grace, Lyra Valkyria, Naomi, Nikki Bella, Rhea Ripley, Ricky Saints, Sol Ruca, Stephanie Vaquer, Tiffany Stratton, and Trick Williams.
Dynamite 300 this week drew 584,000 viewers, down 29,000 viewers from the prior week. This was the least-watched episode of Dynamite since April 23. The show had a 0.16 rating in 18-49, up 0.01 from last week and was #8 on the top 50 cable chart for the night. (Ratings credit: Programming Insider)
The TNA Knockouts and NXT Women’s titles will be up for grabs in the same match at the upcoming TNA Slammiversary pay-per-view.
On last night’s episode of Impact, TNA announced that their champion Masha Slamovich will take on the NXT Women’s champion on the show and that will be either current champion Jacy Jayne or former TNA Knockouts champion herself Jordynne Grace.
Jayne and Grace will battle each other at the Evolution premium live event on July 13 while the Slammiversary pay-per-view takes place a week later on July 20.
This match is not being advertised as a unification match but a winner-take-all match similar to the one between Giulia and Stephanie Vaquer back in March.
On the latest episode of Grilling JR, Hall of Fame announcer Jim Ross revealed that he will be traveling to Arlington, Texas for AEW’s All In pay-per-view next weekend.
Ross said that “absolutely” he will be in town for the show, planning to arrive on Thursday, do Starrcast on Friday, and then work the pay-per-view on Saturday.
JR recently underwent surgery to remove colon cancer and after a few weeks at home, he said he’s feeling great now that the cancer has been removed.
Prior to surgery he made it a point to be healthy to be in Texas for All In and hoped that he would call a match or two.
“You just got to stay positive and move forward. And that’s what I’ve tried to do,” Ross said. “Even though there were days where I was wondering if this was meant to be. But obviously, it is meant to be, here I am, here we are. So let’s get on with it!”
Christopher Daniels sat down with Chris Van Vliet at West Coast Creative Studio in Hollywood, CA to discuss his retirement match against “Hangman” Adam Page, the terrifying spot during TNA Ultimate X where he almost died, competing in the Unbreakable 2005 triple threat match against Samoa Joe and AJ Styles, the rumor that he was going to be The Higher Power in WWE, the inspiration for the Best Moonsault Ever and his thoughts on Tiffany Stratton’s version, the origin of Curry Man, the true story behind his gruesome eye injury in AEW and more!
On the terrifying fall with Suicide during Ultimate X:
“I was holding on so tight to Suicide that he ended up taking the brunt of the fall. And the funny thing is, that wasn’t the original plan. Because Frankie and I, who was doing Suicide, we had an idea of what we wanted to do, and I’ll tell you the story. So we had both jumped off the top of the trust before in these Ultimate X matches, we were the only ones. So I had an idea, ‘What if we did this? I’ll get on this truss, and you get on this truss, and you jump first, and then I’ll jump and I’ll land on your back, and then we’ll stand on the ropes, and I’ll hook you for Angel’s Wings, and then you backdrop me.’ That was what we were going to do. I was full on ready to take this backdrop from the top of the truss into the ring. Then we get to Irvine, and they’ve got a ceiling on it. They’ve got these trusses over the top that cover the X, and we couldn’t do that because every time we had done Ultimate X in Orlando, they had bolted the trusses to the floor. But we didn’t own Irvine. This was UC Irvine. So we had to have the truss on top. We couldn’t bolt it to the floor. We couldn’t use it to secure the trusses. So we had to have the X over top. So then we came up with this idea of all right, well, I guess we’ll climb down and I’ll try and do this complete shot to you, and it turned so my legs got hooked. And instead of just going flat on a flat back, which still would have been an insane bump, it ended up being like almost upside down and landing like this [on my head].”
“Joe really yelled at me that day. The actual danger was coming to the back and having Samoa Joe grab you by the neck and go, ‘Don’t you ever do that again!’ Really, really frightening. I was fine. I literally landed, and the referee comes over to my face. He goes, ‘Oh my god, are you okay?’ I’m like, ‘Yeah, I’m good. What’s up?’ But I could hear that the air escape the room. In the end, I wish we hadn’t done that, because it literally the match just stopped right there. Poor [Amazing] Red is still fighting and trying to get the X Division belt, and the world thinks, Oh, my God, we just witnessed a death. They’re not even thinking about the match anymore at that point. So I feel bad that it ended up being what it was. But I mean, that’s the thing everybody remembers, is my near-death experience. Well, that’s not really what we wanted to get. I tell people all the time, ‘Chris Daniels almost dies’ is on YouTube.”
On the rumor he was going to be the higher power in WWE:
“I didn’t hear this until years later. [So is there any truth to it?] Maybe, but it was never anything that they told me, and honestly, it was a terrible idea anyway. Because the idea would have been Undertaker is answering to this higher power, and then I unmask, and it’s me, and it’s like, Who the f*ck is this guy? It’s sort of like what was going on in my first WCW contract as well. When I first signed with WCW, they had an idea. The way they described it to me was, if Vampiro is Darth Vader, you’re the Emperor. And I was like, Okay. But also, at this point, Vampiro was feuding with Sting, and I was an unknown indie guy, so whatever the reveal was gonna be at that point was gonna be a letdown to me. And so I thought, Okay, we’ll do this. I remember going to WCW one day, cutting this promo backstage with Vampiro. I’ve got this hood, and they’re talking to me, like, ‘All right, talk about harvesting souls and things like that.’ I’m like, okay. So I cut this promo. We get it live, and then I’m back in the locker room, it comes on live Nitro, and we watch it. And as soon as it’s done, Jeff Jarrett, who happens to be there, and I haven’t really even met Jeff at this point, he goes, ‘Who the f*ck was that?!’ And I was like, ‘That’s me sir.’ Then that flopped so quickly that they didn’t go forward with that idea. Then I was just under contract with WCW. I was traveling with them for like four months, and then they let me go. That was the first contract that I had with them that ended like. JJ Dillon called me, is like, ‘Hey, you’re not wrestling a whole lot for us.’ And I was like, ‘Well, you’re not booking me, so that’s why. It’s not like I’m wasting your money on purpose, sir.’ But they let me go.”
On how he found out about the rumor:
“It came out on the internet. I think maybe Bruce Prichard mentioned it? But yeah, everyone was like, ‘Christopher Daniels was almost the higher power.’ I was like, was he though? I don’t think that’s true. I think maybe it was discussed because I had been going to do WWE dark matches as an extra, and Jim Cornette was always sort of high on trying to get me there early on when the light heavyweight thing was a thing, and they knew I was doing The Fallen Angel. So I think they thought, Oh, well, maybe this is something that we could use him as. But honestly, I think once Vince saw me, and, you know, I’m 5’10 and this is the time when everybody is six feet something, it’s like, we can do better. And I was like, that makes sense.”
On the origin of the BME:
“Okay, so I was always a moonsault guy. I always wanted to do a moonsault. The Great Muta inspired me to do a moonsault. And so I started to learn a moonsault, like early 94, 95. I remember doing it for the first time in Puerto Rico when I was in WWC. So I was training one day in windy city, and there was a Mexican wrestler that was there, it wasn’t anybody famous, I don’t even remember the gentleman’s name, but I saw him bounce from the second [rope], bounce to the top, do a cross body, and I thought, Oh, that’s cool. At the time, I was playing with this moonsault where you stand on the top rope and then you jump up and bounce. You basically turn and bounce like Mark Mero had done. So I was doing that for a little bit and having sort of good success with it. But then I thought, Oh, maybe it’d be easier if I just did this bounce-bounce thing. So for the longest time, I just called it the double bounce moonsault. I wasn’t doing it on television at that point, so no one was calling it the double bounce moonsault, no announcers were calling it. It was just me when I would say, Hey, okay, this, this, this, and then I’ll hit you with the double bounce moonsault. So somewhere along the lines in TNA, you know, I’m a Simpsons fan. So everything that Comic Book Guy said was like, ‘best comic book ever.’ And I thought, haha! So I was like ‘best moonsault ever.’ So that was where I got that from.”
On Tiffany Stratton having the prettiest moonsault ever:
“Which was very, very cool of her. I don’t know Tiffany at all. I’ve never met her. But the fact that she didn’t just copy it, she sort of adjusted it, which is what the greats do. I feel like they don’t just steal. If we are inspired by something, we try to put our own little spin on it. So the fact that she goes from the bottom all the way up and then to sort of like, pay homage, call it in that same vein, PME, I was like, that’s pretty cool. I can’t be mad at that. That was very cool, I appreciate it, thanks Tiffany.”
The three-event combo tickets for Smackdown, Crown Jewel, and Raw in Perth, Australia have sold out.
Ticketek, the website selling tickets for the shows at the RAC Arena has a notice saying that all ticket allocations have been exhausted and individual tickets will be released at a later date.
It’s unclear how many combo tickets were available for sale.
Ticket prices started from AU $332, which is equivalent to US $220 and went all the way up to AU $5,552, or US $3,560.
The shows will be held on October 10, 11, and 13 respectively and they are the first shows in Perth since Elimination Chamber 2024.
Speaking during a live chat with her subscribers on her Instagram channel, TBS champion Mercedes Mone was asked her thoughts about the upcoming WWE Evolution premium live event.
Mone was part of the first Evolution back in 2018, teaming with Bayley and Natalya against The Riott Squad in a six-woman tag match.
“I think it’s about time,” Mone said. “They waited way too long to have an all-women’s pay-per-view, but I love and will always support and be a huge advocate for women’s wrestling.”
Mone added that she is “excited” for it and for all the women who will get to perform on the show as well.
Evolution takes place the day after All In: Texas, on Sunday, July 13.
A huge tag team match was made official for All In: Texas last night during Dynamite’s 300th episode.
The match, with big stipulations, will feature The Young Bucks taking on the team of Will Ospreay and Swerve Strickland.
If Matthew and Nicholas Jackson lose this match, the two will lose their AEW Executive Vice President titles while if Ospreay and Strickland lose, they will not be able to challenge for the AEW World title for one whole year.
This is the seventh official match on the All In: Texas card so far, with more expected to be announced over the next week.
This week’s episode of NXT, which was taped last Tuesday, drew just 627,000 viewers, the least-watched episode of NXT of 2025 so far. That was down 102,000 viewers from the previous week. The show had a 0.15 rating in 18-49, down 0.01 from the last show. (Ratings credit: Programming Insider)
MJF won a four-way match on Dynamite last night to earn the #2 spot in the Casino Gauntlet battle royal at All In: Texas.
MJF defeated Anthony Bowens, Brody King, and AR Fox in the match, submitting Fox to get his spot in the match.
He now joins entrant #1 Mark Briscoe in the battle royal, with no more names announced for now. In Casino Gauntlet matches, the earlier entries have a better chance at winning as the match can stop any time.
The winner of the Casino Gauntlet battle royal receives a title shot.
There will also be a women’s battle royal, with Kris Statlander so far the only entrant at #1.
The AEW World title match at All In: Texas next week will now be a Texas Death Match.
It was the challenger, “Hangman” Adam Page, who requested the stipulation, a stipulation which was first turned down by the champion. Moxley told Page that he wouldn’t survive the match and Page slapped Mox in return.
With the two brawling, Page tried to stab Moxley with a fork but The Death Riders made the save, assaulting Page. After a while, The Opps came in to even the odds, leaving Marina Shafir alone with Page. She tried to hit him with the briefcase, but Page blocked it and took it away from her.
Page told Moxley that he has something in his possession that he wants and demanded him to accept the Texas Death Match stipulation. Moxley accepted and Page gave the briefcase back to Shafir…only to flatten her with a Buckshot Lariat.
AEW will celebrate 300 episodes of Dynamite live tonight from the Toyota Arena in Ontario, California. The episode airs live on TBS at 8PM ET and streams on Max as well.
Scheduled for tonight are Mercedes Mone vs Mina Shirakawa for the TBS title, Kota Ibushi vs Kazuchika Okada, Swerve Strickland and Will Ospreay vs The Beast Mortos and Dralistico, Bandido, Kyle O’Reilly, and Roderick Strong vs Konosuke Takeshita and The Young Bucks, and a four-way match with Brody King vs MJF vs Anthony Bowens vs AR Fox with the winner getting the #2 spot in the Casino Gauntlet match at All In.
Almost 5,000 fans are expected at the show this evening which makes this one of the highest-attended Dynamites of the past several months.
There are rumors floating around that Roman Reigns will not be the only WWE Superstar in the upcoming Street Fighter movie as former WWE champion Cody Rhodes is also in talks to join the cast.
NexusPointNews.com is reporting in an exclusive story that Rhodes is eyeing the role of Guile, a character which appeared originally in Street Fighter II. Guile is a colonel in the U.S. Air Force in the game and was portrayed by Jean-Claude Van Damme in the 1994 movie.
Rhodes’ next feature film is in The Naked Gun reboot.
Roman Reigns was announced las week as playing the role of Akuma. Production will begin in August in Australia.
ROH announcer Ian Riccaboni announced in a post on his social media that he signed a new deal with ROH/AEW.
“Very grateful and excited for what is to come! Celebrated by eating some hot dogs at the IronPigs at various points since reaching an agreement which was a while ago at this point so a lot of hot dogs for me & my family,” Riccaboni wrote.
Riccaboni has been doing commentary for Ring of Honor since 2014 and now leads the commentary table for ROH. He also does occasional work for AEW television shows.
The June 23 episode of Raw had 2,600,000 global views on Netflix, tying the lowest number of views for 2025 so far. That was down 100,000 from last week and despite the low number, the show ranked #4 in the Netflix Top 10 global chart.
Netflix recorded 5,200,000 viewing hours based on an episode edited to 1 hour and 52 minutes running time.
It was only in the top 10 chart in six different countries with Bahrain, Bolivia, Canada, Mexico, Sri Lanka, and United States the only ones registering, with no countries in Europe making the chart.
Chad Gable has undergone successful shoulder surgery and is now on the road to recovery.
“I’ll be back quicker than you can say GRACIAS,” Gable wrote in a post on Instagram, adding a video from the hospital bed showing his left arm in a sling.
It’s still unclear how long Gable will be out of action for at this point.
His alter ego, El Grande Americano, appeared on Raw as well on Monday in a backstage segment with American Made, but this time it was Ludwig Kaiser donning the mask and costume.
