Greetings squad. I’ll go ahead and just apologize for my severe lack of content to y’all this year. Suffice it to say, when the first half of my 2025 was spent woefully unemployed, and the latter half was spent catching up on being employed… my time was (and still is) often spoken for just trying to keep my head above water. My last name may make you think I have a predilection to undersea living, but alas I am more man than fish. But I digress. As cripplingly crazy as my schedule has been, my guiltiest of pleasures has never been far away. I’ve been knee-pad deep in all the comings and goings throughout the pro-wrestling world in 2025, and here are my top highs and lows to share with you — my stalwart pop culture stable. May you continue to let me be your Jon Moxley, and never your Finn Balor*.
* OK, I’ll just get this out of the way. I know AEW seems to be sewing the seeds that Mox is slowly losing his clout within the Death Riders, and I friggen love the slowly gurgling cauldron that it is… But Mox has shown what a faction leader should be, and the less said about Judgement Day the better. No offense, but “With Finn”, you don’t win.
Honorable Mentions:
Mick Foley.
Fed up with being tied to a continuously grosser-and-grosser version of the company that once offered him the biggest platform possible, Mrs. Foley’s baby boy had enough. In a single, delectable Instagram post, Mick Foley cut ties to the WWE for their continued support of the Trump administration in the wake of Donald Trump’s subhuman response to the murder of Rob and Michele Reiner.
MJF.
Even if it feels like most of the year has seen AEW’s baddest baddie out for filming and various other projects… Maxwell Jacob Friedman makes the most of his minutes. And while he personally doesn’t seem to be at fault for the complete misfire that was his stint in the “Hurt Syndicate”, his ability to return a couple months later to waltz back into the World Title picture and have it feel fully within scope says everything. He’s just better than you, and we know it.
Max Caster getting the dumbest catchphrase mildly over.
OK this is a purely indulgent pick for me, and maybe me alone. When AEW’s homegrown tag team “The Acclaimed” split, I was genuinely curious how both Max Caster and Anthony Bowens would fare alone. Max’s big idea? To get arenas full of people to spit back his word-vomit catch phrase “Let’s go Max, you’re the best wrestler alive!”. By Crom? He did it. Not everytime… but enough times for me to publicly acknowledge it. Kudos, Max.
Dishonorable Mentions:
HHH.
Whether it’s purposefully slapping his name on screen at the end of all WWE productions, being Trump’s appointed “Health Guru”, or just his lackluster copy/paste booking… Paul Levesque just keeps finding ways to grind my gears. The fact that he’s not an on-screen paid performer anymore just rubs salt in the wound. It turns out if you live the part of a villain long enough, you just might go ahead and become one.
Cody Rhodes.
At the start of Cody Rhodes’ wrestling entrance theme you can hear his faint lisp croak out “Wrestling has more than one royal family”, which leads me to envision Mel Brooks breaking the fourth wall to declare “it’s good to be the king!”. No offense to Dusty’s crown prince of pro-wrestling, but Cody continues to be the same milquetoast midcarder cosplaying like a headliner to me. Strip away the pomp and circumstance (and the Homelander gear), and you get a bleached-blond babyface who only seems to know how to wear a nice suit, and put me to sleep. It may very well not be him specifically, but the AI-writing team producing his storylines… but in all of 2025, Cody didn’t once make me actually care. Thorry.
Anthony Bowens just not getting anything over.
Antithetically to his former partner, Acclaimed’s resident scissoring scrapper couldn’t get a single thing over in 2025. From his initial “5 Tool Player” babyface gimmick — complete with the single dumbest move name ever coined (“The Mollywhopper!”) — to the eventual heel turn… nothing worked! And even when it was clear the audience would rather see the Acclaim reform and just adopt a heel persona again, Bowens’ ingratiating mewling seems to have ruined that too. It seems for having “5 Tools”, Bowens himself is the biggest one.
UP: AEW’s Continental Classic
When smart marks around the wrestling world got their panties in a bunch over AEW adopting an annual Japanese-style tournament for their promotion, I was stuck at the starting line scratching my head. The setup is massively convoluted, I’m afraid explaining it will have you abandon this column faster than Brock Lesnar denies wrong doing when lawyers knock on his door. But here goes nothing:
Two fields of 6 wrestlers each compete in matches to earn points. The highest point earners face each other to win… vague prizes and/or titles and/or money? The matches are all 20 minute contests, with absolutely no interference, ringside assistance, or rule breaking allowed. Winners get three points. Draws award one point a piece. Any ties in the end are determined by the head-to-head record (when choosing each field’s winner).
STILL WITH ME?!
But seriously, once you see how it works? It’s captivating! The tournament blocks force each of the six men within it to have a match with one another. This means at times two babyfaces compete, or two heels, or a tag team now working as two solo practitioners, and so forth. With the strict time limit, great matches have stopped short of a winner — showcasing how equally matched the combatants were. Without the threat of very pro-wrestling run-ins, cheaty-weapon attacks, or outside interference… stories are contained in-ring, which hilariously is my personal favorite way to enjoy pro-wrestling!
And here in 2025, AEW’s Continental Classic remains something I genuinely look forward to. This year thus far I’ve enjoyed a few major upsets, and some burgeoning storylines develop all within the tourney. This, to me, is why AEW continues to be my promotion of choice.
An UP and a DOWN: WWE’s “The Last Time Is Now” Saturday Night Main Event
Having dedicated the majority of his adult life to wearing jorts and being invisible, John Cena’s final year as an “in-ring” performer seemed like an absolute no-brainer to pull off. But leave it to the WWE to take a sad song, and make it crappier. After the botch of letting Cena be a heel long enough for the crowd to revolt him right back to a babyface, “The Last Time Is Now” tournament was opened. Contrary to AEW’s Dungeons and Dragons rule-fest… the WWE kept it simple: A field of 16 superstars in a single elimination tournament. Winner faces Cena on December 13th, in Washington, DC. Cena set the stage: “we’ll see old enemies, new stars, and maybe some people that don’t even work here (!) compete. And whoever wins? I hope I provide them with the same opportunity I had in my debut!”.
And with it, we saw what Cena setup booked right into the garbage can. Every “new” star who NEEDED an opportunity? Gone before Round Two. Every “surprise entrant” (Matt “Zack Ryder” Cardona, and Nick “Dolph Ziggler” Nemeth) gone in ROUND ONE. Perennial “shoved down our throats” babyfaces Curtain Jerker Jey Uso, and Temu Macho Man LA Knight fought each other. And goosestepping through all three of his bouts? Gunther — the old school evil Austrian who needs another push the same way Donald Trump needs his name on another building.
It all culminated on a pay-walled-via-Peacock “Saturday Night Main Event” two hour special. Loaded with enough twinkly-piano-laden video packages to make you think Cena might be dying, and an undercard that was supposed to “celebrate the young stars who need that Cena magic!”, what we wound up with with a schlocky mess. That is, until Cena came out. And for however many actual minutes he was on-screen, the “Neverseen 17” GOAT wrestled Gunther to an entire arena FINALLY ALL ON HIS SIDE. It was goosebump territory for me to hear “Let’s Go Cena!” and NO SIGN of a “CENA SUCKS!” following up. And in the end, Cena winked to the camera, and with a smile, tapped out. He left his shoes in the ring, and took a bow.
In the end? Cena himself showed why the WWE is quick to cash in on his legacy and slowly phase even the memories of Hulkamania out of its closet. But I won’t sit here and defend a terribly booked tournament, and an undercard that didn’t actually showcase these next stars of the WWE. Unless you’d like to tell me that Drew McIntyre disqualifying Cody Rhodes, preventing Oba Femi from winning was a great way to get the new talent over. Cena wins. The WWE continues to lose.
Editor’s Note: Stay tuned for Part Two of this year-end wrestling wrap-up on Monday
