WWE 2025 mid-year: events recap, upcoming schedule, title changes, Netflix ‘Unreal,’ The Rock rumors, Brock Lesnar return, injuries, and Hulk Hogan’s passing.
Halfway through WWE 2025, the company has felt bigger, louder, and weirder in the best possible way. The year opened with a distribution shake-up that changed how millions watch Raw, marched through spring with title swaps and teases, and then detonated at SummerSlam with a shock cash-in and the return of a beast. Even the fourth wall moved: Netflix peeled back the curtain with a backstage docuseries, inviting fans into the writers’ room that steers the chaos. All of this unfolded against moments of loss and rumor, triumph and recovery—a year that reminds you why WWE is part sport, part theater, and part global soap opera.
When the clock flipped to January, Raw began its migration to Netflix in key territories, a multi-year deal that put WWE’s flagship into a streaming spotlight and instantly pulled in big global audiences for the premiere month. The shift wasn’t just a logo in the corner; it was a statement about where live entertainment lives now.
Spring and early summer ran hot. Women’s wrestling took center stage with the long-awaited return of Evolution on July 13 in Atlanta—only the second all-women’s WWE PPV ever. The night’s pivot point came when Naomi cashed in her Money in the Bank contract mid-match to beat IYO SKY and Rhea Ripley and leave as Women’s World Champion. The card also set future stakes: Stephanie Vaquer earned her title shot for late summer. Evolution wasn’t just nostalgia; it was an emphatic reset that placed the women’s divisions at the heart of the road to autumn.
Then came SummerSlam at MetLife Stadium—a two-night sprawl where history turned twice in 24 hours. On Night 1, CM Punk finally slayed Gunther for the World Heavyweight Championship… only for Seth Rollins to cash in Money in the Bank moments later and snatch the gold in the most audacious swerve of the year. On Night 2, Cody Rhodes outlasted John Cena in a brutal Street Fight to regain the Undisputed WWE Championship—and immediately after, a long-haired Brock Lesnar returned from a two-year absence to drop Cena with an F-5, lighting a fuse that will burn the rest of the year.
If you felt like the power rankings shuffled every other segment in the first half of 2025, you weren’t imagining it. Between Evolution’s cash-in, Punk’s short-lived coronation, Rollins’ heist, and Cody’s summer triumph, WWE told a story of crowns worn for minutes, days, and—if you’re lucky—months.
The slate ahead is refreshingly international and stadium-sized:
Clash in Paris — August 31, 2025, Paris La Défense Arena. A fresh European identity for the “Clash” banner, set in a venue built to rumble. Expect Vaquer’s promised women’s title opportunity to factor heavily after Evolution.
Crown Jewel: Perth — October 11, 2025, RAC Arena, Australia. In a twist to tradition, WWE takes Crown Jewel out of Saudi Arabia for a weekend takeover in Western Australia, bookended by SmackDown (Oct 10) and Raw (Oct 13). Announcements framed the show as a champion-vs-champion showcase and part of John Cena’s farewell year.
Survivor Series: WarGames — November 29, 2025, Petco Park, San Diego. Baseball park, open air, WarGames cages—it’s set to be WWE’s first Survivor Series in a stadium environment, and a late-year inflection point before 2026.
WWE’s official events hub continues to list and update live dates, with Clash in Paris front and center as the next PLE on deck.
If by “package winners” you mean the matches that changed hands—here are the title swings that defined the first half and change:
World Heavyweight Championship: Seth Rollins (new champion) via Money in the Bank cash-in on CM Punk at SummerSlam Night 1. It’s the quintessential Rollins moment: opportunistic, theatrical, and era-defining.
Undisputed WWE Championship: Cody Rhodes (new champion) def. John Cena in a Street Fight on SummerSlam Night 2, reclaiming the top men’s prize on SmackDown.
Women’s World Championship: Naomi (new champion) cashes in during SKY vs. Ripley at Evolution and leaves with the title—a masterclass in timing and storytelling.
Women’s Intercontinental Championship: Becky Lynch secured the gold at Money in the Bank (June 7), then weathered challenges through the summer, including Evolution.
Tag Team turmoil & mid-card belts: WWE’s official channels and roundups documented a flurry of spring/early-summer swaps across Raw/SmackDown. If the volume felt high, that’s because it was—across April alone, NXT and main roster saw double-digit changes as the company reshuffled the deck.
Title scenes can change on a dime in this climate; the key pattern of 2025 has been velocity—fewer marathon reigns, more story-directed pivots, and cash-ins that matter.
The business story of 2025 is simple: Raw’s move to Netflix made WWE feel omnipresent. The deal put Monday Night Raw on Netflix in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., and Latin America beginning January 2025, a distribution step that reshaped fan habits overnight and set the tone for WWE’s global push.
Then Netflix doubled down creatively with WWE: Unreal, a five-episode docuseries that goes inside the writers’ room. Narrated by WWE’s Chief Content Officer Paul “Triple H” Levesque, the series reveals how pitches morph into payoffs (and how many “what ifs” die on a whiteboard). The show’s own promos teased alternate timeline storylines they nearly ran—like different Royal Rumble outcomes and a non-heel-turn Cena—and critics applauded the radical transparency, even as purists bristled. Whether you loved or loathed the look behind the curtain, Unreal captured the creative physics that welded 2025 together.
You’ve probably seen the headlines and X-threads. As of August 12, 2025, there is no official WWE announcement of a 2025 WrestleMania being held in Saudi Arabia or of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson wrestling there this year. What does exist are persistent reports that Saudi Arabia is pushing for a WrestleMania-branded show in 2027, with The Rock eyed as a potential headliner—talk that’s heated up in recent days but remains unconfirmed by WWE. Treat it as exactly what it is: a high-profile rumor with smoke but no on-the-record fire yet.
For documented 2025 appearances: The Rock promoted WWE’s Netflix era—he was even tied to the Raw Netflix debut buildup early in the year—though his in-ring 2025 status has been more cameo than campaign. In short: plenty of Rock energy, no signed Saudi WrestleMania in 2025.
Brock Lesnar’s surprise return at SummerSlam Night 2 was the year’s loudest pop-and-gasp combo. Two years after his last WWE appearance, he hit the ramp with a new look and a familiar message—F-5 to John Cena—and instantly reinserted himself into the main-event web. Coverage across sports outlets confirmed the moment; the chatter since has revolved around where he points that energy next and whether he intersects with Rollins’ power base on Raw.
Late-spring and summer also saw smaller-scale returns and teases as rosters adjusted to injuries: veterans ducked in for angles, tag scenes re-shuffled, and NXT call-ups were used to plug gaps. It’s been a year of strategic re-entries, the kind that make September and October cards feel fresh.
The first half of 2025 was bruising. The unofficial long list has included headline names like Kevin Owens, Bianca Belair, Liv Morgan, Rey Mysterio, Tama Tonga, and others—some out for weeks, others for months. Independent trackers and specialty outlets keep running ledgers, while WWE programming weaves status notes into commentary. As always: ETAs move. (And alas, sometimes setbacks happen.)
One storyline-adjacent wrinkle: Seth Rollins’ “is he hurt or isn’t he?” thread became part of the SummerSlam build before the cash-in that flipped Punk’s night upside down—an example of how 2025 blurred reality and work to keep everyone guessing.
From January’s Netflix launch buzz to August’s Money in the Bank heist, the gravity well of Raw has been the evolving chess game between CM Punk and Seth Rollins. Punk’s rehabilitation arc—earning the shot, beating Gunther straight up at SummerSlam—felt like a redemption story finally closing. Rollins then tore the last page out of Punk’s book and wrote his own ending, cashing in on the spot to walk out champion. Fans will argue the morality forever. WWE will happily book the rematches. Either way, the sequence crystallized what 2025 has been about: big swings with bigger consequences.
Raw since then has featured Punk clawing back momentum, Rollins consolidating power with allies, and a stage set for grudges that won’t evaporate by autumn. Keep your eye on the opening segments and the closing brawls—their orbit isn’t decaying anytime soon.
On July 24, 2025, Hulk Hogan (Terry Bollea) died at age 71. The cause of death was an acute myocardial infarction (heart attack); medical examiner records later noted previously undisclosed leukemia and atrial fibrillation. The funeral—held August 5 at Indian Rocks Baptist Church in Florida, where Hogan was baptized in 2023—was a private service that drew tributes from every era of sports-entertainment. Whatever your era, whatever your favorite, the outpouring made clear how vast his shadow still is.
In the days that followed, family members shared public remembrances on what would have been his 72nd birthday, a reminder that behind the showman was a complicated father and friend whose presence defined decades of wrestling’s boom times. It’s impossible to write the story of WWE—of 1980s Saturday mornings, of 1990s pivots, of 2000s nostalgia—without spending chapters on Hulk Hogan. 2025 forced those chapters back open.
Clash in Paris momentum is pulsing through weekly TV. Watch how the women’s title picture (thanks to Evolution’s battle royal winner Stephanie Vaquer) crystallizes in the final build, and how Raw/SmackDown jockey for positioning around the stadium show.
Crown Jewel moving to Australia is both a business and creative pivot—expect the “champion vs champion” concept to give us a clean bragging-rights snapshot heading into Survivor Series season, with a sendoff beat for John Cena on that side of the world.
Raw’s Netflix cadence—with flexible runtimes and global reach—continues to re-shape how cliffhangers are timed and how often “last-ten-minutes chaos” becomes appointment viewing in different time zones. It’s less about one Monday; it’s about replay culture by Tuesday.
If the first six-plus months are any guide, nothing is safe. Cody Rhodes now carries SmackDown’s top prize into a Europe-Australia-U.S. gauntlet; Seth Rollins wears the World Heavyweight crown he stole fair and square (or unfair and squared, depending on your moral compass); Naomi stands tall in a women’s division stacked with sharks; and Brock Lesnar lurks like a weather system. Add in the speculative storm around The Rock and Saudi’s event ambitions—aimed more at 2027 than now—and WWE’s year-end feels like a fuse burning toward multiple powder kegs.
What’s certain is the schedule: Paris in August, Perth in October, San Diego in November. What’s uncertain is everything that makes WWE addictive: who holds the belts when the planes land, who’s healthy when the cages drop, and who decides (in a room full of dry-erase markers and carefully-kept secrets) that tonight is the night the story swerves.
In any case, WWE 2025 has already justified its hype. The rest of the year is the encore.
For ticketing and weekly TV tapings, check WWE’s live events page, which is updated continuously.
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