WWE Royal Rumble 2025: Biggest Winners & Losers

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The 2025 Royal Rumble in Indianapolis, IN was a wonderful night to be Jey Uso and Charlotte Flair. The "Yeet" merchant and "The Queen" punched their tickets to WrestleMania 41 by winning the titular battle royals. You can read more about the crazy happenings on our results page.

The show had many ups and downs, as discussed in the "Loved and Hated" column, but now it's time to break down who really won and who really lost on Saturday. As I said, results will tell you the actual -well- results of the show, but this is more to break down who came out looking good, even in defeat, and who came out looking bad, even in glorious victory.

Sometimes winning on the show will amount to winning in this piece, as Jey Uso has a strong case for the night's biggest winner. But sometimes winning will be an albatross, like it will for DIY. Without further ado, the winners and the losers from the 2025 Royal Rumble.

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The Royal Rumble now looks like an actual sporting event, full stop. In the days of old, WWE graphic designers were usually forced to come up with CGI renderings of the most hideous WWE Superstar avatars, often making Roman Reigns look like a haunted tree or making Bianca Belair's ponytail and lips look like they're stories tall or a giant Becky Lynch that looked like a Chucky doll. It had to be demoralizing work.

This year, the graphics department was put to work in much more substantive fashion. At the bottom of the screen, a display showed the number of people who've entered, the number eliminated, and other details. Entrances were granted full stats and even a little flag for country of origin. Eliminations were spelled out on the bottom of the screen in real-time. It felt as if WWE had finally added the "sports" aspect of "sports entertainment" which had been missing in the decades since the term was coined.

I've had my qualms with the storytelling of Paul Levesque and Lee Fitting's tenure, but the look of the program is one place he has had resounding success. WWE has never looked more like a sibling company to UFC than it does now. Especially a week after the NFL conference championships, and a week before the Super Bowl, the Royal Rumble felt like it was the bye week event that the pro bowl has always struggled to be.

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I need to preface this by saying I like Charlotte Flair. She's a very good wrestler and has told some genuinely great stories. It's just that we've been here before. The result of the Women's Royal Rumble was disappointingly rote: It's Charlotte's world and we're just living in it.

There was something fresh about the WWE Women's Division with Charlotte Flair gone. Especially with the introduction of two women's mid-card titles, it felt like the division had some breathing room, and outside of the main event feud between Rhea Ripley and Liv Morgan, it felt like anyone could break into the upper echelon and end up a women's champion.

There was a suffocating to Charlotte's entrance. The fact that it occurred at the lucky number 27 spot added a certain groan-worthy predictability to the proceedings. For a brief moment, I thought Roxanne Perez might be really skyrocketing in favor in WWE until I realized she was just there to give people like me hope. There's a whole midcard for the women's division now, and I can't help but feel like Flair just put a big glass ceiling over it, penning-in what used to feel like a more free-range division.

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The man himself can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think Kevin Owens might be having a lot of fun at work. In the weeks since he stole Cody Rhodes's winged-eagle WWE Championship replica, he has been on a tear, covering himself in WWE merch and getting under the skin of everyone from Rhodes to even his long-time rival CM Punk. He arrived for his Ladder Match against Rhodes in a shirt that read "The Canadian Dream. Son of a Security Systems Technician." He got to have yet another ladder match where he is bounced off of increasingly complicated ladder structures. He is basically living his dream.

No, he didn't win the Undisputed WWE Championship. I might not be crazy about the safe choice, Cody Rhodes, heading to WrestleMania, but after 4 years of Roman Reigns in that spot, I can't say I'm surprised. This is why Owens's efforts were all the more valuable. I actually believed for a few crazy moments that WWE was going to switch out the resounding success of Cody Rhodes and put the title on Owens. This was before Jey Uso won the Rumble, you see, and so I had no reason to assume there wasn't a bevy of possible main event matches for John Cena, who I assumed would win, and who could carry his final WrestleMania against Gunther, Owens, Rhodes, or whoever they put in front of the retiring star.

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DIY and the Motor City Machine Guns are stuck in a truly unfortunate situation. Paul "Triple H" Levesque thinks that he can make it 2017 again, either by science or magic.

DIY was at one point a team that had monumental tag team classics against teams like American Alpha or The Revival. Unfortunately, Jason Jordan hasn't wrestled since before the first Trump administration, and The Revival is currently in a different company defending the honor of Ricky Morton from Jon Moxley and his band of grappling thugs. DIY are also in a similar predicament of trying to recapture the glory of their 2010s heyday while wrestling in a ring that makes both teams look smaller than I ever thought humanly possible. 

It is not entirely DIY or MCMG or even Levesque's fault that WWE's tag team division is struggling. An injury to Tanga Loa meant that Guerrillas of Destiny's first run in WWE was cut off at the knees, and Rey Fenix being held back by AEW has left Penta to fend for himself in the singles division. Things aren't much easier on "Raw," where the World Tag Team Championships are mainly held by the Vikings after a long stint from The Judgement Day. "NXT" doesn't really have a lot of teams that can be promoted without also destabilizing that delicate division.

The two-out-of-three-falls format also created a level of predictability that meant many found their way to the bathroom during what should've been one of the night's standout matches. The current WWE PLE format includes a lot of downtime between matches, which is why it seems a little rough that the tag team title match was still used as a chance to buy some merchandise, buy some popcorn, or just stretch your legs.

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Speaking of merchandise...

I have often doubted Jey Uso. I've written on this site and in the work chat about how his "Main Event" name is a bit presumptuous for a guy who hasn't really had main event success. Even the WrestleMania match he main evented was a loss. His popular catchphrase "Yeet" has been winning over fans and selling merchandise left and right, but it didn't feel like WWE was actually betting on him in any substantial way. He won the Intercontinental Title. He had a solid match with Gunther and some pretty middling title matches against Roman Reigns.

None of that matters now.

Jey Uso won the 2025 Royal Rumble, eliminating John f***ing Cena. There is no bigger way to say that the company is actually behind a guy than that kind of result. Uso entered at number 20 and made a valiant showing. The Indianapolis crowd was on Uso's side. It was a pretty perfect moment to pull the trigger and the company did it. Having the final three be him, Cena, and the odious Logan Paul, made Uso the most refreshing choice of the final three, and when he sent Cena toppling to the floor it was hard not to pump your fist even just a little. While I'm not entirely sure of Uso's chances at dethroning Gunther, he definitely makes the road to WrestleMania much more interesting for the likes of Cena, Seth Rollins, CM Punk, Drew McIntyre, Roman Reigns, and all the other likely contenders who will be squabbling to face Cody Rhodes. Should make for a hell of an Elimination Chamber at the very least.

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Solo Sikoa is likely biding his time, waiting for the right moment to come back, after being ousted from the New Bloodline by Jacob Fatu following his loss in Tribal Combat to Roman Reigns on the premiere episode of "WWE Raw" on Netflix. While there is plenty of room for Sikoa to get his revenge later, it feels like there was a missed opportunity to not have him involved in the Rumble, either as a participant or just as interference to get under Fatu's skin.

After a year-plus of the Solo Sikoa/New Tribal Chief experiment, I understand going back to the drawing board with Solo, but it also feels like he's being left behind. A lot of people came out of the Bloodline Civil War looking better, Rumble winner Jey Uso included, but Sikoa was woefully exposed and his lack of appearance at the Rumble just further solidifies my feeling that he might've been the only real "loser" of the feud. Jimmy and Jey Uso rebounded from a terrible WrestleMania match, Tanga Loa has accepted his role as a kind of clown-ish figure, everyone found something to work with in the story, except Solo.