WrestleMania 41 has come and gone. Each nights were loaded with winners and losers, as is the character of skilled wrestling, and now it is time to break down the less explicit winners and losers.
Should you want the outcomes, we have now a results page, for each nights. Should you want what we loved and hated, we have now that too. It will as a substitute be about who looked good, who looked bad, who turned victory into defeat, defeat into victory, and so forth and so forth. With two nights of motion, there was plenty to select from on this front. Some shall be easy, like Joe Hendry’s WrestleMania moment, some shall be more complicated, just like the effect of WWE’s big acquisition on the wrestling landscape. Sometimes it would just come all the way down to me not liking a man, like Logan Paul.
Without further ado, the winners and losers from WrestleMania 41.
Winner: Joe Hendry
Many individuals laughed at Joe Hendry’s repeated attempts to insert himself into the conversation about John Cena’s opponents on Cena’s farewell tour, but self-promotion is the lifeblood of skilled wrestling. Hendry proved that on Sunday when he took on one in all Cena’s chief rivals at WrestleMania 41, Randy Orton.
It is very hard to write down off Hendry’s pie-in-the-sky dreams of wrestling John Cena when he just wrestled a legitimate contemporary of Cena’s on short notice. Kevin Owens shouldn’t be medically cleared to compete. WWE needs a surprise opponent for Randy Orton, who will take the main focus off the incontrovertible fact that it is not a returning Rusev or a debuting Jeff Cobb. Thus, they dialed up the reliable human Rick Roll, Joe Hendry. It truly is a tremendous story.
Hendry didn’t win, and he also ate a second RKO after the match, but it surely is undeniable that the TNA World Champion’s persistence paid off. You’ll be able to be probably the most athletic, probably the most charismatic, probably the most completed, but for those who’re not putting yourself on the market, all of that shall be for naught.
Loser: Fans of Lucha Libre
As of Saturday, there may be one less major skilled wrestling promotion on the earth. AAA is now WWE. As a fair-weather AAA fan like myself, who gets TripleMania fever the best way that I get World Cup fever every 4 years, this would possibly not mean much, but for the actual fans of Lucha Libre, it is a seismic shift within the landscape of skilled wrestling.
AAA working with WWE money goes to steer to a variety of prospective luchadors taking the cash of AAA over the prestige of CMLL. It also signifies that the AAA product that fans know and love will likely be irrevocably altered, as the corporate becomes a feeder system for WWE. The thought would not have such a morbid tone if not for the woefully tone-deaf storyline that former AAA star Rey Fenix has been absorbed into.
Initially, a battle between Chad Gable’s El Grande Americano character and Rey Mysterio over the insulting way Americano treats the history of Lucha Libre. When Mysterio was injured, Rey Fenix took his place, lost, and even pulled AAA star El Hijo Del Vikingo into the combination. While there continues to be time for Fenix, Mysterio, and the celebrities of AAA to get their revenge at Worlds Collide in June, because it stands, fans of Lucha Libre can be right to feel punched within the mouth by the goings-on of WrestleMania 41 weekend.
Winner: Iyo Sky
Iyo Sky is proof that a real employee can still find fame and fortune in WWE. Bianca Belair is a capital-C Character who all the time seems to have good enough momentum to hop into the major event. Rhea Ripley is possibly one in all the largest female stars in WWE history at this point. But Iyo Sky just wrestles higher than either of them.
While there may be a number of ways WWE is stuck up to now, Sky becoming the primary Asian superstar to win a match at WrestleMania was a long-overdue little bit of progress. That her victory got here on the expense of two of WWE’s biggest female stars, if not biggest stars usually, makes the win all that much sweeter. Sky has all the time been something of a sidekick in factions like Damage CTRL, so seeing her take center stage in such an exciting win easily pushed her into the stratosphere of the ladies’s division.
Also winning probably the greatest matches of the weekend is a pleasant feather in her cap. The weekend was a really mixed-bag quality-wise, but all three women brought an amazing amount of energy and drama to the cardboard.
Loser: SmackDown Tag Division
Look, I do know that WWE needs to maintain moving forward and have plans for after its biggest show of the yr, but man did this weekend need a Tables, Ladders, and Chairs Match. There shall be a TLC Match on Friday, but that is Friday. They clearly did not have time for whatever madness DIY, The Motor City Machine Guns, and the Street Profits could conjure in WWE’s most entertaining stipulation; in spite of everything, they needed time for “Stone Cold” Steve Austin’s salute to reckless driving.
The incontrovertible fact that the middling World Tag Team Championship match between The Recent Day and The War Raiders got WrestleMania time was just salt within the wound. They weren’t snubbing the tag division usually, just the one with probably the most exciting teams. It just appears like an entire miss. I’m sure the “SmackDown” fans shall be grateful for what is certain to be an ideal match, but it surely still left a gaping hole within the weekend that no match was capable of fill.
Winner: Dominik Mysterio
Dominik Mysterio is WWE Intercontinental Champion. The young Mysterio has come a good distance from being his dad’s smiley sidekick, and now he heads into the remaining of 2025 carrying the title his father held proudly. But that is not all.
I already said that the WWE acquisition of AAA is bad for Lucha Libre fans usually, but this does open up a chance for Mysterio to seem in a promotion once thought not possible for the WWE star. The Mysterio legacy is not only in WWE. It is also in AAA. Add in Mysterio’s many tributes to Eddie Guerrero and he feels tailor-made for regardless of the WWE/AAA partnership will seem like. A real WWE star with a real link to AAA. It shouldn’t be not possible that he shall be a bridge on this recent era.
Even still, the win alone is sufficient to solidify Mysterio as greater than a nepotism hire. His rise through WWE’s rankings has been regular and doesn’t appear to be stopping anytime soon.
Loser: Cody Rhodes
Cody Rhodes is now on yr number two of his beef with The Rock being passed off to another person. First Roman Reigns, and now John Cena. Despite even getting the prospect to wrestle The Rock, like Night 1 of WrestleMania 40, it never looks as if Cody manages to get his hands on The Rock when he must most.
Rock was the catalyst for John Cena’s heel turn at Elimination Chamber, making Rock’s absence from WrestleMania 41 glaring. Even when he shows up on “Raw,” and said that is all in line with plan, he still seems to have left Travis Scott and John Cena holding the bag, narratively speaking. We still aren’t 100% clear on how Cena, Scott, and Rock all fit together, meaning Cena heads into his seventeenth world title run rudderless, while Cody simply looks like a geek. I could say that everybody involved is a loser, but Cena is world champion, Travis Scott is endlessly the star of “Aggro Dr1ft,” and that leaves Cody Rhodes because the guy who got nothing out of this aside from a story to complete.
Although this time that story is way, much dumber.
