WWE SmackDown 6/27/2025: 3 Things We Hated And 3 Things We Loved

Welcome to Wrestling Inc.'s weekly review of "WWE SmackDown," or as we like to call it these days, "WWE Gimmick Infringement!" For those who may have been concerned, don't worry — we have PLENTY to say about CM Punk countering John Cena's "pipebomb promo" reappropriation from last week by transforming himself into the "Doctor of Punkanomics" and dropping a battle rap. We also have thoughts on the women's US and men's WWE tag team title matches that took place Friday night, as well as the women's division as a whole upon their arrival in Saudi Arabia. And of course, we couldn't let Night of Champions pass without addressing the King and Queen of the Ring finalists.

If there's any other element of the show you're interested in reading about, you can go find some facts and details on our "SmackDown" results page, but we only have room to comment on the segments and matches that move us the most deeply in one direction or another, and those are the segments and matches listed above. In other words, from the funhouse mirror opening segment to Punk referring to Cena as "my Drake," here are three things we hated and three things we loved about the 6/27/25 episode of "WWE SmackDown."

Listen, I understand that Cody Rhodes, Randy Orton, Jade Cargill, and Asuka are all working tomorrow and I wasn't expecting any of them to wrestle tonight. I just wish there was like ... something interesting we were doing with these matchups, instead of just sending everyone out for these lame babyface vs. babyface promo segments with no teeth and zero heat.

While Rhodes vs. Orton and Cargill vs. Asuka are obviously two very different cases, there's actual history between both sets of opponents that they could be tapping into, and they're just ... not, really. Granted, the history between Cargill and Asuka involves both women having tag partners, but aside from Bianca Belair and Naomi, that's about good as it gets with someone as relatively new as Cargill. Asuka was involved in Cargill's first WWE match after her Royal Rumble debut, losing to her (as well as Belair and Naomi) at WrestleMania 40 alongside Kairi Sane and Dakota Kai; Asuka and Sane would then lose the women's tag titles to Cargill and Belair, effectively service as the launching point for whatever initial success Cargill has had. There's a story in there somewhere (Cargill is undefeated against Asuka, if nothing else) but for some reason it's not being told. Instead, Asuka just came out for a promo segment with Cargill and did her traditional promo segment bits that the crowd remembers and loves, just to ensure Cargill will be booed when she wins on Saturday. Tremendous work, WWE.

As for Rhodes and Orton, there's no need to explain the history there, and there's certainly no room. This will be the 13^th televised singles match between the two, but the first in almost 12 years; they've tagged together four times since Rhodes came back to WWE in 2022, but they've never been on opposing sides. It's a match fans have been waiting a long time to see, primarily due to the potential for a fascinating, psychological, textually rich feud. Instead, WWE is blowing this match on the King of the Ring finals, where there's no time for any such thing. In this week's jankily broadcast opening promo segment, Orton isn't concerned with the history between he and Rhodes — he wants redemption for losing in King of the Ring last year, and he wants revenge on John Cena that would presumably come with the SummerSlam title match. Rhodes basically says "Yeah, well, I'm going to win anyway," and then the segment is over. So Orton doesn't really care at all about beating Rhodes, specifically, and Rhodes has essentially gotten zero promo time during this entire build and hasn't had anything interesting to say when given the chance, so... who cares?

Again, I'm not saying I wanted these people wrestling tonight. But if this is all you've got, give them the night off and run a video package or something, because these promo segments are just actively harming my interest in Night of Champions.

Written by Miles Schneiderman

I would be lying if I said that I hadn't taken a peek at the results of each match that took place on tonight's episode of "SmackDown" ahead of the delayed airing. The second that I saw Giulia had dethroned Zelina Vega to become the new Women's United States Champion, I knew that I was going to love this particular part of the show as a big fan of Giulia's which was proven to be right when I got around to actually watching the match later on.

WWE has been pushing Giulia hard since her arrival on the main roster, which includes having her compete in the Women's Money In The Bank Ladder Match earlier this month and giving her an ample amount of television time. Now that she's been established amongst viewers of "Raw" and "SmackDown", putting the Women's United States Championship on her was a great call in order to keep her looking strong and continues to cement her by having her actually do what she's set out to do for a while by winning the title. While Vega is talented between the ropes, she hadn't done much with her reign aside from spending the vast majority of it feuding with Chelsea Green and The Secret Hervice. It had started to become played out, and felt like the perfect time to have her be dethroned before the feud and reign as a whole had grown too stale.

Written by Olivia Quinlan

When I first saw spoilers for "SmackDown" earlier in the day on X, it looked to me in my rather fast doom scrolling as though Los Garza caused the disqualification in the WWE Tag Team Championship match tonight for all the teams to take on the Wyatt Sicks. However, when I actually watched the match tonight, I have no clue what WWE was actually going for here. Over the last few weeks, all of the other teams on "SmackDown" have been terrified of the Wyatts and confused as to why they're going after the Street Profits and the tag team championships when they all believe they're the next in line for a shot. However, tonight, all these teams just couldn't work together for a few moments to take out the Wyatts themselves.

Sure, there was a disqualification, but one of the teams went after Angelo Dawkins during the match after first going for Dexter Lumis, pulling him out of the ring. It was the physicality with Dawkins, I believe, that made the referee finally ring the bell on the match, and it all broke down from there. The teams starting fighting with each other almost as much as they did against Lumis and Joe Gacy, as well as Erick Rowan when he got in the ring, with Uncle Howdy to follow to end things. It was all kind of messy and it doesn't seem like WWE knows entirely what they're doing here.

While all the other teams, Los Garza, Motor City Machine Guns, #DIY, and FrAxiom can hate each other, you'd think they'd be smart enough to know now that they have to work together to take out the Wyatts if any of them want a shot at the Profits. But, that leads WWE to a situation where they either bury the Wyatts and have them taken out by all these guys, or the Wyatts just become too powerful for anyone to beat, which is even more difficult to book around if they have the gold. I've been saying it since they've came back and it still holds true – the Wyatt Sicks should have stuck to their original gimmick of taking out factions and other stars who had abandoned their "families" or any other slight they perceived that needed handled the spooky way.

I'm not sure how WWE can get the Wyatts back on track, at least in my eyes and maybe it's just me, but they're still not fitting in the tag team title picture for me. The "SmackDown" tag division runs pretty deep, so either spooky beings who can't be defeated clean have the titles for a long run, or, their gimmick is hurt by abandoning the title picture and going back to their original roots. There certainly may be another option for them, but as of tonight, I just can't see it.

Written by Daisy Ruth

WWE's women literally shined tonight.

When you think of a Saudi Arabia WWE show, you don't immediately think of the roster's women, and honestly, that's understandable. There are obvious social reasons for the underrepresentation (or rather, de-prioritization) of female superstars that exist outside of the ring (we won't get into them). Even from WWE's booking, however, the Saudi shows have, historically, not focused on the women as much as other premium live events. From 2018-2019, there were no women on the Saudi cards at all. 2019 Crown Jewel brought the first-ever women's Saudi match to WWE programming, but Natalya and Lacey Evans were criticized for their blandness, as they were not permitted to engage in certain behaviors iconic to their characters, and their frumpy T-shirts over black, nondescript bodysuits took away any individuality the two women may have otherwise been able to express. The T-shirt/bodysuit combo continued until 2022. This history lesson is necessary for my point; it highlights just how WWE's women have, historically, been deemed as less-than by WWE's Saudi ventures. Women were not intended to have a place at these Saudi events.

Nevertheless, she persisted.

Friday's episode of "WWE SmackDown" is near-unrecognizable compared to WWE's earliest Saudi shows. Not only were a good handful of women featured on television through its two womens' title matches and other segments, but every women had gear that respected Saudi Arabia's modesty standards without sacrificing her character's aesthetic integrity. Zelina Vega's cosplay talent was not wasted by her position as a woman in a WWE Saudi show: she came out with a whole snake entourage before her Women's United States Championship defense. Giulia came out in similarly impressive gear, with her reflective and neon green outfit similar to her typical in-ring style. Jade Cargill, Naomi, Charlotte Flair, Alexa Bliss — all of these women also came in absolutely stunning pieces of gear that beautifully communicated their characters' aesthetics

It might seem frivolous or shallow to offer such high praise to clothing choices, but the evolution of women's gear in places like Saudi Arabia show that it is possible for women to express themselves in ways that are respectful to a foreign nation's customs — "cultural differences" are not an excuse to de-prioritize the female talent on your roster. It also shows the creative genius of WWE's female roster. WWE, and all of professional wrestling, is built on aesthetics; both male and female wrestlers condition their bodies and get custom-made gear in order to signal to the audience their in-ring personas. To stifle that outward expression of identity, as WWE did in its early Saudi shows, is to purposefully debuff the in-ring storytelling capacities of WWE's female roster.

I fully credit WWE's women's division for getting creative with their in-ring expression. The effort they put into their aesthetics is visible every week, but when they go to these extra lengths to preserve their character's visuals, that effort is felt tenfold. WWE's women dared to be beautiful tonight. In that beauty is resistance and resilience.

Written by Angeline Phu

If you read last week's column, you know that I hated John Cena's pipe bomb parody. In full transparency, I saw a clip of CM Punk referencing Kendrick Lamar and Drake and immediately hated it. I was prepared to hate this segment and I disliked a lot of it. There were a few lines that I liked. Coming out to "The Time Is Now" was an excellent choice as was the Titantron showing a moving "PunkLife" logo (which of course is available on a shirt in the WWEShop). He was also dressed like 2003 Cena, complete with a custom baseball jersey which really brought it all together.

On the other hand, both men are closing in on 50 years of age and it was cringe overall. As I looked at Punk in cosplay and Cena wearing his uniform of the last two decades, I kept thinking of how silly they looked. The aforementioned Kendrick and Drake line fits the cringe category. The line I hated most was when Punk said he'd retire too if they hired his ex. Can WWE just let Nikki Bella live? She's clearly living rent-free in their heads. Some of the lines Punk delivered could've just as easily been delivered to a mirror. These last two promos haven't really added anything new to the feud. They're just rehashing their original feud with the roles reversed and using each other's greatest hits.

The Saudi fans ate it up and Punk was very over. As I mentioned last week, Punk has been set up to win the last few interactions with Cena, but he's not going to when the King of the Ring winner (*cough Cody Rhodes cough*) gets a title shot at "SummerSlam". Where does Punk go from here if he can't dethrone his nemesis?

Written by Samantha Schipman

Sometimes wrestling can be a very silly entertainment medium, something that cannot quite be explained but rather felt collectively by those who call themselves fans. Rather famously, wrestling fans aren't an agreeable bunch with everyone including us writers having our own thoughts and beliefs attached to what the perfect wrestling angle is. But what cannot be denied is the fact that no matter what it is that one enjoys about wrestling, rest assured there is going to be another out there who just doesn't get it. 

That will be very much the case coming out of this week's "SmackDown," as CM Punk committed himself to dragging the "Doctor of Thuganomics" out of retirement for one last rib against John Cena. Cena had just last week adopted the "Pipebomb" in a rather – admittedly hollowly – cathartic promo against his more-than-storied rival, talking at Punk while he rested in the rubble of the table he had been put through. So this week it was time for the challenger to get his heat back, in front of a crowd that weren't entirely confident of how to receive him – considering he had made a rather sweeping statement about the Saudi Arabian state of affairs a few years back, and appeared tail-tucked to apologize for his comments as the title bout loomed earlier on Friday. 

The word had been that WWE was expecting him to be booed and had made accommodations as a result, and it certainly seemed like reviving the iconic gimmick worked to warm the crowd to him, as he launched rhythmic if a little shallow digs at the self-proclaimed "Last Real World Champion" much to their audible pleasure. But Punk had won all he was going to win over the moment he made the entrance, committing to the bit and honestly making himself look a little bit of a prized fool for the sake of entertaining. Purely within the context of the story and the way it panned out, the angle did what it had set out to do, giving some cringe-worthy laughs at the expense of the challenger who realistically doesn't stand much of a chance to win. 

It really shouldn't have been good, but it was "Sharknado" good, in the sense that after a certain degree of "What is going on?" one just learns to go with it and enjoy the rollercoaster they're on. That's not to say I don't understand if you personally didn't like it, or would prefer to see either the WWE Championship or the story between Cena and Punk treated with greater reverence. Sure, that might have been better. But sometimes it is just good to have some dumb fun, and if there is any pair of words you could use to describe this segment, then dumb fun certainly fits the mold.

Written by Max Everett