WWE Clash In Paris 2025: Biggest Winners & Losers

WWE held its final main roster PLE on Peacock. Sunday’s Clash In Paris took place in the titular city, and was a lively affair, thanks to the energy from the song-happy French crowd. I won’t bore you with the specifics of what happened, as our fastidious results page has all the happenings of the show. I also won’t be going through what I loved or hated, we did that already in the Loved and Hateds.

Instead, it’s time to talk about who looked like a winner and who looked like a loser, coming out of Clash In Paris. Sometimes a winner can be a loser, like John Cena, whose retirement tour has left me singing the chorus to an old Peggy Lee tune. Sometimes a loser can be a winner, like the duo of LA Knight and Jey Uso. Sometimes, it’s exactly how it looks, and a loser is a loser, like Nikki Bella.

Enough previewing, let’s break down the Winners and Losers from Clash in Paris.

Fatal-4-Way matches are usually pretty predictable affairs, two wrestlers in a feud, and two wrestlers who can act as “pin-eaters” to take the fall and elongate said marquee feud. It’s less predictable than a Triple Threat, mind you, but you still have an idea of who is going to be taking the fall.

I’ll give you a little peek behind the curtain: A majority of the Wrestling Inc. staff figured either LA Knight or Jey Uso would be the “pin-eater” for Sunday’s World Heavyweight Championship Match, so that the feud between Seth Rollins and former champion CM Punk could continue just a little longer. Knight and Uso are popular talents who seem to be hitting a ceiling, and it makes them perfect fall guys for these kinds of multi-man matches.

Then Becky Lynch showed up and punched CM Punk in the beanbag and the match ended up being decided by the two men who have been the narrative focal point of the last few weeks. It’s the kind of moment that will play very well in a video package down the road, but ultimately, it means that there is no room for anyone else in this feud between Punk and The Vision, and that’s great news for Uso and Knight.

Both men showed out on Sunday, reminding people in the crowd and backstage why they’ve become such popular stars in the last few years. Neither of them took a pinfall, and thus they can both go on to their next feud with their heads held high, while Rollins and Punk wring out the last drops of drama from their feud. Then, when there’s nowhere left to go in the saga of Punk and Rollins, there Knight and Uso are, all shiny and un-pinned.

She came, she called Becky Lynch a “b****,” and then she lost. Such was the story of Nikki Bella’s return to singles competition.

The match with Becky Lynch was obviously some kind of consolation after initial plans for Nikki at WWE Evolution were shelved due to an injury to Liv Morgan, but it doesn’t change the fact that the match itself left fans singing that old Peggy Lee tune, “Is That All There Is?”

Nikki Bella did not have a bad match on Sunday, but the match itself did prove what the women’s roster has been telling Nikki Bella for some time: They’ve simply outgrown her. There are too many talented women in WWE catering for me to look at Sunday’s match with anything other than derision. It was a classic WCW-esque showcase of a past their prime star, but at least WWE had the good sense to not put the belt on her.

This feud probably isn’t over, but it feels like it should be. Nikki is probably going to show up on “Raw” in a matter of hours, bemoaning Becky’s rollup win, and we’re gonna have to go through this all again.

…Or maybe we won’t, I shouldn’t be so pessimistic.

Becky Lynch was, without question, the star of the show on Sunday. She not only defeated a WWE Hall of Famer to retain her Women’s IC Championship, but she also took her mantle as “Raw’s” top star. 

The Women’s World Championship scene has been in slight disarray since the injury to Liv Morgan, who wasn’t champion at the time, but was such a load-bearing figure that her injury rippled out to the entire “Raw” women’s roster. Meanwhile, Becky Lynch has been in a Hulk Hogan-esque domination of the women’s midcard scene, following her humbling of former champion Lyra Valkyria.

Joining Seth Rollins’s Vision group adds a certain legitimacy to her egomania. In a way that the men’s IC Title has simply never been, Becky has maneuvered herself into being a bigger star as Women’s IC Champion than the current Women’s World Champion. There are valid concerns of retreading the last time that Rollins and Lynch were a duo on WWE TV, and there are also warranted comparisons to The Death Riders in AEW, but that doesn’t change the fact that Lynch came out of Clash In Paris looking like one of the biggest stars in the brand. 

Will WWE capitalize on this? That’s an entirely different question.

I legitimately believe that if John Cena were to appear on “Raw” and say, “Hey, guys, this whole retirement run got a little bungled. Let’s pretend this didn’t happen and try it again in 2026. What do you say?” Fans would almost unanimously say, “Hell yeah, John. This sucked, let’s try that again.” 

He has bought enough goodwill that it could work, but John Cena is, unfortunately, a man of his word, and it appears that his final run will simply be the middling retirement tour that we’ve been watching.

The match with Logan Paul wasn’t “bad.” Cena carried the awkward YouTuber to a servicable match, but it was a little sad watching one of Cena’s final appearances wasted on a social media influencer who still kinda moves like a baby foal learning to walk. This was nowhere near the lofty standards of even the match he had with Cody Rhodes just weeks ago at SummerSlam.

WWE and Cena are counting numbered days, and between the heel run and the less-than-inspiring opponents, it feels like a lot of money has been burned and a lot of goodwill spoiled in the name of very little. Much like his ex-wife’s match, Cena is starting to leave the “Is That All There Is?” impression. But Cena at least seems to understand that, with every interview of his retirement run seemingly bringing up that WWE sets up the opponents, and he knocks them down, Cena has at least entertained the idea that “If that’s all there is, my friends, then let’s keep dancing.”