Triple H Reacts To Criticism Of Using Previously Banned Terms, CM Punk On Whether He’ll Headline WrestleMania 41, More

The WWE Royal Rumble 2025 pay-per-view event will take place on Saturday, February 1, kicking off the Road To WrestleMania 41.

Coming out of the January 6th premiere episode of RAW on Netflix, we have an updated list of participants for the Men’s Royal Rumble Match:

* John Cena (declared during the WWE RAW on Netflix premiere)

* CM Punk (declared during the WWE RAW post-show press conference)

During the post-show press conference, CM Punk stated that although he wishes to chase a title on the Road To WrestleMania 41, he won’t mind mixing it up with John Cena or The Rock due to its big payday.

You can check out some highlights from the media scrum below:

On a potential match with John Cena or The Rock: “I think I want gold around my waist. But those two names come with big fat paychecks, so I’m not gonna say no to it. It could be interesting. I wouldn’t say no to it, I’m into the big, high pressure money situations. I think that’s when I come alive. I definitely owe The Rock, I definitely owe John. I would welcome both of them with open arms. I saw John, passed in him the hallway. He looked a little tired, he looked like he needed to go to sleep. So I’m sure I’ll see him in Indianapolis.”

On if he feels he needs to main event WrestleMania: “While I think you’d be foolish to say that it doesn’t matter, I would also feel it’s foolish to hold me to the same ideas and things that I said 10, 12 years ago. A lot of other people think that maybe I need to main event WrestleMania to — I don’t know, solidify anything I’ve ever done? Like, I never could have come back here and had a Hall of Fame career, right? So to me, yeah. If that opportunity arises, I’m not going to shy away from it. Because it scares the hell out of me, frankly. And I think if your dreams don’t scare you, I think you need to find different ones, bigger ones. Main eventing the first Raw on Netflix is a pretty big deal though, so nobody else can say they did that.”

During the post-show press conference for WWE RAW on Netflix, Roman Reigns spoke about John Cena calling him the “GOAT.”

Reigns said, “Well, I’m an extremely important man with a lot of things to do so I don’t think about these kinds of things. I think John’s also a very smart man and he knows what he’s talking about, he has an inside look. This is a really subjective business and it’s really on the fan and the person who’s speaking on this matter. But my metrics don’t lie.”

During the post-show press conference for WWE RAW on Netflix, Triple H discussed creating the RAW cold open video and the purpose behind it.

The three-minute cold open video featured the use of several “insider” terms, such as “heel,” “face,” “shoot” and “work,” and the WWE CCO explained how the goal was to provide something for everyone while also presenting WWE to new audiences.

You can check out some highlights from the media scrum below:

On their goal with the opening video: “I think when we first started talking about Netflix and this opportunity tonight. And you look at Netflix’s audience, it’s everybody. And it’s one of the things I think Netflix does so well, they have something there that appeals to everybody. They have something for young people, they have something for older folks like different products, different things, documentaries — they have everything under the sun on Netflix and there’s something for everybody. So when you have the opportunity to appeal to those people, you want to give them a little of everything. And we felt like it was important for us to sort of pay homage to the past, talk about what this business is. Like if you’ve never watched this, if you grew up and you never saw it, what is it?”

On criticism of the use of insider terms: “That was the intent, to capture the emotion — and let people know, ‘We’re not hiding what we do.’ You know, I saw a lot of chatter today from people saying like, ‘Oh my God, they said heel and face and shoot and work and one promo.’ Like, we’re not hiding what we do. That’s what we do. And to be honest, I think most of the world understands those terms and sort of now, they’ve almost transcended our business. I see people talking about that in other [venues], ‘He’s a heel, this guy.’ It’s transcended our business. It’s what it is, people know what we are. We talk about it, we’re not insulting anybody’s intelligence.

“But we’re an art form. Absolutely an art form that captures people’s emotions. It’s not — we don’t take ourselves as seriously as most other people take us. So it was all part of trying to capture that and say, ‘If you’ve watched, watch this and hopefully we honor what you love. If you’ve never watched this, watch this, we’ll explain to you what we are.’ That was the attempt.”