What WINC Wants Vol. 1: John Cena World Champ? Saraya To WWE? Swerve Over Mox?

With the 2025 installment of AEW Dynasty coming up this weekend and WWE's WrestleMania 41 seemingly just around the corner, the pro wrestling landscape could look pretty different in a month's time, and that's just accounting for in-ring product; behind the scenes, things are pretty much always moving.

John Cena is poised to potentially capture the Undisputed WWE Championship at 'Mania and, in doing so, set a new record for most world titles won in wrestling with 17, overtaking Ric Flair in the process. Prior to Elimination Chamber 2025 and the biggest heel turn in recent memory, perhaps more people would have wanted to see this happen. 

Saraya was granted her AEW release last week after months away; the day after Dynasty will be six months since her last televised match, an AEW Women's World Title #1 Contendership Four Way on October 8. While fans have been given no reason to believe Saraya will rejoin WWE any time soon as Paige, 'Mania season is unpredictable and it wouldn't be too big a shock to see her return on the biggest stage in pro wrestling.

Like Cena, Swerve Strickland is circling another title win, seeking his second AEW championship against Jon Moxley; the only thing standing in his way is Mox's cadre of Death Rider teammates. Unlike Cena, Swerve likely isn't wrestling at his final Dynasty and will likely have plenty of other title opportunities in his career. With Tony Khan discussing online fan feedback on the Death Riders storyline, has it run its course or do we want more Moxley?

With all this in mind, we posed some questions to the WINC readership and the WINC staff and the results are as follows, what we're calling What WINC Wants.

After a shocking heel turn at WWE Elimination Chamber last month, John Cena is in hot pursuit of a record-breaking 17th world championship. He's now set to face Cody Rhodes at WWE WrestleMania 41, and Cena has spent the last several weeks berating Rhodes and wrestling fans as a whole. However, that hasn't prevented the Wrestling Inc. readership from making it clear they want Cena to win, with 68% of the poll voting in favor of "The Champ." Our staff is in agreement, with nearly 80% of us casting a vote for Cena.

This might be a little surprising on the surface, given the popularity of Rhodes and the current character direction for Cena. However, if there's one thing that unites almost all wrestling fans, it's that we love to see history being made. Cena passing Ric Flair as the most successful world champion (according to WWE's count) would be a monumental moment in Cena's career and within the promotion as a whole. Like Cena's heel turn, his record-breaking world title victory would serve as a moment that sticks in the minds of many fans forever.

On top of that, there's the storytelling potential of it all. Sure, Rhodes could retain and continue his title reign ahead into WWE SummerSlam and beyond, defending his championship against the likes of the veteran CM Punk, old ally Jey Uso, or friend/rival Seth Rollins. However, if Cena were to win, the title picture becomes a race against time, with ramifications down the card as any and all challengers battle to take the title off Cena before he retires with it. That, combined with giving Cena the record, should be too good of an opportunity for WWE to pass up.

Written by Nick Miller

Saraya-Jade Bevis recently made headlines after she revealed she was finished with AEW in a surprise announcement while promoting her new autobiography and new podcast last week. Entertainment Weekly first reported Saraya's departure, quoting the first episode of her "Rulebreakers With Saraya" podcast that would drop in the following days. The day before the news broke, she discussed potentially returning to what she called the company that "raised" her" WWE, where she was known as Paige. The two-time Divas Champion said she wasn't ruling out the possibility of returning to WWE somewhere down the line, something she had said back in February when discussing her AEW contract.

She's not the only one hopeful that a return can happen. In our first edition of What WINC Wants, we asked our readers if they want to see the former champion back in a WWE ring in a company now under Paul "Triple H" Levesque's creative control. Out of just over 2,050 respondents, 58.4% said yes. That could very well be because there is more for her to accomplish in WWE under a new regime with exciting new match possibilities with women who have come up in the company since she last wrestled there in 2017.

Saraya has previously noted how well WWE took care of her throughout her mental health struggles. She has said that WWE "saved her" numerous times. However, when she left WWE, she wasn't cleared by their doctors to return to in-ring competition after being forced to retire at the beginning of 2018. WWE's doctors could be more keen on clearing her on their end of things since she was given the green light by the competition's doctors and has wrestled numerous times without injury since.

When we polled from within to gauge our own interest here at WINC, we were split almost right down the middle, but 53% of us don't want to see Paige rejoin WWE, partially because of why Saraya said she left AEW. Saraya said she thought there was no place for her in the current iteration of the company, and a majority of us here at WINC don't want to see Paige back in WWE because we can't figure out where she fits in that landscape, either.

Written by Daisy Ruth

It's safe to say that the Death Riders storyline, and Jon Moxley's fourth reign as the AEW World Champion, hasn't exactly gripped people in the way those in AEW might have hoped. A story that started with Moxley and his group disposing of Bryan Danielson has turned in to one of the most controversial talking points in AEW as many people believe that Moxley's reign of terror needs to be put out of its misery, including some of us here at Wrestling Inc.

However, not all of us voted for Moxley to drop the title, and neither did the regular Wrestling Inc. readers, with just under 60% of you opting for Moxley to keep the title past Dynasty. From a logic standpoint, it does make a lot of sense for the big babyface victory over the Death Riders to take place at an event like All In Texas. What's more, AEW have done a lot of work making the 2025 Owen Hart Foundation Tournament feel as important as humanly possible, and considering that the winner of that competition will challenge for the AEW World Championship on July 12, keeping the belt on Moxley may indeed the logical thing to do.

When our staff were asked if Swerve Strickland should be the man to dethrone Moxley at AEW Dynasty on April 6, the results showed an overwhelming majority vote for AEW once again becoming "Swerve's House," as 87% of us opted for Strickland to win the title at Dynasty (it's worth noting the number WINC readership respondents outsizes its staff respondents by a factor of nearly 40. For some of us, covering a company like AEW is our full-time job, meaning that we've followed the Death Riders story since it started and have simply reached our wits end with it. Not only that, but we have been thinking ahead to what AEW can do at events like All In Texas, and after building back a lot of their good will since the turn of the new year, the final main problem that needs fixing could all be sorted by making Strickland a two-time AEW World Champion.

What can't be denied is that we are certainly reaching the tail end of Moxley's time at the top of AEW, but the question of whether the company should double down on the Death Riders until the summer, or pivot towards another potential chapter in Strickland's feud with Hangman Page, only with the AEW World Championship involved, will be answered this Sunday.

Written by Sam Palmer