WWE: Backstage Update on Brock Lesnar’s WWE Return at SummerSlam 2025, Update on Peacock’s Bid Attempt to Retain WWE PLEs Prior to WWE’s Deal with ESPN, More News

Aug 9, 2025

Backstage Update on Brock Lesnar’s WWE Return at SummerSlam 2025

As noted before, this past Sunday’s WWE SummerSlam 2025 Night 2 event featured Brock Lesnar making his surprise return and attacked John Cena.

Dave Meltzer reported in this week’s Wrestling Observer Newsletter that Lesnar was fully paid his guarantee money during his abscense from WWE related to his involvement in the Vince McMahon sex trafficking lawsuit. Meltzer reported that Lesnar was among the highest paid wrestlers in the company.

Meltzer reported that Lesnar was never officially suspended for his abscense and was obviously kept under contract the whole time. Meltzer also reported that if WWE officials had wanted to end their working relationship with Lesnar over the lawsuit, then he would have been let go. Lesnar reportedly was always going to return to WWE once their legal department cleared him.

Meltzer also reported that those close to Janel Grant’s side stated that they were surprised this happened and that nothing had changed in regards to their case over the last month that would lead to a change in WWE’s policy on Lesnar.

Update on Peacock’s Bid Attempt to Retain WWE PLEs Prior to WWE’s Deal with ESPN

As noted before, WWE recently signed a new media rights deal with ESPN to broadcast their Premium Live Events (PLEs) on ESPN’s new streaming service in the United States starting in 2026. Peacock had put in a bid with WWE in an attempt to retain their deal for WWE PLEs that is believed to have been worth around $275 million per year.

The Wrestling Observer’s Dave Meltzer reported in Friday’s Daily Update that multiple sources spoken to stated that Peacock had the right to match ESPN’s offer of $325 million to keep the WWE PLE shows on their service. Meltzer reported that Peacock officials made the decision to not match the offer in the end.

WWE News & Notes

Friday’s WWE SmackDown show in Montreal, Quebec, Canada featured a birthday party segment involving Charlotte Flair and Alexa Bliss. During the segment, Flair gave Bliss a gift of a “We’re Not Friends” shirt for her Lilly doll. Flair also revealed that she brought back the Charly doll in a matching “We’re Not Friends” shirt, which was the same doll Bliss had given to her as a gift in 2021.

As noted before, Austin Theory has been out of action since this past July for WWE due to an undisclosed injury. Dave Meltzer reported in this week’s Wrestling Observer Newsletter that his sources confirmed that Theory’s injury is legitimate and his current abscense from WWE is not due to any storyline reason. No other details were given regarding the nature nor severity of Theory’s injury situation.

Deadline reported that John Cena and actor Kevin Hart will star and produce a new action comedy film titled “The Leading Man” for Netflix. It was reported that this upcoming film is based off a 2006 graphic novel of the same name by Jeremy Haun and B. Clay Moore. This upcoming film was stated to be “When a self-absorbed movie star (Cena) discovers that his co-star/man in the chair (Hart) is an actual agent, he’s forced to swallow his pride and accept that action stars aren’t really action heroes…while trying to save the world.”

WWE recently released one new video to their WCW Vault channel on YouTube. This new video was a singles match of Randy Savage vs. Dennis Rodman from WCW Road Wild 1999.

WWE also recently released three new videos to their WWE Vault channel on YouTube. The first new video was a “Best of Umaga: 2 HOURS of full matches vs. John Cena, Triple H and more!” The second new video was a Lumberjack Tag Team match of Bret Hart & John Cena vs. Chris Jericho & Edge from the August 9, 2010 episode of WWE RAW. The third new video was a “Story of The Undertaker | Rise of The Phenom (1995-97).”

As noted before, this past Sunday’s WWE SummerSlam 2025 Night 2 event in East Rutherford, New Jersey featured Cody Rhodes defeating John Cena in a Street Fight to become the new Undisputed WWE Champion. In a recent interview with Adam’s Apple, Cena gave his thoughts about what he had said to Rhodes’ ear during their embrace after the match. Cena stated “If the world finds out about it, they won’t find out about it from me because that was between me and him.” Several lip readers on social media currently believe that Cena told Rhodes “That’s the best I got. You just beat the real John Cena.” (Transcript h/t: Fightful.com)

In a recent episode of The Extreme Life of Matt Hardy podcast, co-host Matt Hardy gave his thoughts about The Hardys’ guest appearance at WWE’s SummerSlam 2025 event and revealed that he was the one who had pitched the idea for them to appear at the event. Hardy stated “We were booked to come do some content earlier in the week. John Cone, who’s been an absolute pleasure to work with, he reached out to us and talked about coming to film some content, just some evergreen stuff for the A&E shows and whatnot. Just stuff for their social media — we’re WWE legacy acts and they view us as such. We’re doing that on Friday and I want to say it was Wednesday or Thursday, I spoke with Shane [Helms]. We catch up every so often and I was just like, ‘Yeah man, I was thinking that with the TLC match, it might be neat if myself and Jeff were there and we were in the crowd watching. It’s the 25 year anniversary of TLC, that’d be cool if that happened.’ I said, ‘I wouldn’t want to distract and make people think that we’re out here to challenge the champs or we’re going to jump in the match. Just like, we’re there paying respects to these teams that are carrying the TLC tradition forward.’ He said, ‘God, I love that idea, that’s great. I might pitch it, are you okay with that? Would you guys be okay doing it, would it work?’ I was like, ‘Yeah, sure.’ I know he pitched it to a couple of people and they liked it and it officially got cleared I guess through the man with three Hs maybe Sunday morning or late Saturday night. They reached out to us like, ‘Hey, if you can still do that, then let us know.’ I said, ‘Hey, we’re going to this appearance and we’re going to bust our ass.’ We went out there thirty minutes early so we could delete the line and get out on time and make it to SummerSlam. Low and behold, it worked. Shane ended up adding a little more to it, cause he also reached out to The Dudleyz and put them out there. I thought it was real cool that The Hardyz and The Dudleyz were standing out there. We saw a couple of the teams before and we said, ‘Oh man’, not like they had enough pressure as it was, now the OGs are going to be sitting out watching us.” (Transcript h/t: Fightful.com)

In a recent interview with The Ariel Helwani Show, Paul Heyman gave his thoughts about WWE’s WWE Unreal series on Netflix. Heyman stated “It’s a reality of the industry today that I have to accept. I grew up in this business at a time when if you’re in a bar and someone walks up to you and says, ‘You’re in that fake wrestling business –’ notice the Southern accent when I say it? No offense to all the people from the South but, if you don’t swing, if you don’t defend the business, and someone else sees it or finds out about it, you’re catching an ass-kicking and you’re getting shipped out of the territory. That’s the way it was back then. All these stories you hear of legendary bar fights of guys like Haku ripping people’s eyeballs out. ‘Show me how fake this is now, brudda.’ That’s how we were taught to defend the business and we caught the ass kickings if we didn’t defend the business. So, that’s where I grew up. So, to now be in a situation where it’s so open to where it’s not just this is how the magic is done but we’re gonna show you the wires and we’re gonna show you the crew that inserts the wires and we’re gonna show you the writing team meeting in which we discuss the wires to do the magic trick, whew, that’s an adjustment for me, and it’s an adjustment that I have to make and accept, because if I take the tactic of, wow, I’m not used to this. I’m not used to being so open and transparent about the inner workings and the secrecy. For so long, it was a secret society. It was a closed business. But then again, today, Sammy Gravano does a podcast, Michael Franzese does a podcast, John Alite does a podcast. All these gangsters sitting there going, ‘Yeah, so we clipped Mario and Rocko came in the room and we had to clip him.’ ‘I liked Rocko.’ ‘Yeah, I liked Rocko too. Too bad we had to kill him.’ ‘Yeah, and he was my brother-in-law.’ So, all these gangsters are revealing what it is so, it’s a far more open and transparent society, or at least we think it is, and I have to accept Unreal as part of the platform by which WWE is Disney-fied and picks up a streaming deal on ESPN. The way I look at it is this: I’m always going to be like this (jumpscare) when I see a camera behind the scenes because I’m still not used to it, and I’m gonna have to get used to it, because the train is leaving the station and I wanna be part of — if not the conductor, I wanna be one of the conductors or one of the top advisors to the conductors as to where that train is going.” (Transcript h/t: Fightful.com)

WWE announced one new segment for the card of next week’s WWE RAW show on August 11th in Quebec City, Quebec, Canada: