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CM Punk Suddenly Wins Top WWE Title, John Cena Reacts

By Sunil Joseph • Published Jul 09, 2026 15:52 EDT
John Cena and CM Punk WWE
John Cena (left) and CM Punk (right) - Source: WWE.com

CM Punk recently won the WWE Championship.

After CM Punk lost the World Heavyweight Championship to Roman Reigns at WrestleMania 42, he appeared the following night to cut a promo. However, he hadn’t been seen since that night, leading to speculation that things may not be all right between the Second City Saint and WWE.

This week on WWE RAW, Sami Zayn was supposed to defend the WWE Championship against Cody Rhodes. However, Gunther brutally assaulted Cody at the start of the show. As a result, the American Nightmare wasn’t cleared to compete in the match. Hence, CM Punk took Cody Rhodes’ spot in the match and ended up winning the Undisputed WWE Championship from Sami Zayn.

Following CM Punk’s WWE Title win, John Cena took to his Instagram account to post a picture of the Second City Saint dressed as the Doctor of Thuganomics. Check out his post here.

Vince Russo blasts WWE after CM Punk wins huge title

During a recent edition of Vince Russo’s The Brand podcast, the former WWE writer said that the company decided to make CM Punk the champion just to get a cheap pop in Chicago. Instead, he said that WWE should be more focused on building a story rather than the cheap pops.

“Ben, I swear, I talk a lot about this with Al Snow. And Al doesn’t even call it a pop. He calls it like a momentary, because you got to build to a pop. That’s what a pop is. A pop is to build to a pop. Then you get the pop. These are not builds to pop. This is like a momentary moment. That’s what it is, bro. And this is what this company has been doing forever.

I just said, bro, a pop is a moment. It’s a one-off. A pop is a one-off. A story is like a lifetime. If you have a good story, we’re going to talk about Andre ripping the chain off Hulk Hogan’s neck until people don’t know who Hulk Hogan and Andre are…..That’s the difference between a story and just for the pop.”

He further added that the creative team has made a complete mess of the WWE Title picture when they could’ve simplified things.

“Bro, they’re making something so complicated when there’s so many things they can do to simplify it. That is the issue. They’re making this harder than it is. They’ve created a system and a foundation that everybody is running into each other. There’s too many people involved. There aren’t enough hours in a day to come up with freaking creative, and they’ve just created this absolute mess.

So now, at the end of the day, all you really have is let’s put the title on CM Punk in Chicago and let’s get the pop.”

It remains to be seen who will be next in line to challenge CM Punk for the Undisputed WWE Championship.

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