Biggest Winners And Losers Of The Week — 4/6/2026

It’s been quite the week in professional wrestling. On Monday, the WrestleMania card started to come together as GUNTHER took out Seth Rollins on “WWE Raw.” Tuesday’s “WWE NXT” led directly into Stand & Deliver 2026 on Saturday, while “AEW Dynamite,” “AEW Collision” and “WWE SmackDown” saw a trifecta of big returns in the form of Chris Jericho, Hikaru Shida, and Pat McAfee. With so much going on across the wrestling landscape, it’s the perfect week for Wrestling Inc. to debut our brand new feature, Winners and Losers of the Week!

If you’ve been following us for a while, you’ve seen this format applied to individual PLE and PPV cards, but now, for the first time ever, we’re applying it to a full week, from Monday to Sunday! Anything in wrestling is eligible to be named a winner or loser, from individual wrestlers to entire promotions. Without further ado, here are your WINC winners and losers for the week of 4/6/2026!

Bron Breakker is already having an extremely rough 2026, and it feels like the hits keep coming for the star even when he hasn’t been back on television following an injury he sustained in February that required surgery. He’s not a loser by his own doing, however, though maybe he could have lifted that commentary desk a little smarter and avoided the hernia. He’s a victim of WWE’s terrible booking on the “Road to WrestleMania” and it’s a tragedy to witness.

Breakker sustained the injury on the February 2 edition of “Raw,” the show after he had been unceremoniously dumped over the top rope by Oba Femi in the Royal Rumble after being taken out by a masked man. The masked man was later revealed to be Seth Rollins, and reports indicated that Breakker and Rollins would be facing off at WrestleMania 42 if they were both healthy. So when Rollins returned at Elimination Chamber at the end of February, it was looking like they could end up fighting at ‘Mania.

Things seemed to be moving in an even more positive direction when it was reported that Breakker was backstage at “Raw” at Madison Square Garden on March 30. However, that was the same edition of the red brand where it was revealed GUNTHER would be taking on a now-medically cleared Rollins at “The Showcase of the Immortals,” leaving many fans scratching their heads.

In the days that followed, it was revealed that Breakker had indeed been cleared, but reports said that WWE had been planning GUNTHER vs. Rollins for “weeks,” as some in creative didn’t think there was enough time to tell a story between Rollins and Breakker, despite the months of build behind the match. Breakker was the man who wrote Rollins off television back in October when the former World Heavyweight Champion suffered a shoulder injury, so there was absolutely a better story there than anything WWE can write for GUNTHER and Rollins.

Now, it looks as though Breakker won’t be returning to television anytime soon; there’s no place for him on the WrestleMania card without Rollins, as his tag team partner, Bronson Reed, is also on the shelf, and the other Vision members, Austin Theory and Logan Paul, hold the WWE Tag Team Championships. While the “Career Killer” GUNTHER needed to be on the ‘Mania card to continue his momentum, it came at the expense of Breakker, who now seems like he’s sitting in the “loser” corner until the “Raw” after WrestleMania, where he can hopefully make a big comeback to decimate Rollins.

Written by Daisy Ruth

Sure, this one is debatable when it comes to fan opinions, but overall, for Chris Jericho himself, he had a pretty good week. The former AEW World Champion who is likely to soon be known as “The Cornerstone,” his latest trademark seemingly related to his ever-evolving character, made his return to AEW following a year-long hiatus on, of all days, April Fool’s Day.

Fans had been left guessing on Jericho’s status after a report back in December stated that his contract would be up at the end of 2025. It was later revealed that Jericho’s contract may have been frozen following his departure from “Dynamite,” when he told his old stable, The Learning Tree, that he needed to go away for a while. Through it all, Jericho remained on the AEW roster page, perhaps laughing about it all behind-the-scenes.

Jericho is a winner this week, because as a star who seemingly loves the spotlight, he’s back on AEW programming, set to address his return on this week’s edition of “Dynamite.” He’s also able to keep his outside projects, something he more than likely wouldn’t be able to do in WWE. And if he did sign a new contract, as has been reported, it was likely for a ton of money, especially if both major companies were fighting for him.

Jericho is back in the conversation, with wrestling fans either irate, excited, or just overall confused about what direction he could possibly go in now in AEW. He seems like an “any publicity is good publicity” guy, and this news isn’t anywhere near bad publicity (some he’s even been the subject of previously) in the grand scale of news in the wrestling world. Fans are talking, causing his name to trend all over social media, possibly drawing in some new eyes to AEW, whether that be people just watching to hate on it, or because they’re truly interested to see why the hell the former WCW World Heavyweight Champion is still wrestling.

Jericho may not stay a winner for long, but his recent return following such a long absence is certainly a “W” for the star.

Written by Daisy Ruth

It takes something quite miraculous to undermine the biggest show on the biggest company’s calendar coming off of the biggest boom in recent history, but here we are. 

Following weeks of middling TV hampered down by questionable and shallow booking, WWE went and completely screwed themselves by booking a celebrity to come onto TV and tell the audience everything they think is wrong with the current product. “WCW 2000” was trending on social media afterwards as many pointed out the Vince Russo-ism of completely dumping on a product produced by the same company that facilitated said dumping.

In case you still have the fortune of not knowing what this refers to, former NFL kicker, commentator, and occasional attraction wrestler Pat McAfee returned to WWE during “WWE SmackDown” on Friday, aligning with Randy Orton in his WWE Championship feud on the road to WrestleMania 42, thus being revealed as Orton’s mysterious caller. Why Orton, the “Legend Killer,” needed McAfee by his side for this feud might be a bit of a mystery in itself to many, considering McAfee was last seen at the commentary booth yelling all manner of pleasantries at the top of his voice and dancing on the table to the themes of his favorites. And the mystery only continues to be… mysterious, with what McAfee said about the product when he did. He railed against the generation that Cody Rhodes is leading, a cluster of smaller wrestlers working what he called weekly Iron Man matches, and said that fans of the “Attitude Era” were being left behind. 

Over 26 years have passed since that era, which never once featured Orton, and eight years since the last Iron Man match in WWE. Beyond it just not being a good idea to bring an outsider in to talk about how things were better decades ago, none of what he said really rang true. Instead, it’s now seeming as though TKO made the decision to insert McAfee – someone Ari Emanuel seems to think could be the next Sylvester Stallone, for whatever reason – into its flagship feud for its flagship event purely to echo the sentiments of lapsed fans who post hot takes in this attention economy. That doesn’t exactly bode well for the company.

Written by Max Everett

AEW went through its own stage of telling fans that the product wasn’t entirely what they wanted it to be, and that was a torrid time to be a fan of the promotion. So it only seems fair to give them credit for being out of that rut, producing good-to-great TV every week, while WWE runs through its self-imposed identity crisis. 

There are those who take issue with the super-indie element of AEW, stripping back the sports-entertainment of its competitor in lieu of telling the story within the ring and between the bells. Sometimes that can be bloody, sometimes it can be indulgent, and it almost certainly always manages to be long and intensive. 

But there can be no doubt that AEW does what it can to put out the best product it can for those it knows will appreciate it. Fundamentally, AEW knows what it is. It knows what it has to be. And for the past few months it has successfully walked the line of enjoyable TV. One only has to listen to the crowds this week, unaffected by the trauma of having to take out another mortgage to pay for tickets, and entirely free to celebrate some of the world’s best wrestlers doing what they do well. 

There is a clear eye on the future. There are familiar names in the likes of Adam Copeland, Christian Cage, and even Chris Jericho. AEW shares talent with NJPW and CMLL as well as the occasional indie outfit, blending the familiar with the new and exciting, as well as breathing life into the general wrestling ecosystem. To be honest, AEW does best by being exactly what WWE isn’t, and that is a good thing, especially after the week WWE just had.

Written by Max Everett