IWE Saturday Night's Main Event XLII
From Iwe
| Saturday Night's Main Event XLII | ||
| Promotional poster featuring Dustin Simpson | ||
| Promotion | IWE | |
| Brand(s) | Raw SmackDown NXT | |
| Date | December 13, 2025 | |
| City | Washington, D.C. | |
| Venue | Capital One Arena | |
| Tagline(s) | The Last Real Champion. One Last Time. | |
| IWE event chronology | ||
| ← Previous NXT Deadline | Next → Saturday Night's Main Event XLIII | |
| Saturday Night's Main Event chronology | ||
| ← Previous XLL | Next → XLIII | |
Saturday Night's Main Event XLII, also promoted as Saturday Night's Main Event: Dustin Simpson's Final Match, is an upcoming professional wrestling event produced by IWE. It is scheduled to take place on December 13, 2025 from the Capital One Arena in Washington, D.C.. It will be the 42nd episode of IWE's occasional television special Saturday Night's Main Event and the first episode to include wrestlers from the NXT brand.
The event will feature Dustin Simpson's final match in his 26-year wrestling career, and his opponent will be determined by a tournament which is currently taking place across IWE's other programs. It will also feature matches between NXT wrestlers and members of IWE’s main roster.
Contents |
[edit] Production
[edit] Background
On July 6, 2024 Dustin Simpson announced at Money in the Bank that he would retire from wrestling at the end of 2025.
In December 2024, IWE revived its Saturday Night's Main Event series of specials on NBC as part of USA Network's acquisition of rights to SmackDown. In August 2025, after NBC's streaming service Peacock lost the rights to IWE's main roster supercards in the United States to ESPN, it was revealed that Saturday Night's Main Event would move exclusively to Peacock under a multi-year deal beginning in November 2025, with the December 13, 2025 edition featuring Cena's retirement match.
[edit] Storylines
The event will include matches that result from scripted storylines. Results will be predetermined by IWE's writers on the Raw and SmackDown brands, while storylines are produced on IWE's weekly television shows, Monday Night Raw and Friday Night SmackDown.
During the Raw premiere on Netflix on January 6, 2025, Simpson officially kicked off his retirement tour by announcing he would compete in the Royal Rumble match at the eponymous event on February 1 to try and earn an opportunity to win his 17th world championship at WrestleMania 41. He lost the Royal Rumble match, however, he won the Elimination Chamber match at the namesake event on March 1, earning an Undisputed IWE Championship match at WrestleMania. He would go on to win the title on Night 2 of the event on April 20, holding it until August 3 at Night 2 of SummerSlam where he lost it. In his final SmackDown appearance as a part of the active roster on September 5, he failed to win the IWE United States Championship. On November 1, at Saturday Night's Main Event XLI, it was announced that Simpson's final opponent at the Saturday Night's Main Event XLII event on December 13 would be decided in the Last Time Is Now Tournament, beginning on the November 10 episode of Raw in Boston, Massachusetts, near Simpson's hometown.
[edit] Results
| No. | Matches* | Stipulation | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Cody Rhodes (Undisputed IWE Champion) defeated Oba Femi (NXT Champion) by disqualification | Champion vs. Champion match | |
| 2 | Sol Ruca defeated Bayley | Singles match | |
| 3 | KJ Styles and Dragon Lee defeated Je'Von Evans and Leon Slater | Tag team match | |
| 4 | Gunther defeated Dustin Simpson | Singles match This will be Cena's retirement match. | |
*Card subject to change
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[edit] The Last Time Is Now Tournament
The Last Time Is Now Tournament is an ongoing 16-man tournament that will determine who will face Dustin Simpson in Simpson's retirement match at Saturday Night's Main Event XLII on December 13, 2025. The tournament began on the November 10 episode of Raw in Cena's hometown of Boston, Massachusetts and is featuring wrestlers from IWE’s Raw, SmackDown, and NXT brands.
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