Welcome to Wrestling Inc.'s weekly review of "AEW Dynamite," the show where we hit briefcases with spike weapons until we get what we want! Don't worry, we're definitely talking about the show-closing angle between Jon Moxley and Cope this week, along with the trios title match, MJF's match with Dustin Rhodes and subsequent brawl with Adam Page, and much more. Sadly, we can't get to everything notably, this week we are going to let the AEW tag team title match stand on its own, free from our commentary but there's always our "Dynamite" results page if you want to catch up on anything you've missed.
This column, on the other hand, is strictly for the matches and segments that stood out to the WINC crew and gave us the strongest positive or negative feelings. Which, for this week's offering, is simply another way of saying that these are three things we hated and three things we loved about the 2/12/25 episode of "AEW Dynamite."
Last week, we saw the AEW tag team division well and truly come alive again. The Hounds of Hell, The Don Callis Family, and the return of Austin and Colten Gunn made it seem like The Hurt Syndicate actually have a number of fresh, interesting teams for them to be challenged by. However, the tag team division is in fact not the division in AEW that has needed the most tender loving care, as that prize goes to the often forgotten trios division. It's a division that is so forgotten that the champions barely ever mention that they are the champions, never wear the belts, and probably use them as coasters at home.
With that said, something has been happening over on "AEW Collision" that, if we did these loves and hates for that show, would have already been mentioned. Since it hasn't, the trios division has been getting some renewed focus, with actual trios being formed rather than just one guy and a random tag team. The Undisputed Kingdom, Shane Taylor Promotions, La Faccion Ingobrenable, even Daniel Garcia and 2.0 have gotten involved in the action, and that spilled over on to this episode of "AEW Dynamite" with an excellent AEW World Trios Championship match.
While an Undisputed Era reunion wasn't really my idea of a good time at the end of 2024, having them be one of the frontrunners of the new trios division seems like the perfect place for them right now. Roderick Strong bursts into life in multi-man matches, Kyle O'Reilly bounces from opponent to opponent seamlessly, and after years of claiming he's going to win the AEW World Championship and not coming anywhere near it, Adam Cole might have found his true purpose in 2025. Then there's the champions. The Death Riders rightfully get a lot of negativity thrown their way for being a directionless group, but when they are allowed to go out and wrestle, all of them (including Jon Moxley) are still amongst the best that AEW has to offer, and some of the best wrestlers in the entire world.
The ending stretch to this match was the most alive that the trios division has felt since the best of seven series between The Elite and Death Triangle. I'm not saying the titles are anywhere near as important as they were then, but these days, there is at least a semi-competitive division underneath the holders that actually value the belts and want to win them. On top of all of this, you throw in The Ops, the terrible new name for the absolutely not terrible group of Samoa Joe, HOOK, and Katsuyori Shibata, and The Patriarchy, and for the first time since the original tournament in 2022 that crowned the inaugural champions, there is an actual trios division full of entertaining personas, and even more entertaining matches to be had. Tonight was a promising sign of things to come, let's just hope this trend of multi-man goodness in AEW continues to move forward.
Written by Sam Palmer
Like everything else in professional wrestling, squash matches serve a purpose and are used to help establish talent. However, there is a time and place for them, and when used incorrectly, they can feel pointless and unexciting to watch. That latter statement applies to the trios match between Samoa Joe, Hook and Katsuyori Shibata, and Jon Cruz, Aaron Solo and Rosario Grillo.
There were already two other squash matches on the card, with "Hangman" Adam Page scoring a quick win over Max Caster and Megan Bayne doing the same later in the show with Maya World. Yes, providing HOOK, Shibata, and Joe with a match does allow them to add another victory to their win-loss record, but they also defeated talent that don't appear in AEW very frequently and hold more losses than wins to their name. It didn't really do much to provide HOOK, Shibata, and Joe with more credibility in order to make them seem like a major threat to The Patriarchy, and simply felt like another needless match that was meant to act as a vessel for Joe to challenge The Patriarchy for a challenge to a trios match next week. The squash match really didn't add anything to the challenge, and a backstage segment would've sufficed to accomplish that (if not being more effective than the squash to do so). It simply ate up time on the show, and did nothing to help the primarily boring aura that filled up the vast majority of the two hours.
Written by Olivia Quinlan
When AEW started, Dustin Rhodes was talking like he was ready to hang up his boots. 6 years later and he's outlasted his brother Cody Rhodes, seen CM Punk come and go, and watched Sting and Jeff Jarrett have big to-dos made about their retirements. Meanwhile, Rhodes is quietly plugging along, having tremendous match after tremendous match and Wednesday was no different.
I honestly went into Wednesday's show expecting a pro-longed feud to begin between MJF and Dustin Rhodes, or for Rhodes to join his friend Jeff Jarrett's quest to get one up on the former AEW World Champion. It is a testament to how reliable Rhodes is, that I didn't see the Hangman Page attack and likely feud coming. I was completely fine with the possibility of MJF feuding with a 55-year-old. The match itself was also a damn fine meat-and-potatoes TV wrestling match. The man still has "it," as Old Hollywood types would say.
There are a lot of guys in AEW who get flak for overstaying their welcome, from Cope to Jericho, there's plenty of people who feel like they're on a victory lap for a race that has yet to be run, while Rhodes is dutifully doing the work he came there to do. Yuji Nagata often makes light of his age, by saying he's the youngest 56-year-old he's ever been, and damned if it doesn't feel like Rhodes is fitting into a similar role. Whenever he decides to finally finish that retirement he teased in 2019, the wrestling world will be lesser for losing him, and Wednesday was proof.
Written byRoss Berman
This is once again an instance of me not watching "Collision" live and forever forgetting to catch up before "Dynamite," but even so, the lack of Ricochet, Prince Nana, and Swerve Strickland in person tonight was a bummer, especially with how hot this feud has been. AEW attempted to wrap up what happened between Strickland and Ricochet in their match, and Nana and Strickland having their differences on Saturday, in a video package, but it wasn't enough for what this rivalry has been so far. I'm sure their absence was partially because of the go-home angles for Grand Slam: Australia tonight, but I was still disappointed, since I'm sure they're going to have another match at Revolution coming up in March.
The big thing last week on "Dynamite" was Ricochet stealing the Embassy robe, and then he even turned up in Strickland's home promotion of DEFY last Friday wearing it. That wasn't a big focus of the video package tonight, which I thought AEW would touch on a lot more, but hopefully they did on "Collision." I will say that it seems like AEW and its production team are slowly starting to do better recaps between the two shows, while still making sure people want to watch on Saturday night, but for this blood feud, it wasn't enough for me. Even if one of the men, likely Ricochet wearing the robe, cut a promo on the other backstage tonight, it would have felt like things were still going strong, despite the pair not being on the upcoming special in Australia.
I also don't like the fact that Nana and Strickland aren't on the same page right now, with Strickland needing to end this personal feud with Ricochet before going after the AEW World Championship like Nana thinks he needs to focus on. The Embassy robe is also important to Nana, and he's been beaten down and threatened by Ricochet multiple times, so he should be on Strickland's side as to why he needs to continue things and see them through to the end, which is likely Ricochet lying bloodied in the ring.
I actually really liked "Dynamite" tonight, but Strickland is my favorite wrestler on the program, so I suppose I'm a bit bias. But, this feud is hot and Strickland is perpetually super over with the fans, so his presence was missed. I have faith that AEW will pick this right back up next Wednesday when Grand Slam is out of the way, but just for tonight, I hated the lack of Strickland/Ricochet drama.
Written by DaisyRuth
You know you got smoked when your opponent makes a cover of the theme song that you performed and does it better than you.
Harley Cameron is set to take on Mercedes Mon for the TBS Championship at Grand Slam: Australia, and while the deck is statistically stacked against our hometown hero, I think that, no matter what. Cameron can be happy that she won the war of words against Mon.
Cameron can really do anything. Her musical talent blended in with her background of ventriloquism in her video package on Wednesday's episode of "AEW Dynamite," and she performed a cover where she turned Mon's sonically-challenged theme song (the moment you make me start chanting during a song like I'm at a K-pop concert, I'm out) while parading around a muppet version of Mon. This would have been one level of disrespect if the cover was bad, but I genuinely think that mockery through imitation becomes more sinister when the cover is good. Like, Cameron performed Mon's own song better than Mon while *mocking her.* That is another level of disrespect that simultaneously elevates Cameron while discrediting Mon. If anything, Cameron's definitely a better listen to than Mon's soulless and kind-of-off-beat (embarrassingly off-beat) bars.
The puppet for Mon was brilliant, full stop. Like, what other woman on the roster can feasibly mock their opponent with a puppet and have it be fitting? There is a difference between a competitor reaching into the ether for shocking one-liners or outrageous acts of sabotage to enact against their opponent and creating an environment that those same shocking one-liners and outrageous acts of sabotage make complete sense. Cameron did the latter. Through her wide variety of talents and unapologetic interest in all of them, Cameron has created for herself an environment where she can pull out these crazy tactics to get under Mon's skin and have them work.
Not only does Cameron succeed in the absurd, she delivers in the heartfelt and serious department too. Cameron told Mon that Mon's petty, bullyish, elitist personality has only given her more incentive to do well and walk out Australia as champion. While it's not as sensational or spectacular as her original promo, Cameron showed that she has the range to do both. Again, this is not Cameron picking her words out from thin air she has created a personality where she can handle both gravity and audacity in one person.
It's almost unfair to put Cameron next to Mon. Mon's never been that great on the mic once you take two steps to decipher her words, they usually ring shallow or played out so to pair her with someone as complex and theatrically versatile as Cameron almost feels like bullying. Like, Cameron's expertise highlight's Mon's lack thereof. I figure Cameron won't walk out as champion, and I wish they had more in-ring interactions, but I can be satisfied knowing that Cameron absolutely smoked Mon.
Written by Angeline Phu
This week's "Dynamite" saw MJF wrestle Dustin Rhodes and then establish a feud with "Hangman" Adam Page spanning much TV time and more of the same back-and-forward light vs. dark drivel and narrative water treading from Cope and Jay White against The Death Riders. Cope's title match with Jon Moxley was made official which on its own sounds like an immensely fun match-up that I'm eager to see for Revolution, but only once he brought back "Spike" to tease the crowd into thinking they will see the World title belt, only for "THE NUMBERS GAME" to catch up with him and prevent him from doing so. It's like groundhog day but we are Bill Murray stuck in the mind palace of Moxley as he reads War and Peace. Meanwhile, two of the actual matches on this weekend's pay-per-view card were relegated to backstage segments. Obviously, Mariah May killed her promo as a deeply impassioned lambasting of her former mentor selling that Toni Storm had well and truly got underneath her skin ahead of their rematch and Harley Cameron also produced an amazing diss track/promo hybrid towards her opponent, Mercedes Mone. But once again they had to make do in such a short span of time even without comparing it to what else was on the card. But when you do look at what was, it starts to feel even more egregious.
Chris Jericho had a much longer and worse version of Bandido's showdown with Bryan Keith last weekend, the former Goldust wrestled a competitive match with MJF, who then himself had a lengthy brawl with "Hangman" Page who had himself wrestled Max Caster earlier on. The Death Riders defended their trios titles against Adam Cole, Kyle O'Reilly, and Roderick Strong; Samoa Joe, Hook, and Katsuyori Shibata dispatched of enhancement talent, and The Gunns challenged The Hurt Syndicate for the tag titles. There were two women's matches, neither of which served the stories heading into Grand Slam Australia, involving Megan Bayne and Kris Statlander. They totaled around 11 and a half minutes together, less than the trios match and just a dozen or so seconds more than Rhodes-MJF alone. What is the point of having such a well-rounded and promising women's division if you aren't going to give them the time? It's not enough to just have Storm and May wrestling a rematch, resting on the laurels of what has come before, and that's especially the case when it comes to Cameron and Mone since they don't have the established history. There is no reason to be getting Moxley and Cope promos week in and week out, establishing a title match between them before they've even wrestled the already meaningless tag match this weekend. And yet, it's been weeks of the same copy and paste formula applied to each and every one of Moxley's feuds since beating Bryan Danielson. This whole "Moxley wants to kill AEW" storyline is a little too meta, all things considered.
Written by Max Everett
