Welcome to Wrestling Inc.'s weekly review of "AEW Dynamite," the show that sometimes comes close to not even happening because Omaha gets hit by a blizzard on the last day of winter! With that in mind, the WINC crew would like to acknowledge the possibility that the weather played a hand in some of the things that annoyed us this week it would explain a match like WillOspreay vs.AR Fox, for example, or (if anyone was running late) the world title match not going on last. However, in the absence of reporting to that effect, all we can do is go by what we saw and provide our opinions.
And these, these are our opinions, which means they are personal and subjective. If you want the opposite of that, go check out our "Dynamite" results page. If you want to know what our staff thought of Wednesday's broadcast, from the wonky four-way finish and the continued dominance of "The CEO" to the improbable main event and subsequent championship challenge, here are three things we hated and three things we loved about the 3/19/25 episode of "AEW Dynamite."
The March 19 episode of "AEW Dynamite" opened up with the finals of the AEW International Championship Eliminator Tournament, where the winner would advance to Dynasty and challenge Kenny Omega for his newly won title. Last week, we saw the debuting "Speedball"Mike Bailey and Orange Cassidy advance, while Mark Davis and Ricochet won their bouts on "AEW Collision." A four way with four different styles was always going to be entertaining, but this match went the extra mile in giving the fans in Omaha, Nebraska something to talk about.
The big thing that worked in this match's favor was the air of unpredictability. Cassidy is the most dominant AEW International Champion in history, Bailey had just debuted for the company, Ricochet is in the middle of arguably his best run as a character of his whole career, and even though his chances were very slim, Davis is a part of The Don Callis Family who Omega has been feuding with. Realistically, anyone could have won this match and it would have made sense in both storyline, and from a logic point of view. AEW has been guilty of booking too many matches that feel undercooked, and even a bit soulless at times, because the result is far too predictable, meaning that you have no reason to get invested in it because the result is pretty much guaranteed already. With this match, it was everyone's for the taking, giving it an extra kick, particularly in the closing stages.
All four men were put over strong in this one too with various moments that showcased their biggest strengths. Bailey's unique arsenal shone through once again, Ricochet was both athletically pleasing and a punchable goof at the same time, Cassidy got the balance of action and comedy right once again, and I might sound like I'm exaggerating when I say this, but this was the best individual Mark Davis performance I have seen since he signed with AEW. However, the moment that sealed this match as something I was more than happy to praise in one of these pieces was the ending.
Davis being pinned by both Speedball and Ricochet was not only a creative finish, but it actually put Davis over in a very strong way. Like it legitimately took half the field to pin him, and one of the guys had to have their feet on the ropes for extra leverage, that is a strong way to be pinned. The finish also solved the issue of not having someone who really shouldn't lose actually lose the match. Ricochet's momentum continues, Bailey gets another win on TV, they both pinned Davis in honest (Bailey) and dishonest (Ricochet) ways, and at the end of it all, we're getting Kenny Omega vs. Ricochet vs. "Speedball" Mike Bailey that on paper looks like an absolute barnburner of a match. Multi-man matches like this one can often go very wrong for a variety of ways, but this one hit all the right notes for me.
Written bySam Palmer
It seems like it will be forever litigated as to whether Mercedes Mone amounts to the character of her former life as Sasha Banks amongst the fandom, but such is tribalism and it makes no difference to the fact that Mone has been on a stellar in-ring run as TBS Champion. This year alone has been a year where she has faced Mina Shirakawa, Yuka Sakazaki, Harley Cameron, and Momo Watanabe in truly exceptional matches, and those in themselves follow the two solid bouts between her and Kris Statlander last year, and there really is no reason to question whether she deserves to be the four-belt champion she is. Tonight, she added yet another excellent match to that catalog and cast a spotlight on the talented prospect Billie Starkz, who at such a young age has carved out an already-impressive career. This was a match that leaned into the staple idea of veteran vs. rookie, and successfully conveyed that through the in-ring action.
Mone was calling the shots in the bout and Starkz was following her lead, and that crafted a dynamic for the latter to believably pick her moments for bursts of youthful rebellion. The match was effectively 10 minutes shorter than the World title match that came later, and yet it managed to do far more in that fraction of time; Starkz has been a staple of ROH for some time, but this has been a fantastic way to re-integrate her to the AEW audience; Mone added yet another great title defense during this reign, and then proceeded to throw shade at the one who trained her opponent. That last part, of course, should be taken as a tease of the much-awaited bout between her and the forever ROH Women's Champion, Athena. And if 2010s box-office has shown anything, it's that the audience loves a post-feature teaser for the next thing.
Written byMax Everett
It's always nice when a talent who isn't allotted tons of television time gets to have some, especially one like AR Fox who is fun to watch do their thing inside the ring. Some of that excitement is taken away though when they're placed in a random, out of the blue match with no storyline or set-up heading into it like the one that Fox had with Will Ospreay tonight.
Wins are a great way of establishing a talent as a credible threat to the rest of the locker room and are a great thing to help build them up, but when there's not really an obvious end goal that those wins are being put towards, then it becomes a bit of a moot point. Ospreay hasn't been really prominently featured in any sort of storyline after his Revolution Steel Cage Match against Kyle Fletcher and heading into Dynasty, so putting him in a rather abrupt match against Fox felt like a move that made little sense especially on a show that was already overall pretty boring and odd. It just lacked complete sense and didn't really do anything to create much excitement for either man especially considering how little time it was given in comparison to almost everything else on the card.
Written by Olivia Quinlan
On an episode of "AEW Dynamite" that saw a breakout performance from Billie Starkz, Kenny Omega get not one but two new challengers for his AEW International Championship, and Jon Moxley supposedly driving 11 hours to get to the show only to end up with Tetanus (which really does deserve its own portion of this article because it was violently wonderful), one moment flew under the radar.
That moment was Hangman Page declaring himself for the Owen Hart Foundation Tournament. Page has delivered on the microphone time and time again in recent years, to the point where he belongs amongst the elite talkers in all of wrestling, just look at his 2024 work for evidence. With that said, while this promo didn't have any houses being lit on fire, it did something that AEW have really been improving as of late; making their tournaments feel important.
At the time of writing, there is still no word on when the Owen Hart Foundation Tournament will be, but the fact that it is being mentioned this early in the year is a very smart move. The decision to give the 2024 winners shots at the AEW World and Women's World Championships looks to be continuing in 2025, and that adds extra weight to a tournament that might only have Hangman and Will Ospreay in it so far, but those are two of the biggest names in the company. Building up anticipation for competition like "The Owen" by having your biggest stars not only enter it, but state how much it would mean to win it gives the whole thing a weight and importance that the company really should have given to the Continental Classic when that was created in 2023.
Assuming that the title matches will have at All In Texas on July 12, getting people excited about what the main event of that show could look like this far in advance is something AEW has struggled with in recent years due to the move to monthly pay-per-views. However, using "The Owen" as the vehicle to drive the excitement for All In Texas up kills two birds with one stone as it makes the tournament THE competition to enter on a yearly basis. Only Tony Khan knows what the rest of the field looks like, but I will be very interested to see who enters next given that Page and Ospreay are the first two entrants.
Written by Sam Palmer
Going into "AEW Dynamite" it might have been fair to say the rematch between Jon Moxley and Cope couldn't be worse than the slow, limbering, gruel of the widely panned Revolution title match they had before. But leave it to two men, a faction and a few others with a hope and dream to give it their best shot.
Moxley and Cope started with their slow and trying-too-hard-to-convey-violence journey to the ring in the backstage area in a production truck, slowly (emphasis: slowly) making their way through the arena before eventually getting to the ring. They then proceeded to run the formulaic pattern of any professional wrestling Street Fight you've probably seen before, once again very slowly, until Moxley established control in the ring. The match then stopped being slow, in that it stopped, as Moxley spent some time with a steel chair pressed against the throat of Cope.
The one bright spark of the bout would come in an entirely accidental way, with Cope once again bringing "Spike" out from under the ring with the intention to hit Moxley. He did, and then he did again, and then he set up for a suplex onto the weapon; for those unaware, "Spike" is a bat with countless nails sticking out of it. Normally, this is a spot that never follows through, with the performer ultimately escaping the legitimately dangerous spot. We arguably got a look at why that is the case, with Moxley legitimately impaled by the bat to the point it simply refused to let go of his flesh even Wheeler Yuta tried, bless his soul, only to seemingly cause Moxley more agony as the bat continued its protest. Simply put, this unintentional hopefully; surely outcome provided the one and only true high spot in the match, and that is merely without considering that the AEW World Champion could have been seriously hurt for a spot that arguably didn't need to happen. Moxley understandably took a bit of time to lick his wounds after the spot, with Yuta and the Death Riders turning the match into a free-for-all. Then FTR came out, because of course they did, to save Cope from their bald and hair counterparts in the Death Riders.
Cope speared Moxley through a table, because someone had to be speared through a table in this hardcore Cope/Edge match, but of course he was saved by Marina Shafir; who was then interrupted by Willow Nightingale. Quick side note: with the amount of time it took between Willow and Shafir's entrances, Willow could have just stopped Shafir before she run down to the ring, alas this was a match that had to follow the formula. And then Moxley won by choking out Cope, the exact same move that asphyxiated both Christian Cage and the crowd at Revolution and simply needed to be repeated. Important note: Cope did not lose via submission or pinfall, yet again, and took plenty of time lapping up adulation for losing the already-longest match on the card.
Written by Max Everett
I was initially so excited to see that women were main eventing a "Dynamite," since that doesn't happen often, but when we got to the street fight AEW World Championship rematch pitting Jon Moxley against Cope, things started to feel off in terms of pacing for me. Moxley and Cope had a match that had all the makings of an AEW main event, for better or worse. It was certainly a better match than the pair had at Revolution with even more storyline implications by the end of it all. The fact it was a street fight with a pretty gruesome bump when Cope's Spike, basically a baseball bat with nails, got stuck so far into Moxley's back the referee could barely pull it out, just spelled "main event" to me, so seeing it by 9 p.m. was kind of jarring.
Outside of the Spike spot, there wasn't much to write home about on the Moxley versus Cope end, but the interference from the Death Riders, FTR, and Willow Nightingale was good, albeit extremely expected and almost the standard for these men anymore. Wheeler Yuta had a pretty good table spot, and the general chaos of everyone around the ring made it feel like a big, well-overbooked, main event match. After Moxley defeated Cope and he and the Death Riders had taken their leave, it was Nightingale, Cash Wheeler, Dax Hardwood, and Cope in the ring. Despite being called "Rated FTR" for their trio and the fans being told how close of friends the three of the are, Hardwood refused to help Cope up and left the ring, and shoved Wheeler when he confronted him. Breaking up FTR for a bit certainly seems like a big story, and, to me at least, that felt like something that AEW would usually end the broadcast with.
With the brutality of a street fight done for the night, the pacing of the rest of the show for just under the hour left felt weird after that. It would have no matter who main evented, so this is absolutely not me taking a shot at Megan Bayne and Kris Statlander. The Will Ospreay versus AR Fox match felt slow after the street fight for the company's top title. The "Hangman" Adam Page interview with Renee Paquette also felt a bit out of place.
I'm interested to see why Tony Khan made this decision. If he was trying to make up for the crap finish of Cope versus Moxley at Revolution, this wasn't exactly the way to do it. The match could have easily traded places on the card with Bayne and Statlander and made things flow a bit better. If I can take anything good out of all this, however, it's the fact it's Moxley going on to Dynasty to hopefully be beaten by Swerve Strickland. The Death Riders story continues to not be exciting, and tonight, it wasn't doing it for me even on a different spot during the night.
Written by DaisyRuth
