About per week ago, to have fun what was then the upcoming Forbidden Door 2025 event, Wrestling Inc. published a possible WWE vs AEW dream card featuring matches chosen by our staff. We thought it was a fun exercise, and our readers appeared to agree, as you threw out tons of your personal ideas within the comments. So many legitimately good ideas, actually, that we decided to do the WWE vs. AEW dream card again — but this time, along with your matches as a substitute of ours.
Obviously we couldn’t include all of them, especially because we desired to persist with the concept of only using a given wrestler once. We surveyed all of the comments and got here up with five that appeared to have broad support (and another that did not, but that we just really liked). The outcomes lie before you: That is What Could Be — if WINC’s readers had their say!
Swerve Strickland vs. Roman Reigns (Socrates Burrito and Wrestling Inc.)
We promise, every match from here on out was chosen since it appeared in multiple comments, but after we saw this one we just couldn’t resist including it. Each men appear to have some inherent quality that symbolizes greatness in the trendy world, particularly throughout the world of sports, which wrestling is eternally attempting to emulate. Each Swerve and Reigns fit more naturally into that sports-adjacent universe than most other wrestlers, largely because of their public-facing presentation, and a clash between them can be intriguing based on charisma and personality alone, especially in the event that they got any promo time.
So far as the actual match is worried (assuming Roman decides to placed on his employee boots that night) we expect it will be a really interesting style contrast with the potential for a juiced-up version of the chemistry Reigns has with Cody Rhodes. However it’s also just one in every of those matches that is as much in regards to the mere sight of two former world champions facing off at the highest of their game.
Charlotte Flair vs. Britt Baker (Majin Biip and others)
There was a time not too way back that this might have been a battle of the WWE and AEW women’s division’s respective top dogs, nevertheless it’s a little bit little bit of a special discussion in 2025. Since returning to win the 2025 women’s Royal Rumble but failing to dethrone Tiffany Stratton at WrestleMania, Charlotte Flair has taken a slight step out of the highlight, ceding singles title territory to the younger generation and establishing in the ladies’s tag division as a substitute. Meanwhile, Britt Baker hasn’t been seen in any capability for nine months now, together with her last match dating back to November 2024. She’s wrestled a complete of 5 AEW matches within the last two years.
Are we crazy for pondering this actually makes the concept of a match between the 2 more compelling, not less? With a well-told story, Flair vs. Baker could possibly be a battle of two women who’ve each tasted the highest of the mountain fighting to revive their former glory, with each believing their only path to redemption lies in defeating the opposite. It won’t be the marquee matchup it once was, nevertheless it has the potential to be a far more compelling story.
Hikaru Shida vs. IYO SKY (Uncle Herman and others)
It isn’t quite a first-time dream match, but their last singles contest on the joshi scene was in 2009 and went to a cut-off date draw; their last match together of any kind happened in 2011. Since then, Hikaru Shida and Io Shirai — now referred to as WWE’s IYO SKY — have traveled very different paths, with Shida becoming the one-time ace of the AEW women’s division (surpassed lately only by “Timeless” Toni Storm) while SKY is currently a part of a dominant group of ladies on “WWE Raw.” Each at the moment are multi-time world champions, and a match between them today can be as much a battle between the industry’s perfect as it will be a renewal of hostilities after greater than a decade of neutrality.
While there are other matches on this hypothetical card that feature greater names and more personal rivalries, from a level of technical execution, this might be our pick to win Match of the Night awards. SKY and Shida wrestle similar styles while remaining fundamentally adaptable, and so they are each uncannily smooth and precise with each their grappling and their strikes. If there’s any match that would bring the true feeling of joshi to the widest possible wrestling audience, it’s this one.
CM Punk vs. Jack Perry (Super Shaan and others)
This match very nearly made the unique list created by WINC, so it’s no surprise to see it pop up here. Regardless of your selected sort of wrestling — puro, lucha, deathmatch, whatever — is there anyone who would not tune in to see CM Punk get within the ring with Jack Perry, the person whose “real glass” comment and subsequent physical altercation with Punk led to Punk’s ouster from AEW at All In 2023? Wouldn’t it be an actual fight, or would they work together, or would they lie and promise to work together after which get in an actual fight? Even at the present moment, when the Raja Jackson incident has the wrestling world spooked, fans internationally would still line up across the block for Perry vs. Punk.
The mix itself speaks to 1 the central appeals of wrestling: the blurring of the lines between fiction and reality. But assuming Punk and Perry were actually in a position to work together to attract a house, the match would likely be tremendous. No matter what anyone thinks of either man as a employee in 2025, we have seen enough from their careers (particularly Punk’s) to know that they may successfully channel the warmth into something raw and brutal within the ring — especially if it involved hardcore stipulations. In any case, if a Punk/Perry match doesn’t include real glass at any point, what are we even doing here?
Megan Bayne vs. Rhea Ripley (Finch Faint and others)
This one got here up quite a lot of times within the comments, and … yeah, we get it. There’s nothing complicated about it, and there doesn’t need to be — as Big E might put it, we’re here for large meaty women slapping meat, and that is what Megan Bayne vs. Rhea Ripley would deliver.
The match itself seems self-explanatory, but an underrated element of this pairing is the respective auras Bayne and Ripley bring to the table. There’s an odd dichotomy to their presentations; Bayne is a monster heel but comes out looking like a literal Amazon if not a full-on Greek goddess, all fire and gold and winged helmets. Ripley, alternatively is some of the popular babyface wrestlers on the earth, and yet her goth aesthetic is replete with chains, fishnets, and piercings; the wings that appear to spring from her shoulders during her entrance could possibly be those of Lucifer himself. That makes this match almost a literal clash of the titans, which a part of us hopes ends in a no contest when Bayne and Ripley are still fighting after the ring has collapsed.
John Cena vs. MJF (Electric Head, Smeghead & others)
While searching through your comments, we found a lot of different ideas for MJF, often involving rematches with old AEW rivals CM Punk or Cody Rhodes. The only hottest idea, nevertheless, was a match that has never happened before and certain never will: MJF vs. John Cena.
If the gods of wrestling gave us The Ultimate Pen, there’s absolutely no way we would not have had John Cena’s seventeenth and final WWE title reign end with MJF cashing within the guaranteed world title opportunity he won at AEW All In. Does it make sense? Who cares? Are you able to imagine the sight of MJF holding the WWE title over his head as he prepares to unexpectedly help usher Cena into retirement?
Anyway, even in case you don’t have the desire to make this about championships and contracts, this continues to be a match — and more importantly, a feud — that would have a lot juice as a part of Cena’s final run. The promos can be incredible. The crowds can be electric. The business would most assuredly boom. And if Cena’s showing against Rhodes at SummerSlam is any indication, he continues to be greater than able to the occasional Big Time Principal Event Match, and MJF likewise tends to excel under that format. It won’t be for everybody, nevertheless it would rattling sure be a spectacle — and at the top, we would finally get to know of course if Cena is willing to place over the subsequent generation on his way out the door.