3 Things We Hated And three Things We Loved

Welcome to Wrestling Inc.’s weekly review of “AEW Dynamite,” here on the ultimate Wednesday before the largest show on Tony Khan’s calendar, All In 2025! It wasn’t essentially the most newsworthy episode of AEW TV in history — probably the “biggest” things that happened were Megan Bayne’s four-way win and the return of Gabe Kidd, and the WINC staff has principally nothing to say about either. In the event that they interested you greater than us, be happy to read more about them on our “Dynamite” results page. On this column, we deal with giving opinions and evaluation of the segments and storylines that caught our attention most strongly, in either a positive or negative way.

With that in mind, we’ve got loads to say in regards to the final Toni Storm/Mercedes Mone promo segment that opened this week’s show, in addition to MJF invoking Jay Briscoe’s name for warmth, Swerve Strickland destroying the Young Bucks’ limousine with an excavator, and more! Listed here are three things we hated and three things we loved in regards to the 7/9/25 episode of “AEW Dynamite!”

Certainly one of the matches I’m most excited for on the All In Texas card is the AEW Women’s World Championship match. Nonetheless, “Timeless” Toni Storm and Mercedes Mone didn’t do justice to what I expect the match to be on Saturday in any way once they opened “Dynamite” tonight. Their face-to-face was a clunky, reasonably awkward affair that had me glad the talking portion of their feud is over for now.

Mone has never been the strongest promo despite how freaking good she is within the ring, and sadly, that is much more noticeable when she’s paired up with the most effective talkers and biggest characters in the sport today. Storm’s portion of the promo was excellent, but Mone’s half of the segment just wasn’t there for me. Storm had the higher lines, saying Mone “had the emotional depth of a kiddie pool,” and Mone didn’t say anything that stuck out or may very well be considered noteworthy toward Storm.

It’s price mentioning, but I am unable to pick on her an excessive amount of because she wasn’t the just one to make the error tonight, but Mone did confuse me there for a second with a slip of the tongue when she said All In was on Sunday. Nonetheless, that only gets mentioned here within the hated section because I didn’t need the additional tiny little bit of panic during an already busy, confusing weekend. She recovered quite well, though.

The opposite thing that bothered me was the best way the segment ended. The ladies toasted with regardless of the heck was in those glasses, since it actually wasn’t champagne, and Storm got the last word. She told Mone something along the lines of, “eat s*** b****” and she or he wasn’t in striking distance of Mone when she said it, so the small brawl that followed between them was a bit awkward. Mone got her hands on Storm first when it looked just like the “Timeless” one must have been the one to punctuate the road with some physical offense, especially because the champion seeking to end the segment strong.

I’m also so torn on just who I feel goes to win this match, and this promo segment tonight didn’t help me make up my mind. Not that it’s necessarily a problem, nevertheless it’s not clear where AEW goes with either of those women following All In. If Storm retains the title, I’m unsure who she goes on to face next. At the least if Mone loses (which I’m leaning toward with reference to my prediction), she has the TBS Championship, along with her other belts, to defend.

Written by Daisy Ruth

There is a famous scene from the Adult Swim show “Smiling Friends,” where a gaggle of nihilists take over the world of the show, and produce everyone under their offended, incel-tinged spell. They’re interrupted, mid-speech, by a man with a machine gun, who threatens to shoot them in the pinnacle. Suddenly, the nihilists care very much. They care a lot that the spell is broken, and folks realize that these guys care as much about things and stuff as anyone else.

That is basically how I feel in regards to the Death Riders: they’re fake nihilists.

Toni Storm, however, is the actual deal. 

On Wednesday’s “Dynamite,” she told Mercedes Mone point blank that “We’re all going to die sooner or later,” after which capped it off by saying “You fear an unusual life but I only fear an unusual death.” It would’ve been one in all the toughest bars I’ve heard in a wrestling promo in a protracted time. It was the whole lot that the AEW Men’s World Champion’s pseudo-Mussolini schtick desires to be, and so rather more.

In that moment, Toni Storm became the hard-nosed world champion that Jon Moxley pretends to be. I’m unsure that Mercedes Mone held up her end of the moment, but I’ll let my colleague Daisy have the ultimate word on that. Toni Storm has taken a personality that probably should’ve had the shelf-life of 1 feud, the Mariah May/Sunset BLVD deathmatch, and one way or the other found a option to keep it not only fresh, but bracing and exhilarating. “Timeless” indeed.

Written by Ross Berman

Nothing against Blake Christian, but like … why?

This is not only a sound query, it’s actually three valid questions. First, why has Blake Christian now been on 10 episodes of AEW TV for the reason that starting of March? He’s wrestled more televised matches during that point than Kris Statlander, Willow Nightingale, and Anthony Bowens, simply to name just a few. Prior to March he hadn’t been on AEW programming for nearly two years, so I’m just very curious what happened, since it just kinda looks as if he’s here to lose to more vital people. Second of all, why is Blake Christian wrestling on the All In go-home episode of “Dynamite?” He isn’t anywhere near having anything to do on the cardboard, so far as I can tell, and yet we’re devoting go-home show minutes to … a heel vs. heel match with Ricochet?

That brings me to my third “why,” which is, what the hell is AEW doing with Ricochet and why is it a random heel vs. heel match that he’s apparently wrestling to impress the Gates of Agony? Didn’t this guy completely reinvent himself and begin doing a little of the most effective character work of his profession against a few of your top stars? And now he has zero creative for AEW’s biggest show of the yr, presumably because Tony Khan ran out of fellows you remember from “SmackDown” 20 years ago? Just a whole and total lack of vision for somebody who had really emerged as one in all AEW’s stronger performers.

Written by Miles Schneiderman

Lots could be said about AEW’s foremost event scene straight away, with Hangman Page, Swerve Strickland, Will Ospreay, The Death Riders, The Young Bucks and so many more all making it seem as wealthy because it has been in a protracted time. They’ve all contributed to AEW’s run of form as of late and are key reasons as to why the corporate has a lot momentum straight away, but every company that has had a hot streak or golden era has had one thing in common; the midcard is just as strong because the foremost event scene.

This was evident within the tag team match from this week’s “AEW Dynamite” that saw Konosuke Takeshita and Kyle Fletcher (sorry guys, but Protoshita feels like some form of weight reduction drug or laxative I simply cannot get on board with that name just yet) taking up Brody King and the ROH World Champion Bandido. All 4 of those guys have the capabilities to find yourself within the foremost event scene post-All In, but for straight away, they’re doing a superb job of giving each show a solid base of fine motion that may all the time get people excited every time a match graphic involving them drops on social media two hours before the show.

In the event you read these each week, chances are high you have probably heard me specifically banging the Brody King drum for months in saying he needs some form of major singles push, and this was one other great example as to why. He’s great within the ring, he literally has the gang barking at him each week, and because the weeks go on you get to see slightly more of the person behind all of the tattoos that only makes him more relatable. If anything, I actually feel sorry for Buddy Matthews sitting at home in Australia because he might find yourself getting in the best way of King’s ascension towards the highest of the cardboard.

Bandido is firmly back into the swing of things after that awful feud with Chris Jericho, which just goes to indicate what having good opponents can do in your confidence. Yes, he can have eaten the pin on this one, but his interactions with Takeshita ahead of their ROH World Championship match on Friday at Supercard of Honor only make me wish to see that match more because it should be great.

Takeshita is within the prime of his athletic profession at this point, and while getting the pin here makes me query if he’ll get the win on Friday, he NEEDS to be near that AEW World Championship in the longer term (and he should probably win the G1 too). As for Kyle Fletcher, he is nearly actually walking out of All In with the AEW TNT Championship, which is the least that he deserves given all of the work he’s been doing over the past nine months. A terrific tag team encounter that proves just how deep AEW’s roster is straight away.

Written by Sam Palmer

Here’s the thing: MJF’s entire character is centered around garnering heat from the AEW fanbase. That is all fun and games for essentially the most part, there continues to be a line within the sand that should drawn on the subject of certain matters corresponding to the death of a wrestler’s loved one. That line felt prefer it was crossed tonight when MJF began talking trash once more about Jay Briscoe’s tragic passing to his brother Mark Briscoe, and we have seen time and time again that selecting this tactic never works out well in skilled wrestling. While things were surely cleared with Mark himself ahead of time, that did not make it any less uncomfortable to look at as a viewer nor did it actually work to perform the intended goal of bringing more heat on MJF with the intention to get the fans behind Mark ahead of the Casino Gauntlet Match at All In. Name dropping Jay did nothing to really profit this whole segment, especially considering that there are at the least a dozen other ways for MJF to get himself some heat and it shouldn’t have even been the main focus of the segment in the primary place.

On condition that The Hurt Syndicate, JetSpeed, and The Patriarchy got into a large minutes long brawl with each other within the moments that followed MJF and Mark’s “talky talk” in any case, this whole a part of “Dynamite” should’ve just been dedicated towards some last minute construct for the All In AEW World Tag Team Three-Way. Not only would’ve it had avoided a controversial moment for AEW, nevertheless it also would’ve brought The Patriarchy more to the forefront of the whole lot since they felt like an afterthought on this segment and storyline as a complete. Sure, you possibly can still have MJF and Mark get right into a verbal spat but that may very well be done in a backstage interview or short in-ring segment (key word being short). On the entire, the whole lot just felt so unnecessary and a low point on a “Dynamite” that was nothing greater than mediocre at best.

Written by Olivia Quinlan

This week’s “Dynamite” succeeded in bringing some weight behind “Hangman” Adam Page ahead of this weekend’s Texas Death challenge against Jon Moxley, with the goal of rescuing the AEW World Championship from each the kayfabe and often-times literal reign of terror under the Death Riders. 

Until now, it had been the run of the mill Death Riders numbers game shenanigans always getting the upper hand over Page and hardly doing anything to cement the challenger who’s alleged to be the flag-bearer for the longer term of the corporate heading into its biggest show of the yr. And while that obviously can’t be modified by a single segment on the go-home episode of “Dynamite” on the very least it was actually the best time to finally give him some type of momentum, in addition to some well-needed progression on the status of Swerve Strickland’s kindling alliance with the person that burned his house down. 

Again, Page was running the route of getting jumped by the Death Riders and falling prey to the pack, with the Young Bucks also within the ring to place the kicking to their former friend. They looked to make a press release ahead of this weekend with the return of the plastic bag – that which they used to put in writing off Bryan Danielson at WrestleDream – until the large screen flashed up with satellite image of Strickland within the cockpit of an excavator. Strickland then proceeded to crush the Young Bucks’ flash limousine, much to their dismay, and concurrently providing enough of a diversion for Page, Will Ospreay and The Opps to get the upper hand over the heels and set them into retreat; Page got here near landing the Buckshot Lariat, hitting Claudio Castagnoli as an alternative as he launched himself in the best way, and making for the shot of Page standing tall against the World Champion. Meanwhile, the Bucks had gone to envision their limo only to seek out it had been destroyed and dropping the golden line, “How are we going to financially get better from this?” 

It was a goofy little bit of fun yet it delivered on what it needed to do, the limo spot itself being the hook for a message that the heroes have aligned and the numbers are not any longer purely within the Death Riders’ favor. Time will tell where the story goes but for now, tonight on the very least was an entertaining spot of TV and felt like the best option to close the go-home.

Written by Max Everett