AEW WrestleDream 2025: Draws And Duds

This Saturday, All Elite Wrestling presents the third annual WrestleDream PPV, and the primary to happen outside the Pacific Northwest, coming to us this 12 months from St. Louis, Missouri! There are eight matches set for the cardboard as of this writing, including contests for each the lads’s and ladies’s world championship, in addition to the newest singles match between Darby Allin and Jon Moxley that is broadly expected to push the death match envelope to their extremes. And as at all times, while the WINC staff is worked up about a few of these bouts, there are others we’re giving a bit more of a side-eye.

Provided that that is an AEW event and includes significantly more matches than your typical WWE PLE, we thought we might fulfill the promise of the plurality within the “Draws and Duds” title expanding our scope just a little bit! Which matches (plural!) from WrestleDream have us overestimated, and which might we fairly see relegated to an episode of “Dynamite?” It is time to search out out the most important draw and the most important dud as we stay up for AEW WrestleDream 2025!

Since their grotesque coffin match at AEW All Out on September 20, Darby Allin and Jon Moxley have been involved in nearly every closing segment on “AEW Dynamite.” Darby has threatened to light Moxley on fire with each a flamethrower and a Molotov cocktail, the latter of which being prevented by AEW security who speared Darby in to a bunch of trash cans in a move that even someone like Bill Goldberg or Rhino can be happy with. Moxley has had Darby beaten down and told to his face that he’ll force him to say “I Quit” for the straightforward undeniable fact that he cannot. Briefly, someone might be going to die at AEW WrestleDream.

This match actually has the longest build-up out of anything on the WrestleDream 2025 card. Moxley’s mission with the Death Riders began finally 12 months’s WrestleDream pay-per-view when he thought he had compromised Bryan Danielson to a everlasting end, something Darby got a front row seat to as he was forced to take a seat and watch after being attached to the ring ropes. Darby was at one point the one man in AEW to essentially care about taking down the Death Riders, and even after traveling across the word to appreciate his personal dream of climbing Mount Everest, Darby was still serious about Moxley at the highest of the most important above-ground mountain on planet earth.

Since Darby returned at All In: Texas, he has vowed to take every thing away from Moxley, which began with the AEW World Championship as Hangman Page left Globe Life Field with the title around his waist, however the hatred that Darby has for Moxley runs deep. We have already got a taste in the shape of the aforementioned coffin match, in addition to the frequent appearances of fireplace and the each men’s mutual love of stabbing one another with forks, but all of this has built to this unhinged, demonic crescendo that taps in to something primal inside people.

With the popularity each men have, it is extremely obvious that they are going to go to probably the most extreme lengths conceivable to force the opposite to say “I Quit,” however the segments on recent episodes of “Dynamite” have escalated this match to the purpose where they legitimately should do something life threatening otherwise it’s going to be a let down. Nonetheless, that’s what makes this match such a draw. Even probably the most squeamish AEW fans will watch this match. They could should cover their eyes for many of it, but they are going to watch because persons are just too curious to not see what Darby and Moxley will do to one another.

Written by Sam Palmer

I hate doing this, since it’s about rattling time a non-title women’s match got booked on an AEW PPV again (it has been actual years). That said, of all the ladies’s matches to present that spot, I might have chosen several before selecting this one, and the undeniable fact that it’s on the cardboard speaks to me more in regards to the card’s overall weakness than the worthiness of the Hayter/Thekla feud.

Simply to recap: Back in May, Thekla debuted by attacking Hayter within the ring. It isn’t like they’ve history from Stardom or anything; it took until this past Wednesday’s “Dynamite” for Thekla to clarify why she attacked Hayter, and the reason was essentially “because she was there.” Based on reports, Hayter and Thekla were imagined to start feuding after Hayter’s loss to Mercedes Mone at Double or Nothing, but Hayter suffered an injury in that match and ultimately would not return to the ring for nearly 4 months. As such, Thekla’s attack served to put in writing Hayter off TV, despite the undeniable fact that it didn’t exactly seem impactful enough for that form of storyline.

Since Hayter’s return at Forbidden Door, Tony Khan has been booking the ladies’s division primarily around a series of multi-woman matches and encounters, broadly leading toward the first-ever women’s Blood & Guts match on November 12. Hayter and Thekla were involved in one among these, after which they were involved within the four-way women’s title match at All Out — though neither was involved within the finish that saw Kris Statlander pin Toni Storm to win the world women’s title. Apart from that, their feud has entirely consisted of brawls going down ringside or backstage, and it’s essentially been swallowed up by the broader Blood & Guts construct. Functionally, which means this Hayter/Thekla match doesn’t have a ton of history besides “You hit me with a pair regular wrestling moves and put me out of motion” after which a whole lot of punching. It also means the match will likely be removed from conclusive, because it’s principally a stepping stone to a different, larger match. It’s much more suited to an episode of “Collision” than to WrestleDream, and I can not imagine it’s pulling any weight in terms of getting fans to order the PPV.

Written by Miles Schneiderman

AEW can have this issue infrequently, where they’ve two great wrestlers, who’re on an upward swing, whose storylines may be on pause, or possibly they’re waiting for a brand new one, but either way, it’s going to take these two wrestlers and smash them together like motion figures because they don’t have anything to do but each men should probably be on the PPV.

Such is the case with Mark Briscoe and AEW TNT Champion Kyle Fletcher. Fletcher is coming off a feud with Hangman Page that, personally, convinced me that the child has what it takes to be an AEW principal eventer. Mark Briscoe is coming off, or possibly still in the midst of, his feud with MJF, which has grown just a little long within the tooth, but either way, it is a feud that has raised the stock of the previous ROH World Champion.

So, after all, one among these guys must lose a match.

Even when Mark Briscoe is cost one more title by MJF, it doesn’t feel like either man is in the proper place for this match, aside from simply not having a match at WrestleDream. Fletcher will either get a win over Briscoe, bolstering his position after losing to Page at All Out, or, even worse, can be losing the TNT Title to him in the midst of his ascension. None of those options are all that appetizing to me, and I’m left feeling very “dud”-y about this match. It sounds good on paper to have two incredibly popular wrestlers in a match, however the ramifications are only form of boring. There’s an old saying, “…after which the bell rings,” about how two wrestlers should have the ability to wrestle to have a match, but there ought to be one other saying in regards to the other bell, at the top of the match, when the talent and the booker should cope with the fallout.

Written by Ross Berman

AEW can have this issue infrequently, where they’ve two great wrestlers, who’re on an upward swing, whose storylines may be on pause, or possibly they’re waiting for a brand new one, but either way, it’s going to take these two wrestlers and smash them together like motion figures because they don’t have anything to do but each men should probably be on the PPV.

Such is the case with Mark Briscoe and AEW TNT Champion Kyle Fletcher. Fletcher is coming off a feud with Hangman Page that, personally, convinced me that the child has what it takes to be an AEW principal eventer. Mark Briscoe is coming off, or possibly still in the midst of, his feud with MJF, which has grown just a little long within the tooth, but either way, it is a feud that has raised the stock of the previous ROH World Champion.

So, after all, one among these guys must lose a match.

Even when Mark Briscoe is cost one more title by MJF, it doesn’t feel like either man is in the proper place for this match, aside from simply not having a match at WrestleDream. Fletcher will either get a win over Briscoe, bolstering his position after losing to Page at All Out, or, even worse, can be losing the TNT Title to him in the midst of his ascension. None of those options are all that appetizing to me, and I’m left feeling very “dud”-y about this match. It sounds good on paper to have two incredibly popular wrestlers in a match, however the ramifications are only form of boring. There’s an old saying (“after which the bell rings”) about how wrestlers should have the ability to wrestle to have a match, but there ought to be one other saying in regards to the other bell, at the top of the match, when the talent and the booker should cope with the fallout.

Written by Ross Berman