AEW Dynamite 5/7/2025: 3 Things We Hated And 3 Things We Loved

Welcome to Wrestling Inc.'s weekly review of "AEW Dynamite," where Motor City got extreme once again for the AEW debut of the last true ECW Champion, Rhino! It was one of the only truly newsworthy things that occurred Wednesday night — AEW is deep into the build for Double or Nothing later this month while simultaneously setting up their Beach Break TV special next week, and this one felt a little bit like the calm before like, two or three storms. That won't stop the WINC crew from giving you our opinions on the latest PWG nostalgia match from the Young Bucks, Mercedes Mone brawling with Jaime Hayter, and Willow Nightingale finally being booked in AEW again, but it does mean we don't really have anything to say on major angles like Adam Page teaming up with Will Ospreay or The Opps taking out Claudio Castagnoli. Those segments were certainly things that happened; we will likely have more to say on them next time around.

As always, if you don't care what we thought of the show and just want to know what happened because for some reason you didn't watch it yourself, be sure to check out our "Dynamite" results page. If you do care what we thought, from multiple eliminator matches to MJF's continued efforts to join The Hurt Syndicate, here are three things we hated and three things we loved about the 5/7/25 episode of "AEW Dynamite."

This week saw the continuation of a one-week story told in several parts for absolutely no reason between MJF and the Hurt Syndicate, as the tag champs sought to do what no other AEW champion could this week: find a challenger. That challenger emerged in the form of Top Flight, who then cut a bit of a garbage promo before getting blindsided by MJF and beaten up. The two of the would-be title challengers were then unceremoniously beaten bloody and exhibited by the singular MJF, on his own. The same MJF that the company is telling us is scared of wrestling in a tournament — he was the one who beat up two people on his own for the sake of this segment. He beat up the two people who wanted to challenge Bobby Lashley and Shelton Benjamin. Admittedly, I am struggling to get past the fact that MJF just decimated two guys that we are supposed to see as challengers, but it cannot just be me that doesn't see who that helps, surely?

Anyway, this violent exhibition was all in the name of Lashley telling MJF last week that the reason he had been saying no in the weeks before that was that he wanted to see MJF hurt people. So surely after seeing MJF hurting people, he would change his mind? Or, he would stick to his guns and finally put this cliffhanger for the sake of it to an end? You would be wrong if you guessed either of those options, with Lashley instead telling MJF and the fans that they will have to wait yet another week for his answer. Later on, the Hurt Syndicate were backstage for another segment, with someone conspicuously lurking behind Lashley. That turned out to be the Hurt Syndicate's counsel, who for some reason figured out that now his client had said he would answer next week, it would be in his best legal interest to say nothing until next week. I feel stupid for writing that, and yet I was just re-capping what happened. It's a weekly TV show and there are going to be threads better left alone until a later episode, and that is fine. But there is nothing in this angle that calls for weeks of refusals and MJF getting to the stage of begging to be in a group that clearly doesn't want him. Especially when it gets in the way of the tag team champions actually facing other tag teams.

Written by Max Everett

AEW has been pushing The Patriarchy as a whole of late, but Nick Wayne has perhaps felt this push more than anyone else in the group as it increasingly seems like the company is positioning him for a singles run that will inevitably see him go up against Christian Cage in the near future. For this reason, it was absolutely the right choice to have him retain the Ring of Honor World Television Championship against Rhino. The part of the match that makes less sense, however, is having Wayne defeat Rhino in such a quick fashion.

It makes perfect sense that AEW would want to keep Wayne looking strong during his title run in order to further the dissension and tension between him and Cage, but it felt like such an odd choice to have Wayne defeat Rhino in a match that lasted for somewhere around a minute. Not only was this Rhino's first ever match in AEW, but he also made his return in front of his hometown crowd who had given him a very warm welcome. Rhino has had a long and memorable career, so to have him lose in what essentially was a squash match felt like a huge disappointment. It was a let down of a debut, and made what should've been an exciting moment feel like simply another plot point on a boring edition of "Dynamite."

Written by Olivia Quinlan

The first hour of the May 7 episode of "AEW Dynamite" was a little strange in my opinion. A predominantly heel-centric first hour that had the fans in Detroit, Michigan on auto-pilot when it came to booing people. The Don Callis Family got heavy boos (obviously), FTR and Stokely Hathaway got booed (potentially because of Dax Harwood's attempt to grow a beard), and even Top Flight got a smattering of boos, mainly because of the fact that their promo in The Hurt Syndicate segment wasn't all that great. However, this trios match was the shot in the arm that this show truly needed.

I know that the need for the PWG-style party tag team matches, which usually have all the flashiness of all the things Dave Meltzer dreams of in his sleep and the house show shenanigans that allows wrestlers to let their hair down, isn't exactly at an all-time high in big 2025. People want more intracity in their storytelling, things to last longer, the big fight feel to be what every major company strives to accomplish, but I'll be damned if someone didn't look at this match and just go "hell yeah that rocked."

This trios match worked on all sorts of levels. It was another case of why the people who kept calling The Young Bucks "washed" over the past few months and years hadn't been watching properly, or were still blinded by the evil AEW takeover storyline that didn't work out. It was another case of why "Speedball" Mike Bailey might be the best signing any company has made this year, and is on track to be an all-timer in terms of AEW signings. It was another case of Ricochet being the heel that he was born to play, and was able to give call-backs to his feud with Swerve Strickland, who felt like the biggest star in the entire match. Mark Briscoe was the final man in this match, and he was great as usual, if not a little distracting by the fact he's also trying to grow hair again.

Sequences that ran at 100 miles per hour, complete with the crane camera shot that let you take in everything in real time with no cuts. All of the moves from six guys who have become masters at this type of match, especially Ricochet and The Young Bucks, flowing effortlessly into another, making for the most entertaining match on the show by a country mile, and another example of why tag team wrestling, with the right people, just works on so many levels.

Strickland being the one to eat the pin was certainly a choice, but there's no harm in the top guy being beaten by a roll up by a heel who knows they would have the life beaten out of them in a one-on-one contest. All in all, this match was a blast. Don't think about it too much, have fun with it, because wrestling is at its absolute best when its fun.

Written by Sam Palmer

The first hour of "AEW Dynamite" was basically just various combinations of guys standing around yelling at each other while the crowd booed. It was a grating, aurally atrocious hour of television that had me clawing at the walls, desperate to hear something, anything, different.

For this reason, the brawl between AEW Women's Owen Hart Cup finalists Mercedes Mone and Jamie Hayter was like a breath of fresh air. 

Grabbed by the hair during a backstage interview, Mone and Hayter brawled out of frame, leaving Renee Young and the broadcasters in the arena bewildered. Not long after, Mone and Hayter came tumbling out of the box seats near the stage, brawling down through the audience and over to the entryway, where the two women both managed to get "moments" over the other, with Hayter first standing tall and then Mone locking in a Bank Statement. It was a complete 180-degree change from the Men's Owen Hart Cup Final promo, which saw Will Ospreay and Hangman Page shout video game cutscene dialogue at each other, followed by Don Callis doing his usual shrieking nonsense.

AEW has been running unique arenas over the past few months, but tonight's venue saw them struggling with making the one hallway in which they filmed the backstage interviews look different. Meanwhile, Mone and Hayter were using the interesting architecture of Detroit's Masonic Hall did as much to highlight the venue as Claudio Castagnoli's creative elevator entrance at the end of the night.

It can be easy to just throw a bunch of heat segments at the top of a broadcast to kill time, but AEW ran the risk of getting overly repetitive on Wednesday. Hopefully, they take some cues from what worked about Mone and Hayter's brawl in the future.

Written by Ross Berman

If there is one thing that can be said of AEW, it's that between its core promotion, its sister brand Ring of Honor, and the deluge of promotions around the world that the company works with – which is a good thing – there are more than enough titles and champions. Just tonight, we had the AEW Women's World Champion, the ROH World TV Champion, the AEW Continental Champion, and one-third of the AEW World Trios Champions in action. What title got defended during this week's episode of AEW's flagship show? Of course, it was the ROH World TV Championship. Because Okada was tied up with a match against Kevin Knight with a Continental title opportunity on the line, Toni Storm was in a four-way with a shot at her Women's title on the line, and Samoa Joe was wrestling in the main event against Claudio Castagnoli as a prelude to his own shot at Jon Moxley's World Championship next week. 

I cannot for the life of me understand why you wouldn't just have your champion defend the title if they are wrestling. There are some occasions where it could, in theory, make sense to have your champion throw out an eliminator challenge because they need a tune-up match. But Okada hasn't had a title defense since March and Storm hasn't had a title match since she beat Megan Bayne at Dynasty at the beginning of March, and they continue to remain without a challenger being built up to face them. Surely, and this is cognizant of the fact I just write about wrestling, it would be a far better booking strategy to build credible challengers to the champions already established than to have the champions defeat the entire field in non-title matches. Storm defeated Thunder Rosa, Penelope Ford, and Anna Jay all in one fell stroke tonight; what does that do to establish them? What does it do to enhance Storm's reign? It feels like the Eliminator matches are being used as a crutch for thoughtful and planned-out storytelling, an excuse to get two names in the ring without a rhyme or reason, and tread the water until something can actually happen on pay-per-view or a named show. It hardly restores or sustains any form of feeling but apathy.

Written by Max Everett

I didn't love much on "Dynamite" tonight, I have to admit, but I will always love a Willow Nightingale appearance, especially after learning how criminally few matches (just four) she's had on AEW programming so far this year. She was backstage being interviewed by Alicia Atout and started off talking about the Death Riders and how glad she was that the list of wrestlers who hate the faction is growing. She made a motion that she wanted to be one of the first to punch the Death Riders collectively in the face, but when she turned around, she almost clocked Kris Statlander. We've known Stat has been wanting to apologize to Nightingale and make amends for awhile now, and it seems like after this segment, she may be one step closer to doing so.

Statlander wanted to address their issues in front of the entire world since Nightingale didn't want to talk to her backstage, but Nightingale did her one better and challenged her to a match tomorrow on "AEW Collision." Stat seemed happy about this, so we might get a reconciliation of these two in a less-sappy way. Instead of apologies, Statlander can earn some respect back in Nightingale's eyes in the ring.

While it won't be nearly as gory as their street fight at All Out last September, their last one-on-one bout, I know it'll be a good one. I think the rumors of AEW Women's Tag Team Championships (ones to hopefully be promoted across all its partner companies) coming true are more likely than ever after the latest round of WWE releases. If Statlander and Nightingale can make good and team up, I think a women's tag division in AEW could absolutely be possible. Now I'm just fantasy booking, but I'd put the straps on those two immediately. With that not a current possibility, these two colliding on Thursday is going to be a highlight of the show, especially if they reunite.

Written by Daisy Ruth