AEW Dynamite - 8/13/2025: 3 Things We Loved And 3 Things We Hated

Another "AEW Dynamite" has come and gone. There is one more "Dynamite" and a handful of programming until Forbidden Door in London, England next Sunday. The last "Dynamite" on American soil before Forbidden Door was a muted affair, with little by way of matches with stakes, and heavy in talking.

The show had plenty to love, from the women's division's outing of the night, or Hiromu Takahashi's surprise appearance and dominant win. There was also plenty to hate, like the heatless matches and the nonsensical booking of the seemingly injured Will Ospreay. This will not recap what happened on Wednesday night, as that has already been done on the results page.

Instead, the Wrestling Inc. Staff will be breaking down our thoughts, as we do every week. Enough with the introductions, let's get down to the opinions.

I don't know about you, but I know that a match between Adam Copeland and Stokely Hathaway was on my 2025 bingo card nor did I think I would ever enjoy it nearly as much as I did.

Yes, Hathaway getting himself disqualified from his match against Copeland by throwing baby powder into his eyes was not a great idea and completely unnecessary given that the ending of this seemed pretty straightforward. However, everything up until that point and the events that followed afterwards was otherwise very entertaining and compelling to watch. From Copeland going around the arena to mock Hathaway with the fans to Cage saving Copeland from a beatdown at the hands of FTR to Copeland and Cage officially reuniting with one another, it was the perfect mix of comedic and emotional storytelling on an episode of "Dynamite" that was otherwise nothing more than average. It was a standout moment, and actually worked to move a storyline forward with the reunion and FTR causing their restraining order against Copeland to be void rather than repeating something similar to last week's show as evident in other segments on the show (looking at you, Swerve Strickland promo and the Darby Allin/Death Riders stuff).

Written by Olivia Quinlan

Look, I'm not going to pretend the main event trios match between LFI and The Opps was "bad" or even "not good." It was a perfectly cromulent match, but my god can we get some stakes? Any stakes!?

The match was more of an epilogue than a climax, which made the decision to let it run through the overrun kind of baffling. It was the kind of show that needed to be clipped off before all the air ran out of the balloon, and unfortunately, by the time MJF was jumping Adam Page in the parking lot, the balloon was flat. There was a lot that worked about tonight's show, but when the decision was made to reunite Adam Copeland and Christian Cage for the first time in roughly 15-20 years, I really don't understand how a match like The Opps beating up LFI -without even putting their titles on the line- was the main event.

The main event was emblematic of the whole show. Outside of Copeland's match with Stokely Hathaway, and the all-star tag match, this was a pretty perfunctory "Dynamite" with a perfunctory main event. Crazy to think that even the opening contest between Jon Moxley and Kevin Knight felt like a bigger deal than the show-closing bout. At least that had a Darby Allin stinger at the end, no pun intended.

Written by Ross Berman

Forbidden Door 2025 is just around the corner, and while the current card features can't-miss matches like "Timeless" Toni Storm versus Athena for the AEW Women's World Championship and Kazuchika Okada versus Swerve Strickland for the AEW Unified Championship, you would not be remiss in criticizing AEW's self-imposed emphasis on a card that is, supposedly, meant to highlight AEW and NJPW talent. While such a criticism was not completely addressed on Wednesday's edition of "AEW Dynamite," Tony Khan did take a step to rectify the issue, as NJPW's Hiromu Takahashi appeared in Cincinnati to clear house and stake his claim on Kyle Fletcher's TNT Championship.

Takahashi appeared as the final member of AEW's weekly heels-versus-faces Eight Man Tag Team Match, aligning himself with Brody King, Tomohiro Ishii, and Hologram to take on the combined forces of The Young Bucks and The Don Callis Family's Fletcher and Josh Alexander. The match was pretty run-of-the-mill stuff, considering the talent within: the Bucks had great synergy, Hologram stunned with a death-defying dive to the outside, and Fletcher asserted his dominance as TNT Champion. Khan scored the night's first brownie point by having Takahashi get the match's winning pin, after the NJPW star rocked Alexander with a Superkick and Death Valley Driver combo. This was a small gesture of goodwill towards NJPW in a time of justifiable criticism towards AEW and its Forbidden Door favoritism. Takahashi and NJPW went over, but not at the cost of any AEW star's reputation (I guess Alexander lost some dignity, but he hasn't found much of that with the Callis family anyway).

As the boys marched to the back following their loss, the match was announced: Takahashi will represent NJPW at The O2 Arena in London when he takes on Fletcher for the TNT Championship at Forbidden Door. In a card that is so AEW-heavy, an NJPW star making the cut is pretty notable news for the company. It's a fun and logical decision: Fletcher is looking for NJPW's best to test himself against at Forbidden Door, and while I'm not too familiar with Takahashi's body of work, his multi-colored gear, dyed hair, and infectious energy make for an eye-catching look that AEW fans unfamiliar with NJPW can easily rally behind. Pair that with the sample of a Fletcher/Takahashi lock-up that we got at the beginning of Wednesday's Eight-Man Tag Team Match, and this is looking to be an entertaining, no-frills, low-stakes match-up that will see some great wrestling from both sides.

Again, this isn't the fix to the criticism surrounding the Forbidden Door card. For a card that boasts the dissolution of promotional barriers with its enticing name, there is a startling focus on AEW versus AEW match-ups. Is one TNT Championship going to tip the scales in NJPW's favor? No, but it is a step in the right direction. Hopefully, Fletcher and Takahashi's match can set a good example for AEW/NJPW mix-ups, so next year's Forbidden Door can cross more boundaries.

Written by Angeline Phu

The last time we saw Will Ospreay was just three weeks ago, and though it does feel a bit longer than that, probably due to the fact he last wrestled on All In Texas, what he came back tonight to do seemed a bit strange. The last time Ospreay was on our TV screens, he was talking about a serious neck injury. Granted, it wasn't serious enough that he required surgery, but AEW made it seem pretty serious, with an in-ring interview with Tony Schiavone and everything with Ospreay saying he had to go away for a while. Reports had been circulating that Ospreay had been working banged up, but that he'd be fine for Forbidden Door. He kind of confirmed that by saying he'd "try his hardest" to make the pay-per-view in London, which, thankfully, he is, because I do love Ospreay. However, his announcement, the confirmation of it, tonight was just kind of strange, as is the match overall.

Ospreay returned to save Darby Allin from the Death Riders, then challenged them to a Lights Out Steel Cage match, of all things. While I'm glad Ospreay is okay enough to do that, it really threw me off for a second. I thought it had already been confirmed that Allin was taking on Jon Moxley at the show, but I guess that wasn't the case. The match also grew from Moxley, Claudio Castagnoli, and Wheeler Yuta taking on who I assumed would be Ospreay, Allin, and another partner, to a full-blown 10-man match, also involving Kenny Omega, Kota Ibushi, and Hiroshi Tanahashi for the good guys, and Gabe Kidd and the Young Bucks for the heels.

Personally, a ten-man tag team Lights Out Steel Cage Match seems pretty crowded, but it's something interesting for Forbidden Door, at least. Adding more guys could protect Osprey and his neck a bit more, but we only have one more "Dynamite" left to build to get more of these guys in front of a crowd altogether, or at least, most of them. It was a strange move, especially for Ospreay, tonight, though I am curious to let it play out, though I'm assuming it will be just as chaotic next week as the creation of the match was tonight.

Written by Daisy Ruth

After last week's bumpy fatal four-way qualifier match, tonight's six-woman tag team bout was refreshing to watch. TBS Champion Mercedes Mone teamed up with the Death Triangle's Skye Blue, and Thekla (with Julia Hart at ringside) in what I thought was a really interesting team, against Willow Nightingale, Queen Aminata, and one of the challengers for Mone's title at Forbidden Door, Alex Windsor. The match was a fun bout that I really enjoyed, and the ending made perfect sense, with Windsor getting the victory when she tapped out Blue with the Sharpshooter.

What made the women's segment of the show even better was the fact AEW Women's Champion Toni Storm and ROH Women's Champion Athena, who will be facing off at the pay-per-view in London, were watching from the crowd, something I thought was a nice touch, since they're usually just at ringside, or Storm is on commentary. Of course, they started brawling following the match, with Athena attacking Storm, and all the women down in the ring started brawling, too. In the end, it was Storm and Windsor staring down Mone and Athena. I barely noticed the rest of the women clearing out to leave space for those booked on Forbidden Door to further things along even more before the big event. It was then that Storm, in her usual way, full of innuendos, challenged Athena and Mone to a tag team match in Glasgow, Scotland, next week, with Windsor as her partner.

If the women were only going to get one big chunk of time on tonight's show, I at least thought it was booked well. I love Storm and Windsor together, so I'm looking forward to next week's match. While it wasn't the most exciting thing I've ever seen on an episode of "Dynamite," I thought this was solid, and I was glad to see so many women on the show, even if it had to be all at one time.

Written by Daisy Ruth

He was just like his country, young, scrappy, and hungry, but Maxwell Jacob Friedman seems to have thrown away his shot.

With the necessary reference to another staged spectacle out of the way, let's keep things simple: MJF and "Hangman" Adam Page's opening promo on Wednesday's episode of "AEW Dynamite" was an interesting start to the show. This is not the first time I've criticized MJF for his rapidly degrading promo performances, but as long as he continues to drop the ball when he's put on the mic, I will continue to do so.

I will say this: this promo war's basic progression was good (maybe even great), and, at the end of the day, this segment did what it needed to do. MJF walked in to Wednesday's opening segment thinking he was going to trick Page into giving him an AEW World Championship opportunity without using up his Casino Gauntlet Match Contract title match rights, and he walked out of that promo battle sufficiently goaded into using his contract for a match at Forbidden Door. Having Page get an intellectual one-up on the typically wily, conniving MJF was fun, but it was exactly MJF's wily, conniving nature that made this promo almost unbearable to listen to.

When philosophy is appropriately added to a wrestling promo, it's awesome. There is nothing more fun than being prompted to dig deeper into this medium — that's why terms like "in-ring psychology," "mind games," and "mentality" get thrown around as compliments in this sphere. However, clarity is everything. There is nothing more mind-numbing than trying to follow an "intellectual" promo that does not make a lick of sense. When I was listening to MJF's promo — when I was listening to his tirades about accepting his devilish nicknames, and about how morality is contingent on perception — I felt my eyes glaze over in real time. He was saying so much, but meaning so little.

I understood everything MJF was saying in a vacuum, about how the identities of "good" and "evil" are a social construct, about how that devalues Page's reign, but MJF delivered it carelessly, without the finesse he's known for. Sure, he's just ragebaiting, but you can ragebait and have a semi-cohesive argument; in fact, if he had threaded together his words with any more care, this would have been an absolute home run of a segment. He just lacked the sophistication that he used to have during the height of his career, and as the segment went on and on and on, it became clear that MJF, as he exists right now, no longer has the verbal chops that have carried him throughout his early AEW career.

I'm sure their match at Forbidden Door will be a decent one (as disappointing as it is to have another AEW vs. AEW match at the AEW/NJPW collab event). However, MJF threw away his shot on Wednesday. He threw away his contract, and he threw away his chance to redeem himself from his recent collection of abysmal promos.

Written by Angeline Phu