AEW Dynamite - 8/27/2025: 3 Things We Loved And 3 Things We Hated

The final "AEW Dynamite" of August has come and gone, kicking off a residency in Philadelphia's famous 2300 Arena, the former home of ECW. The arena itself was a highlight of the event, imbuing the episode with a certain energy.

This will not be a recap of what happened, as that's what our fastidious results page is for. Instead, the Wrestling Inc. Staff will break down the good, the bad, and the ugly of AEW's homage to Extreme Championship Wrestling. There were plenty of highs, like the show-closing plunder-filled Falls Count Anywhere Match, or the world trios title match between The Opps and The Gates of Agony & Ricochet, but there were also plenty of lows, like Mercedes Mone's aimless promo, or Hangman Page's dire future.

Without further ado, let's get into what we loved and what we didn't love from this week's "Dynamite."

I feel like we all knew AEW's residency, especially their first show at the historic 2300 Arena, was going to be good, but I feel like this was the best, most solidly booked "Dynamite" in weeks, and the entire setup of the physical set, as well as the raucous crowd of sickos in Philadelphia, only enhanced the show. AEW set everything up to look very much like an old-school ECW show, probably as much as they could without getting in trouble with WWE, from the entrance ramp to the lighting. I wouldn't have had the LED boards on the side of the entrance, but that's just my slightest little nitpick. Everything looked great, was visually appealing, and hit that nostalgia part of my brain hard.

Of course, the crowd was absolutely excellent. From the "f*** Don Callis" chants, which were to be expected, to them hollering at Willow Nightingale and Kris Statlander to "hug it out!" they were hot all night. The opening segment, when the crowd was at its freshest, was probably the best. It was difficult to hear Dax Hardwood, Cash Wheeler, and Stokely Hathaway speak, and I loved the "No hoes!" chants at Big Stoke. Adam Copeland and Christian Cage ran away with the segment, however, when Copeland grabbed the microphone when Cage started to talk about dead dads, then gave it back when the crowd responded with a "FINE, you're a bunch of sickos!"

The show was really solid overall, including the All-Star Eight-Man Tag Team match, which was really surprising to me, because I'm usually not about those matches at all. Even that was booked well, with the seeds of dissension between Kazuchika Okada and Konosuke Takeshita being sown further with a brief shoving match. That's something I'm really looking forward to in AEW in the coming months, and I hope it's a slow burn for Takeshita to turn on the Don Callis Family. Josh Alexander, being the one to finally get a pin here, was excellent, too.

Everything about tonight, from the way the matches were booked to how the arena was lit, made me excited for the next few shows to come. I hope the crowds in the 2300 Arena stay just as hot, and with the build-up to All Out, with plenty of time to spare before the pay-per-view, I really hope things are going to stay just as interesting in the ring as they were tonight.

Written by Daisy Ruth

Following the victory over MJF at Forbidden Door, many people wondered who would be the next man to step up and face Hangman Page for the AEW World Championship. The problem everyone immediately ran into was -outside of MJF, who still has his Casino Gauntlet contract in his back pocket- there aren't many top heels in AEW right now who could realistically pose a threat to the champion. Sure, there are a lot of heels who are great wrestlers, but if you keep throwing random bad guys at Hangman with no real reasoning, his current reign might end up going the way of his first one; fun in places, but leaving people wanting more.

Then Don Callis showed up, the only man in AEW right now who has a larger family than Mark Briscoe (congratulations by the way Chicken), to say that the last time Hangman faced one of his guys, he lost the AEW World Championship. That guy that Hangman faced was Kenny Omega back at Full Gear 2021, and since the,n Callis has assembled a literal army of men to do his bidding, and Callis stated that one of his guys will be next up to face him. We'll just have to be patient when it comes to finding out which family member it will be. This is a direction that I'm not overly thrilled about for one simple reason: The Don Callis Family already has so much going on right now.

We've got Kyle Fletcher as the AEW TNT Champion, Konosuke Takeshita as the most recent G1 Climax winner, Kazuchika Okada as the AEW Unified Champion, Wardlow has returned to the company and joined forces with Callis, and all of those guys not only have their own things going on, but they all shouldn't really be losing either. Takeshita didn't seem happy about Wardlow being in the family at Forbidden Door, as well as showing signs of resentment towards Okada in their All-Star tag team match. Okada has just gotten done putting Swerve Strickland on the shelf, and Fletcher has just won the AEW TNT Championship and is the company's best bet in bringing prestige back to that title, so while all of those names mentioned would make for a good match with Hangman, none of them should be eating a loss right now.

That then leaves the likes of Hechicero, Rocky Romero, Lance Archer, Trent Beretta, and Josh Alexander as potential opponents. While all of those men are talented wrestlers, none of them make any sense when it comes to who Hangman should face at All Out. You could argue that Alexander is the best bet purely because All Out is in Canada and he's Canadian, but AEW can't heat him up enough to make him a viable challenger to the AEW World Championship in four weeks, even if Hangman was the "Walking Weapon's" first opponent in the company. We still have a few weeks before All Out, but already Hangman's direction seems a bit underwhelming.

Written by Sam Palmer

There are very few wrestlers in the world that wouldn't have chemistry with any one of or all three of the Opps, and perhaps that's why they make such good Trios Champions that, up until recently, had yet to get truly going with the titles in hand. Following up on their Forbidden Door win over an NJPW adversary, they were tasked against a team that honestly could have credibly taken the titles, but for the one fatal flaw that had ultimately cost them, in Ricochet and the Gates of Agony.

There are times when teams just click, and there is perhaps just no greater example than Ricochet, Bishop Kaun, and Toa Liona, with Ricochet's corny character work perfectly meshed with the brooding brawn of the Gates. On their own, they were both good enough acts. But together, they feel like a stable that can go really go somewhere.

However, as alluded to, Ricochet had already started a beef before setting his eyes on gold, and costing Bobby Lashley and Shelton Benjamin their Tag titles was never really going to end the matter where it stood. So, of course, when the time was right and the match was hanging on a razor's edge, that was the right time for MVP and his cane to make a cameo, the latter doing so across his back.

Thus, the challengers, who could credibly hold the titles in the future, lost their match with a heavy asterisk; the champions not only continue their reign but do so having not been entirely beaten beyond belief, and both can move on with whatever they have got going on, respectively. More importantly, the action was pure fun, with no reliance on stretching belief or melodrama. Everything in the match served a purpose in laying down the foundations for a future spot, and it flowed in such a way that there was never really a lull in movement.

The only thing that would maybe put a dampener on things, and this is admittedly very nitpicky, is the fact that Hook returned on the same show as this match, and there was nothing to address his status within the group. That would have been cool, even if it was a small interaction in a segment. Otherwise, a solid title defense for the champions as they are starting to get back in their groove and a sure-to-be interesting feud between the Hurt Syndicate and the Gates of Ricochet. What's not to love?

Written by Max Everett

I feel like tonight would have been the perfect time, in front of the perfect, hot crowd, on a perfectly timed anniversary, to bring back Jack Perry and reunite him with Luchasaurus. Tonight happened to be the two-year anniversary of Perry's backstage altercation with CM Punk, where Brawl Out gets its name from. AEW could have done the cheekiest little nod to that fact by bringing back Perry, who we haven't seen on AEW programming since last November. While I'm sure most AEW fans are online (hopefully not as chronically as I am) and would have known what happened two years ago today, I still think it would have been a nice touch to kick off the Philadelphia residency with a surprise bang.

It also wouldn't be like bringing him back was anything completely random and just because of the Brawl Out anniversary. Fans across social media believe that it was Perry who brought Killswitch/Luchasaurus back to life in the video played right before the big man's return last week on "Dynamite." And, if that wasn't initially the plan, fans on X certainly gave AEW President Tony Khan an excellent idea as to how to bring back "The Scapegoat."

Sadly, we didn't see Killswitch, who I am officially going to refer to as Luchasaurus moving forward now that he's no longer alongside Christian Cage, after his loss alongside Kip Sabian against Cage and Adam Copeland at Forbidden Door. There was tension between Luchasaurus and Sabian after they took the "L," and their team-up was so quick that I wouldn't be upset if AEW pulled him from the now-former Patriarchy and reunited him with a returning Perry without much explanation.

That didn't all happen tonight, which I disliked, but that doesn't mean it can't happen in the following weeks, preferably when AEW is in Philadelphia in front of that amazing crowd, which hopefully stays just as hot. Philly has smart wrestling fans who would appreciate the return of Perry and a subsequent reunion with Luchasaurus. The pair would also likely work as babyfaces, something AEW desperately needs right now with the losses of Will Ospreay and Swerve Strickland.

Written by Daisy Ruth

As someone who will always have a place in his heart for the chaotic world of ECW, the August 27 episode of "AEW Dynamite" was right up my street. A show that was so ECW-coded that, if you listened closely, you could hear Tony Khan backstage doing his best Paul Heyman impression by writing down the card for this Saturday's "AEW Collision" on a napkin. However, a show in the 2300 Arena wouldn't be complete without a bit of hardcore action, and there is no one better at producing high-quality, "Oh My God, he's dead" matches than Darby Allin.

Darby has virtually mastered his own genre of match, "Darby Death." The way it works is Darby throws himself around the arena like a human pinball, takes an ungodly amount of punishment, bumps that even the legends of ECW would look at and go "Yeah, I'm already not getting paid, so I'm definitely not doing that," before fighting from underneath to get the underdog victory. It's perhaps one of the best formulas in all of wrestling right now, as it is incredibly entertaining, and for the people who don't like the guy due to all of the things he's been accused of in the past, the sight of him getting murdered in real time is something that they can cheer for as well.

This Falls Count Anywhere match with Claudio Castagnoli already had high expectations, given their pair of matches from late 2024 being excellent, and the fact that when he's paired with someone much bigger than him, Darby will go above and beyond to make his opponent look like an absolute killer. That's exactly what happened with this one, as right from the jump, Darby leaps off the top of what looked to be a shipping container to kick things off, and 20 seconds later, he is launched "Jackass" style into a sea of chairs from a shopping cart, before being slammed through a flatscreen TV.

When they finally get into the 2300 Arena, Darby and Claudio make great use of the surroundings by having Darby climb one of the building's support beams for a Coffin Drop, and by having Claudio do his best Bam Bam Bigelow impression by launching Darby out of the ring and through the announce table. Back in ECW, Spike Dudley would have been caught by a sea of fans, but in AEW, Darby Allin gets caught by an announce desk that Excalibur keeps trying to convince me is solid oak, but I'm just not buying it, dude, I'm sorry, it's too flimsy.

There were weapons galore, the ringside area looked like a tornado ran through it, and after making Claudio look as strong as he's ever been, Darby gets the win to wrap up the show-long story of him wanting to face Jon Moxley at All Out. One of the most entertaining TV matches of the year so far, Darby Allin is back in AEW, and he's only going to get crazier from here.

Written by Sam Palmer

Every professional wrestling fan may not always agree about their feelings on specific segments that are produced weekly wrestling shows, but at least we can all generally agree on a particular goal that we're able to tell they are meant to accomplish. While it's up to personal opinion on how fans ultimately feel about Mercedes Mone's championship celebration on "Dynamite", it feels pretty safe to say that there was no real goal that it was meant to accomplish.

In theory (and even if AEW has already done it in the past), hosting a celebration for Mone and her many titles is a great idea, fitting in line with her current character. This was the perfect opportunity to set up a new challenger for any of Mone's many, many titles. In execution, though, it turned out to be incredibly disappointing and was ultimately a letdown. Many fans and viewers (including myself) expected something of note to happen here, but it instead turned out to be pointless, wasted television time. Even if this was ultimately meant to set up Alex Windsor as Mone's next challenger for the RevPro Undisputed British Women's Championship with the shots that the former took at the latter, then it would've been much more effective and interesting to have Windsor at least attack Mone. This was a major low point on an episode of "Dynamite" that was overall fast-paced, exciting, and full of non-stop action.

Written by Olivia Quinlan