AEW September To Remember - 9/17/2025: 3 Things We Loved And 3 We Hated

"AEW September To Remember" was a hybrid episode of "Dynamite" and "Collision," and took place over 3 action-packed hours in London, Ontario.

With an extra hour of programming, there was plenty to love and plenty to hate from the final show before AEW All Out on Saturday. There were glorious highs, like The Beast Mortos and Mascara Dorada's qualifying match for the Unified Title Three-Way. There were also drizzling lows, like the overall pacing of the bloated program. We won't break down "what" happened, since that was already covered on the results page. Instead, we'll break down the good, the bad, and the downright ugly from Wednesday's supershow.

So without further ado, the best and the worst of Wednesday.

I'm sure the logistics of booking a Saturday PPV, while still being beholden to broadcast the program that would normally air on Saturday night, are an utter nightmare, but Wrestling Inc. essentially pays me to complain, so that's what I'm going to do.

Often times, I will jokingly say to my colleagues who work on Mondays or Fridays, "Enjoy your 'Raw,' with it's nebulous runtime, or your 3 hour 'SmackDown,'" smugly content that the shows I mainly cover have either a hard out at 10 pm like "WWE NXT," or are usually brisk affairs like the 2 to 2hr 10min "AEW Dynamite," and like a monkey's paw curling at my wish to not work on "Raw" or "SmackDown" days, I was forced to sit through a laborious 3-hour "Dynamite" and "Collision" hybrid. "Collision" was represented well, as the last hour felt very much like the Saturday night B-show, but the 2 hours of "Dynamite" that preceded it were a weird bit of programming. The first hour felt like time-killing and warm-up matches, almost like "AEW Dark" but with a contract signing. The second hour was your usual "Dynamite," but then we went into the final hour, which, like I said, was just an episode of "Collision." 

It was a weird, lumpy show, like poorly cooked mashed potatoes. There were some highlights that my co-workers will break down for you, and I agree with their praise, but the overall show was just an odd duck. A necessary, if frustrating, bit of table-setting before Saturday's big show.

I'll acknowledge the obvious right off the bat: I love flippy wrestlers. I know they're not everyone's cup of tea, but I grew up on Rey Mysterio's flips and tricks. I'm a big fan of Will Ospreay's body of work. I was a Ricochet supporter before he began reposting Andrew Tate slop to his millions of followers, and I attest that IYO SKY is one of the best wrestlers alive, male or female. Considering my established preference for high fliers, it's honestly my fault that I haven't been paying as much attention to Top Flight as I probably should've.

There's no time like the present, however, and after the main event of Wednesday's three-hour "September to Remember" special, I am very interested in Dante Martin.

If the younger Martin continues to put out performances comparable to Wednesday's main event, I guarantee you, he will have a decorated career. After what was a very "bleh" episode of AEW to me, his performance against Hechicero and Josh Alexander of The Don Callis family woke me right back up. His airborne style of wrestling might not be for everyone, but you cannot deny that it is attention-grabbing and effective.

Martin is explosive. From the moment he leaps into the ring, Martin is off to the races, as he propels his body across impressive distances at awe-inspiring heights. In a highly visual medium like professional wrestling, an energetic, combustible style like his is worth its weight in gold. We know that wrestlers over-exaggerate their movements in order to catch the eyes of everyone in the house, from ringside to the back of the venue, and Martin's movements are exactly that. His incredible athleticism demands your attention. This isn't to say that he is a loose cannon — his moveset is explosive, yes, but you can tell just how much control he has over his body. He can somehow withstand the clutches of gravity to slow his descent — literally, float — over the competition. That is some Nightwing-level calisthenics mastery that is visually stunning. Don Callis and Bryan Danielson's shout towards his abilities is well-deserved.

Martin's impressive athleticism is highlighted when he's next to his brother and tag partner, Darius. Of course, they work well together, but seeing how Darius moves next to Dante really highlights how good Dante is. Darius is a great wrestler, but he clunks and clambers compared to his brother. You can clearly see the difference in in-ring caliber following Dante's incredible rope-traveling Moonsault, when Hechicero and Darius lock up temporarily. Dante is observably in a league of his own.

Dante isn't perfect: he struggles with selling offense well and convincingly, and he doesn't have much in-ring character to him other than being a very good wrestler who is babyface-aligned. If he can add some spice to his character, though, he could very well break out into the upper mid-card, if not the main event scene. He is a spectacular in-ring performer. I need to see more of him on my screen, please!

Written by Angeline Phu

Anyone who's been reading our loved and hated column for a while now will know that it isn't the first time I've written up a hated that's similar to this one, but one thing that AEW has a tendency to do before a big pay-per-view match is to have the competitors come face-to-face one last time in nothing more than a basic contract signing.

Adam Page defending his AEW World Championship against Kyle Fletcher is easily one of the bigger matches of All Out, given the star power of both men and the fact that the World Championship is up for grabs. For that reason, having the two men do nothing merely more than exchange a few words and put pen to paper for their match feels rather underwhelming and an uninspired way to generate some last-minute hype for Saturday night. Moreover, Page essentially said the exact same thing as he did last week in ever so slightly different phrasing, making this segment feel even more boring to watch, especially for the opener of the show. There was so much more that AEW could've done here, such as a pull-apart brawl (given their frequency of doing them isn't too frequent) or a much more heated verbal confrontation, but they instead went down the very safe route.

Written by Olivia Quinlan

September 15 marked the beginning of Mexican Heritage Month, and with that in mind, AEW kicked off the month-long festivities with a fantastic Lucha Libre showcase on the "September To Remember" TV special.

Throughout 2025, I've been a big fan of the spotlight that The Beast Mortos has been given on AEW TV. He finished off 2024 with zero points in the Continental Classic tournament, but he earned a spot in that competition through raw talent that became impossible to ignore. Since the turn of the new year, he's been able to mix it up with some of the best that AEW has to offer, including finding himself in the main event of certain episodes of "AEW Dynamite," including the Grand Slam Mexico show in Arena Mexico. He might not win a lot of his matches, but he is a perfect example of how you can get yourself over in defeat.

Then there is Mascara Dorada. Fans certainly have their opinions about how AEW treats the relationships they have with the likes of New Japan Pro Wrestling, CMLL, and STARDOM, and how for as much talent as those companies have, they never really get the chance to make a big impact on AEW TV. Dorada has been an exception to that rule in this match with Mortos.

From the moment the bell rang, Dorada was flying all over the place, but Mortos was keeping up with him. It was a match built as Dorada being the high-flyer while Mortos was looking to keep him grounded, but honestly, Mortos was flying around as much as Dorada at times. With that said, they did stick to these roles for the most part, and given how good Mortos is at basing for guys smaller and lighter than him, it really gave Dorada a chance to shine in this match. Some of the moves he pulled off in this match looked like they were about to go one way, but then Dorada would add an extra rotation or turn mid-move, and the crowd would just eat all of it up.

Granted, not all of it was perfect, and there were moments that looked a little sloppy as Dorada went for a few things that didn't exactly land correctly, and other things that just flat out failed, but that's the risk you take when you essentially try and invent moves mid-match. Dorada getting the win was also a welcome surprise, and bucks the trend of guys coming in from AEW's partners only to be jobbed out.

Does Dorada stand a chance of dethroning Kazuchika Okada for the AEW Unified Championship at All Out? Of course, he doesn't. However, he is going to bring a different flavor to a match that already has two of the best wrestlers in the world, and hopefully, he can have one of his career-best performances on a major North American pay-per-view. A very fun match worth checking out, and a contender for being the match of the night.

Written by Sam Palmer

I hate the fact that I'm not at all excited for the AEW Women's World Championship fatal four-way match at All Out. I really hate not being hyped for women's matches, especially when they involve "Timeless" Toni Storm, but I just think Saturday's match outcome is going to be so predictable, with Storm coming out on top. While that's not necessarily a bad thing, because I know I'm not alone in adoring her, I'm just getting tired of the predictability, especially after Storm has had much stronger opponents than the three she's up against now. Tonight's episode of "Dynamite: September to Remember" didn't do much to get me any more excited ahead of Saturday, and it certainly didn't make me believe in any of Storm's challengers.

Storm came out and cut a fantastic, as usual, promo on the stage with the spotlight shining down on her. It was still going pretty great when Jamie Hayter inserted herself with a mention that she didn't love the spotlight. She told Storm to remember just three simple things: that she doesn't forget, that it was Storm who invited her into the match, and "Hayter hits hard."

While that was all good and pretty effective, Kris Statlander also joined the spotlight, which made sense, but she literally admitted on the microphone that she didn't have a claim to the title match, and it had been four years since she had challenged for the AEW Women's World Championship. While her character is a bit all over the place right now, I don't think that really needed to be brought up, as it definitely makes her feel like a much less credible challenger.

As for Thekla, I think she actually looked the silliest tonight while still looking like an absolute badass, if that makes any sense at all. While her No Holds Barred match against Queen Aminata was a banger, as we knew it would be, why would she agree to a match with a hardcore stipulation against a woman who's had her number for weeks, just days before she challenges for the AEW Women's Championship for the first time? Predictably, because she's in the match on Saturday, Thekla got the victory, but in storyline, even agreeing to the match was a pretty dumb decision.

I'd be more than surprised if Hayter, Thekla, or Statlander defeated Storm on Saturday. By the end of the (long) night, this was all also a bit forgettable, with the qualifier matches for the AEW Tag Team Championship fatal four-way ladder match taking up a lot of the show with much higher stakes. Sadly, this women's segment was a down point for me tonight, but hopefully, they'll prove me wrong on Saturday.

Written by Daisy Ruth

It's always a good idea to rely on the relay action of tag team wrestling to pack out a three-hour go-home broadcast, and while admittedly on too short a notice to establish any form of story with the champions going into the bout, the three eliminator matches to determine Brodido's Tag Team Championship challengers at All Out this weekend did well with that goal in mind.

The champions won the titles in a relatively surprising fashion at Forbidden Door, with Ricochet and the Gates of Agony ensuring the at-time champions in the Hurt Syndicate were factored out of the result. They won their titles in a three-way match, and their first defense will come at the next pay-per-view in a four-way tag match; no one was saying this was inspired. But, shortcomings aside, this is tag team wrestling, and so rarely does it disappoint, even when it's being booked seemingly as an afterthought.

First on the agenda tonight was the Young Bucks against Juice Robinson and Austin Gunn, the former team being legitimately one of, if not the best, tag team in the world, and the latter team comprised of, personally, one of the most underrated workers on the planet and the more entertaining half of a former championship-winning team. The Bucks, in their relatively "Sad Corbin"-esque arc, have been entertaining, losing their EVP titles at Forbidden Door and spending their time as the aptly named "Bum A** Bucks," only to win a $500k match alongside the Death Riders last week to experience a sudden resurgence. But as said, one of the best tag teams in the world, and a performance that reflected that. Fun to be had all around.

Next on the agenda, Kip Sabian and Killswitch against Kevin Knight and Mike Bailey. Now, this was hardly the best match, focusing more on the ongoing story between Sabian and 'Switch, their constant in-fighting, and Mama Wayne's proverbial banging of their heads together. Entertaining, sure. But it was a means to an end, that end being JetSpeed in the upcoming tag title bout. Then, the main event of tonight's show was the last item on the agenda, a technical tandem of Josh Alexander and Hechicero against Top Flight, who, if you're not aware, are high-flyers.

That made for the natural juxtaposition of grounded, "Get here and let me put you in an ankle lock," against aerial offense, entertaining as the bout essentially becomes a "Tom & Jerry" scene in all of the best ways. But more importantly, it was Alexander and Hechicero picking up the win. Thus, All Out this weekend will see Brodido defend their titles against the Young Bucks, JetSpeed, and Alexander and Hechicero; one can only speak for oneself but that is an intriguing clash of different styles, and while it would most certainly deserve it's own considered build (much like many things in professional wrestling), it should not be disputed as anything but an exhibition of tag team wrestling. And I love tag team wrestling.

Written by Max Everett