Biggest Winners And Losers Of The Week — 10/26/2026

It's been another wild week in the world of professional wrestling, and as always, that means it's time for the Wrestling Inc. staff to name some winners and losers!

We didn't have any major events go down in American wrestling this week, but that doesn't mean the last seven days weren't eventful, especially as both major companies have some big matches to build up. On "WWE Raw," Roman Reigns finally joined his family's fight against the 946, giving us a sneak peak at a potential WarGames match. Meanwhile, over in AEW, Tony Khan has been building toward both AEW Full Gear and the Blood and Guts "Dynamite" special next week, with multiple matches and segments serving those purposes on Wednesday and Saturday night.

Whose stock is trending upward this week, and whose is heading down toward the bottom? Here are your WINC winners and losers for the week of 10/26/2026!

There are plenty of examples of "WWE NXT" call-ups to the main roster who have floundered, due entirely to WWE's booking, or lack thereof. Some are called up to "WWE Raw" or "WWE SmackDown," then never used, with Jordynne Grace being a recent example of a disappearing act. Sometimes, even worse, however, a talent is brought up from the WWE Performance Center, then misused in spectacular fashion. There's no better recent example than Joe Hendry, as seen in whatever the heck his Funko Pop-based match with JD McDonagh was on Monday.

Hendy was a delightful, viral character during his time in TNA. He was a successful comedy gimmick, at that, as he had a reign with the TNA World Championship before officially making the jump to WWE, where he held the NXT title before making his way to the red brand. Which is where his momentum and entire gimmick went to die.

He faced off in a match with McDonagh on "Raw," and Hendry brought backup against Dominik Mysterio, in the form of a little person wearing a giant head fashioned to look like a Funko Pop figure of McDonagh. The joke is that McDonagh has a giant head that makes him look like one of the popular figures, a joke that has been going on via commentary for months, before being picked up, and the Funko part added, by Hendry. The Funko character has followed him around in recent weeks, and became the focal point of their match on Monday.

The guy with the costume head took a beating at the hands of Dominik Mysterio, armed with a guitar, and a regular-sized boxed Funko figure from the commentary desk also made its way into the match. The crowd did not seem into this whatsoever, though it was also difficult to hear the crowd on the broadcast thanks to Joe Tessitore's overly-enthusiastic commentary.

One would think Hendry, the comedy character, would win the comedy match to put this entire annoying story to rest, but McDonagh scored the victory, with a headbutt of all things, making Hendry look all the more the chump. A win here wasn't going to necessarily propel Hendry forward, but it could have gotten his gimmick back on track ever so slightly, and McDonagh wouldn't be hurt too much by a loss in a match that many fans are going to likely want to forget ever happened.

Written by Daisy Ruth

Just when it looked like Roman Reigns was once again ducking the Bloodline's problems of Royce Keys and the 946 on "WWE Raw," the "Tribal Chief" appeared at the end of the night to help even things up a bit more, and he sent the faction packing through the crowd after a starting a brawl. Earlier in the night, it looked as though Reigns was headed out after making his show-opening appearance against Crown Jewel opponent Sami Zayn. That wasn't the case, and now the Bloodline is looking even stronger heading into the inevitable WarGames match at the end of next month.

Reigns still has to get through the upcoming premium live event and Zayn, but he's now more invested than fans have seen in his family's fight against Keys, Carmelo Hayes, Bronco Nima, Lucien Price, and Jaida Parker. It's taken quite some time, as this rivalry started weeks before Jacob Fatu was taken out by a car driven by Parker on the September 28 edition of the show, but the "Tribal Chief" seems ready to do battle.

He even attempted to get some backup himself. In his face-to-face with Zayn, he questioned if the Undisputed WWE Champion was there to help out the Bloodline, as an Honorary Uce. When that answer was "no," Reigns of course resorted to insulting and disrespecting him, but the thought of bringing in some backup to help the Bloodline's cause was there, and that's not usually something Reigns ever does.

At the end of that segment, Reigns got into his SUV and took off. It looked as though the Usos and Solo Sikoa were once again going to have to fend for themselves, but when they were nearly down and out during the main event segment, Reigns' music hit, stunning 946 into backing off. Reigns didn't quite run down the ramp, but he certainly didn't take his usual time of aura farming to get down there. The factions stared each other down before Reigns and Keys came to blows, starting a brawl.

Reigns helped his family run off 946, driving them out of the ring and back through the crowd. It was the Bloodline standing tall this week, after Hayes joined the group last week and left the Usos and Sikoa in a heap in the middle of the ring. The Bloodline desperately needed to look strong in this feud after weeks of 946 dominance, and with the help of the "OTC," things are looking a lot more even.

Written by Daisy Ruth

I think that The New Level and Swerve Strickland make a good team. It's just that Swerve's rivalry with Hangman Page is the kind of raging wildfire that sucks all of the narrative oxygen out of the room. Austin Creed and Kofi are good backup for Swerve, but it feels like a team of their stature should not be relegated to "backup."

Ilja Dragunov was brought in as a star. Motor City Machine Guns disappeared for months, but are now in a heated Best-of-5 series with FTR. The New Level are standing next to Swerve and saying "Man, that's crazy!" Sure, they were AEW World Trios Champions, but it has all been in service of re-igniting the umpteenth chapter of Swerve/Hangman. At least Bandido and Brody King got to be World Tag Team Champions.

I'm waiting for Swerve to finally scare them off for good, so that they can get into some shenanigans of their own. It's not going to sink them or anything, but it has officially been long enough to say that there were better ways to introduce The New Level to AEW than making them glorified sidekicks.

Written by Ross Berman

Eliminator matches in AEW don't always get people excited. Sure, they are an easy way to get a champion on an episode of television and they are always good for an entertaining match, but it's very likely that the champion will end up coming out on top which makes a lot of them feel too predictable, and even a bit pointless. However, this past week on "AEW Dynamite," we saw a glorious exception to that rule.

When The Young Bucks were set to take on Mark Davis and Jake Doyle, there was some recoil from the AEW fanbase as Davis had just been beaten by Jon Moxley at AEW WrestleDream 2026, and Doyle has had a stop-start first year in AEW due to being part of the Don Callis Family's B-Team. A team with that much power and physical threat shouldn't be getting beaten so easily, especially by a team like Matt and Nick Jackson who had just gone to war at WrestleDream with Kyle Fletcher and Kevin Knight. The champions should be tired and overworked, and should realistically be easy pickings for Davis and Doyle. 

Fortunately, that's exactly what happened. In just under three minutes, Davis and Doyle battered, butchered, and beat the reigning AEW World Tag Team Champions. It was a perfect example of a squash match done right because of course The Young Bucks wouldn't be able to beat these two — they went nearly 25 minutes a few days earlier with two of the best wrestlers in the world. Yes, Davis went around the same amount of time with Moxley, but Doyle was fresh and ready to get a result that long-time fans of his have been waiting for.

It was a match that was similar to the first match between CM Punk and Jon Moxley from four years ago, where Punk was squashed in three minutes after missing two months of action with a broken foot. When done properly, squash matches can be a fantastic way to add a bolt of lightning into the booking, and it worked countless times many years ago so why not try it out now? Jerry Lawler had the same strategy where he'd get squashed by an outsider, get closer to the win in the rematch, and eventually work his way up to getting the feel-good win. Sometimes the classics still hold up when used correctly.

I don't expect Davis and Doyle to win the titles at AEW Full Gear 2026, but they have a win over the champions so they can always be considered a threat from now on. If they win the titles later down the line, this match will deserve credit for that.

Written by Sam Palmer

Despite it being one of the most anticipated episodes of AEW TV each year, the 2026 Blood and Guts edition of "AEW Dynamite" finds itself in the losers column this week before it's even taken place. That might sound harsh, but it's here more so for the Blood and Guts matches themselves not really being anything to rave about.

Cast your minds back to the 2010s, where WWE had a habit of naming its pay-per-views after match types. Some still exist to this day like Elimination Chamber and Money in the Bank, but others like TLC, Fatal 4 Way, and Hell in a Cell have all been discontinued purely because they all ended up being a hindrance to the yearly calendar. You could even argue that a match like Hell in a Cell has never fully regained the aura it once had due to so many matches happening within the cell, not because the story called for it, but because it was "that time of the year."

That is the issue that Blood and Guts has found itself in this year. Both the men's and women's matches seem more thrown together and non-sensical than ever before, and the fact the special was announced well in advance meant that we could all see AEW scrambling to set up four sets of teams for each of the two matches. You can have some sympathy for the men's match as it did seem like the Death Riders were going to be involved in some capacity before the passing of Pac, but now The Don Callis Family will now take on the team of Will Ospreay, Adam Copeland, Darby Allin, Steven Borden, and The Young Bucks.

The women's match is arguably even more egregious. Divine Dominion and The Triangle of Madness will face The Brawling Birds, Wrathlander, and Willow Nightingale in a match that is almost a carbon copy of the bout that happened last year, with Lena Kross and Alex Windsor taking the place of Mina Shirakawa and Toni Storm, while Mercedes Mone and Marina Shafir are away feuding against each other. This is a match that falls into the trap of needing to do a women's match alongside the men, as well as the already mentioned "It's that time of year" trope that AEW were good at avoiding until very recently.  

The show will be fun and set a standard for WWE to hit with WarGames at Survivor Series a few weeks later, but maybe next time, try and make it so the matches have a bit of build behind them, rather than just saying "It's that time of year."

Written by Sam Palmer