All Elite Wrestling: Dynamite: All Elite Wrestling: Dynasty (2025)

April 6, 2025 4:48 PM - Season 6 (Specials)

Last year, AEW premiered a new April PPV show where nearly every title was defended, Will Ospreay had a first-time ever match, Swerve faced someone violent and terrifying for the top spot, and Timeless Toni Storm defended her title. Now it's one year later: nothing (and everything) has changed.

The announced card for Dynasty 2025:

AEW World Championship Match: Jon Moxley (c) vs. Swerve Strickland (with Prince Nana)
AEW Women's World Championship Match: "Timeless" Toni Storm (c) vs. Megan Bayne
AEW International Championship Three-Way Match: Kenny Omega (c) vs. Ricochet vs. "Speedball" Mike Bailey
AEW TNT Championship Match: Daniel Garcia (c) vs. Adam Cole -- No time limit
AEW World Trios Championship Match: The Death Riders (Claudio Castagnoli, PAC, and Wheeler Yuta) (c) vs. Rated FTR (Adam Copeland, Cash Wheeler, and Dax Harwood)
Ring Of Honor World Championship Match: Chris Jericho (c) vs. Bandido -- Lucha de apuestas: Title vs. Mask
AEW World Tag Team Championship Match: The Hurt Syndicate (Bobby Lashley and Shelton Benjamin) (c) (with MVP) vs. The Learning Tree (Big Bill and Bryan Keith)
Owen Hart Cup Tournament Men's Quarterfinal: Will Ospreay vs. Kevin Knight
Owen Hart Cup Tournament Women's Quarterfinal: Mercedes Moné vs. Julia Hart
Owen Hart Cup Tournament Men's Quarterfinal: Kyle Fletcher vs. Mark Briscoe

posted by The Pluto Gangsta (6 comments total)

That funny moment when Claudio and Dax Harwood each have non-legal men inside sharpshooter locks and then just start slapping each other made me super-nostalgic for Chikara.
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 6:14 PM on April 6

So Rated FTR loses, partly due to a little miscommunication but also mostly due to them not having sufficient teamwork in place and also being unable to run defense whenever any of the three of them were making a pin attempt! Wheeler Yuta even makes the pin -- in his own hometown -- to a chorus of boos.

And just to underline the point, as soon as FTR decide to turn on Copeland, their nonverbal communication becomes impeccable, and Copeland reaps years of bad karma from his Edge-years in one minute of neck-related violence.
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 6:35 PM on April 6

Toni Storm's preparation for the match includes a vignette of her in Rocky-style sweats, recreating his run through the Philly streets, screaming into her pillow, and then entering in a Balboa-style boxing robe with Luther as her cornerman. Commentary even makes the comparison of Rocky vs Thunderlips, (which... does that count as a Hulk Hogan reference?)

We do get a brief return of Deathmatch Luther when Penelope Ford tries to interfere as he hoists her on his shoulders and carries her away, with his tongue snarling. I'd like to say that Toni wins because of superior tactics, it seems Bayne's one weakness is her reliance on a handful of strength tactics, so Toni had to stay conscious long enough for her to attempt the F-5 and snatch her into a flash pin.
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 6:56 PM on April 6

Kyle Fletcher and Mark Briscoe tried to MURDER each other. Briscoe dropped Fletcher with a burning hammer, and Fletcher (whose repertoire was described by someone in my watch group as "a kid who made a wrestler in a videogame that's all finishing moves") performed multiple brainbusters. Having a Briscoe lose in the ancestral home of Ring of Honor is a heartbreak, because I really question whether Fletcher will go all the way to this torunament final. I mean, Ospreay will probably win his half of the bracket, so is this whole tournament merely a justification to re-run Ospreay v Fletcher so soon after their great cage match at Revolution?
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 7:26 PM on April 6

Bandido v Jericho is the biggest emotional rollercoaster so far. Bandido never lost the title when he held it in the COVID lockdown era, he had to give it up through injury. And no matter what you (or I) might say about Jericho's longevity and his mid-card vortex, he absolutely knows how to be either a comical heel with a hint of actual dangerous malice, or the dangerous heel with a hint of comedy. So he taunts la madre y la hermana de Bandido in the audience and sneaks his baseball bat into the match. The crowd is shocked at the idea of Bandido losing his mask, but -- in the other long-term storytelling payoff of ref Aubrey and Jericho hating each other -- the bat is uncovered and the match resumed for Bandido to win.
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 7:39 PM on April 6

I heard Luke from WrestleTalk this morning describe the three-way International Match as "like the legendary triple threat from TNA Unbreakable 2005, except all three people are AJ Styles".
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 7:04 AM on April 7