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AEW Dynamite Recap – 11/5/2025

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AEW Dynamite Recap

Hey everyone! Todd here once again. Jen is going to be out for a bit longer, but like a good tag team partner, I’m ready to cover what just happened on another great Wednesday night of wrestling via my AEW Dynamite Recap!

Yep! First, Tony Schiavone was trying to make an announcement, but he was interrupted by The Opps, who apparently were still “a little bitter” about the “Halloween doppelganger” last week. Thankfully, Hangman, Eddie Kingston, and Hook interrupted them ahead of their big trios match later in the night. Hook was able to make the main event even sweeter, though, by making it for the trios championships! How’s that for raising the stakes on a Wednesday night?

Alright, next up was a match with huge implications for Blood and Guts next week! Both the men and the women will have a best-of-3 series to determine who has the advantage going into the cage! For the men, the first match was Orange Cassidy vs. Claudio Castagnoli!

This was a classic AEW-style matchup, because, on paper, Claudio should wipe the floor with OC. Except, OC doesn’t give up! I personally loved how he kept putting his hands in his pockets to frustrate Claudio, only for Claudio to toss him around like a ragdoll…and then put his hands back in his pockets!!! Bless you, OC. Bless you.

This battle was really good, and though Claudio won in the end with his Swiss Death uppercut, he had to WORK to earn that win. 1-0 to the Death Riders in this series.

So, after the match, we got another interview piece with Mark Briscoe calling out Kyle Fletcher for the TNT title, at Full Gear! The catch? Well, it’s two-fold. First, Briscoe wants it to be a NO DQ match!!!! He’s clearly still sore about what happened at WrestleDream. 

However, “The Worm” Don Callis upped the ante himself by saying if Briscoe loses…he has to join the Don Callis family! …I don’t know what to make of that! Briscoe is there to Conglomerate!!! NOT BE IN THE FAMILY!!! Does this mean that Kyle is going to lose…? We’ll find out in a few weeks… Oh, and that wasn’t the only “recruiting” Callis was doing…

Moving on, we had the second quarterfinals match for the women’s tag tournament, with Mercedes Mone and Athena teaming up against Willow Nightingale and Harley Cameron! Last week’s quarterfinal was good, but I thought it could’ve been longer.

Thankfully, this match delivered, went well over ten minutes, had the crowd going “This Is Awesome!”, and set up a lot of potential future matches. After all, Billie Starkz couldn’t help her Minion Overlord get the win, and Harley pinned Athena…so…are we on the march toward Harley vs. Athena, and then Athena/Billie 3 at Final Battle? I’m all for it, so long as Athena is on the main roster full-time in 2026!

Next up was something that I missed before the show started, as Tony Khan announced via one of his livestreams (that he’s been doing a lot recently on Twitter) that he is bringing back a classic championship to AEW: The National Championship. This one takes things back to Mid-Atlantic Wrestling and Georgia Championship Wrestling, and was the belt that preceded what many know as the United States title.

As you’ll hear in the video below, this AEW title will be different from others in the brand, as it’s one that will be defended all over the place, including at New Japan Strong, Ring of Honor, and, of course, AEW. Heck, I wouldn’t be surprised if CMLL and Rev Pro got in on this action! All of this will be brought to a head at Full Gear, when we get a Casino Gauntlet match to determine the first National Champion!

While we won’t know all the participants in the match right away, it was confirmed that Bobby Lashley, Shelton Benjamin, and Ricochet will all be participating. Look, this is a good rivalry, and I appreciate them using it to help build up the new belt, but let’s not overstay the welcome, okay?

We now head to the third match, which was Darby Allin vs. Daniel Garcia in the second match of the men’s Blood & Guts advantage series.

This was another fun bout, not the least of which is because these are two of the “future talents” that will eventually run the company one day, and it was great seeing them do all sorts of damage to each other and showing off their different styles.

It wasn’t too surprising that the Death Riders tried to get involved, via Pac trying to KO’d Darby so he’d lose by countout, but Darby doesn’t quit! …remember, Jon? He was able to put the Scorpion Deathdrop on Daniel, who had no choice but to tap out. Naturally, the other Death Riders took that personally, leading to a beatdown that brought the rest of the Conglomeration out to help make things “more even.

That means, on AEW Collision, it’ll be Jon Moxley vs. Roderick Strong to determine who gets the advantage!

After that, came a segment with FTR, who don’t like Brodido because they “robbed them” of the AEW tag titles back at Forbidden Door. So, what’s the “Living Legend Killers” to do? Well, they locked Brodido in their dressing room and attempted to humiliate and attack Bandido’s family!

Hmm…clearly there’s nothing wrong with that plan, right, Stokely?

Yeah, you deserved that, and FTR deserved this:

That should be a fun one at Full Gear. The tag team division has been cooking, so why not continue the trend? Speaking of continuing trends, how about another hype video for Blood & Guts?

If you didn’t hear, next week’s show will be over 2.5 hours to ensure both cage matches get enough time! I can’t wait!!!! Oh, and if you think, “Wait, isn’t there someone missing from that video?” …I have some bad news…

Yeah, Queen Aminata was sadly injured last week, and as such, she wasn’t cleared for tonight or Blood & Guts next week. Thankfully, they had a worthy replacement in Mina Shirakawa! Yes, it absolutely sucks that Aminata was taken out of the match, but that’s not an event you risk an injury on, as there have been injuries in that match in the past.

Focusing on the match itself, Mina and Megan brought it, and this was another great example of different styles clashing in fun ways.

I truly adore Mina, and there were times I thought this match would be much shorter than it was due to the subbing out, but instead, they put on a nearly 10-minute match, with multiple fun moments, including Mina suplexing Megan on the edge of the ring!

Megan was able to take advantage of a distraction by Marina Shafir to get the win, which means the women have some catching up to do on Saturday’s Collision! But, because this is the lead-up to Blood & Guts, all the women came out to play and beat the crap out of each other!

Finally, in the main event, we had the world trios titles up on the line! They’ve been defending them a lot more recently, and I approve, especially with us getting Hangman/Joe II at Full Gear.

There was a lot to like about this fight, including Hook throwing Hobbs around, and then…Hobbs throwing Hangman around…and then through a table!

…I love wrestling.

Anyway, with Hangman out of the picture, The Opps were able to take advantage and then put a Torture Rack on Hook to make him tap out. A worthy end to the show, and hopefully, we’ll get more Trios title matches with those who are regularly a group, so that whoever beats The Opps can give the division a little extra juice.

And…that’s it! What a show, huh? Let me know what you thought about Dynamite, and my AEW Dynamite Recap, in the comments below!

AEW Collision Matches:

  • Roderick Strong vs. Jon Moxley
  • Jamie Hayter vs. Skye Blue
  • Harley Cameron vs. Thekla (if necessary)
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A self-proclaimed Nintendo fanboy, born, bred, and Mushroom fed! He’s owned every Nintendo handheld and every console since the SNES. He's got a degree in video game development, is a published comic book writer and an author of several novels!

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