Close Menu

Follow Us

AEW Dynamite Recap – 12/17/25

A "Holiday Bash" to remember!
By
AEW Dynamite Recap

Hello everyone! Are you ready for another epic night of wrestling talk? Tonight was a big one for AEW, as they did a 3-hour Dynamite/Collision special (and they’re doing an early showing of Collision this weekend), and they made sure to BRING IT with all sorts of great wrestling and moments. Shall we start this AEW Dynamite Recap?

And imagine my surprise when I turned on the show and saw they were already ready for some in-ring action!

Yep! Much like certain AEW shows of old, they decided to ignore the first match entrances and get right to it! Moxley vs. Roddy previously happened right before Blood & Guts, but that match ended with Roddy winning due to some interference; however, that wouldn’t happen this time!

This time, it was all about who would go the distance! And yeah, there was definitely some distance to go!

No, guys! We need you to come back to the ring! Don’t worry, they came back, and this was a truly hard-hitting match. In many ways, the Continental Classic is built for guys like Moxley and Roddy, as they can do long matches, make each one interesting, and make you wonder how it’s going to end. That indeed happened tonight.

…pain… The longer this match went, the more I wondered if Roddy would pull it off, or if there was another tie in the cards.

Yet, even with his reserves allowing him to kick out of the Paradigm Shift, Roddy couldn’t get out of the Death Rider. Still, that was a great near-20-minute match, and gives me yet another reason to be grateful for the C2.

And now…a message from our Mad King.

I loved that promo. Eddie wants to keep pushing forward, and we won’t get in his way! Much like Sonic the Hedgehog, he’s going to “Live and Learn,” and I’m curious where this will all head. Will he go after another title? Will he make an attempt at whoever is champ after World’s End? I’m excited to find out…

So, we already had one great match happen…how could AEW possibly top it? Well…

Yeah, they pulled out this card! Oh, and this match went OVER twenty minutes, and I wouldn’t have minded if they kept it going! It was that good. It has been a long time since The Elite truly teamed up, and the England crowd was absolutely loving it when The Young Bucks and Kenny Omega started firing on all cylinders and pulling out all the classics.

Seriously, these three are so great together, and I hope they stay in the trios division for a long time, because it could use a well-deserved shot in the arm. For the record, Takeshita, Okada, and Heichicero also brought it in this match, while also building up the tension between Takeshita and Okada. World’s End seriously can’t get here quickly enough!

Oh, and when Okada and Kenny got in the ring? Yeah, that was magic.

The match just kept going and going, and I was loving every minute of it:

But in the end, The Elite wouldn’t be denied! They got the win, they got the money, and even though the Don Callis Family got their licks in, the Cleaner would “sweep them away.”

So, at this point in the show, and I was timing it, they were on for about 49 minutes, and they had about 40 minutes of wrestling. That’s a lot! You almost had to wonder, why would they do that to start the show? The answer came in the “contract signing” segment, when Samoa Joe, Swerve Strickland and Hangman Adam Page came together to make their feelings known about the World’s End match to come.

It was good. REALLY good. And then…AEW threw the curveball…

Yeah, MJF is back, and he officially signed his Casino Gauntlet contract (that he still had from All In Texas), and used it to make the match a Fatal 4-Way. …oh, and MJF had plenty to say:

Yeah, that whole segment cooked, and they made the most of their time to make it so that pretty much no one can predict what will happen at World’s End. Legit, who would YOU have win the match and take the pin? All four of them are in “untouchable” territory right now on different levels, so how would you sort it out? Guess we’ll see in ten days!

Next up was the first women’s match of the night, with the 8-woman tag. Admittedly, I really wanted this one to go the distance, and not be one of the shorter matches of the night, but all the women came to play and had some big spots, so I can appreciate that.

The real question for me was, “How would things go to set everything up for World’s End?” The answer…?

Yep, Willow got pinned, and later on, Athena and Mercedes made it clear that they were coming for the belts at the PPV. This sets up a lot of interesting potential, including what I think will happen: Mone loses and potentially sets herself up for getting beaten by Athena later on. We’ll see how that goes…

Ah, yes, as we get back to the Continental Classic, we see another match that I was REALLY looking forward to. After all, last week we had the classic between Fletcher and Speedball, so the question this time was, “Could Fletcher/Pac top that?” Well…no. But it was still a great match!

The two were delivering not just acrobatic moves, but hard-hitting ones that made it so you couldn’t look away:

I loved how back-and-forth things went, and just when you thought Pac was out of it, or that Fletcher would tap out to the Brutalizer, they kept going. That’s when it happened…another upset occurred!

Intrigue!!!! Yes, Pac got the victory, and Fletcher has now lost two matches in a row. That leaves things wide open for who will be the runner-up in the Gold League, as there’s a lot of possibilities on the board still!

Next was the Dynamite Diamond Battle Royal. I’ll just glaze over this, because it’s only “part one” of this event. With MJF not being in it for the first time ever, that meant that there would be a guaranteed new holder of the ring. Sure enough, not only did they pick two great contenders, but we’re due for a classic next week:

Yep, that’s going to cook, and I’m not sure who will win, either! (Go, Bandido, GO!!! DON’T STOP FIGHTING!!!!)

Also, I’ll never get tired of Jon Moxley doing promos like this:

He’s just so good!!!

Back to the C2 we got, as Mascara Dorada fought Orange Cassidy! Or, as I liked to call this match, “The Fast versus The Sloth!” …you know it’s true.

I was genuinely surprised at how fun this match was, even with their “conflicting styles.” That just goes to show you don’t know how something will go until the match happens!

This particular sequence got me. Oh, Orange, never change:

In the end, OC got the victory, and things in the Blue League continue to heat up.

If I recall correctly, Orange still has to face Takeshita and Moxley…and that’ll be a lot of fun.

Following that was a match between Jamie Hayter and Isla Dawn, who has been getting a lot of time on Ring of Honor recently, and even had a nice little match against Marina Shafir on the return of AEW Dark Stocking Stuffer!

Look, AEW has a tendency of doing “short women’s matches” when they events like this, and sadly, while fun, this was only about 7-minutes, so what really matters is the fallout from after it:

I like how they’re still focusing on Statlander/Hayter, but have Thekla waiting in the wings to showcase that “she’s got next.” Show them how it’s done, ladies!

Finally, we had our tag team title main event. These two crews know how to have a good tag team match, and tonight was no different.

Sometimes, you just find a “partner” you work well with, and FTR has that here with The Bang Bang Gang, no matter what iteration you’re talking about. Plus, we got to see Stokely get razzed by fans, and get his head caved in:

They even had the BBG get some key offense near the end to make you, and the wonderful Manchester crowd, wonder if they were going to have an upset on their hands. Sadly, it wasn’t to be, but the match was still a lot of fun, and we could get a runback at World’s End, depending on what the rest of the card is:

As a reminder, as I end this AEW Dynamite Recap, there IS another episode of Collision on Saturday, it’ll just be at a much earlier time due to College Football starting its playoff.

In the meantime, let me know what you thought of this 3-Hour show in the comments below!

Avatar photo

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!