AEW Full Gear 2025 took over the Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey on Saturday night as the men’s World Heavyweight Championship shockingly changed hands and Swerve Strickland returned. Hook stunned the AEW world and realigned himself with Samoa Joe and The Opps, the Don Callis Family is falling apart, the Elite are back, and Kris Statlander is the face of the women’s division.

With Full Gear in the rear-view, here’s 10 takeaways as we take a look at the path forward.

1. Hangman needs backup

In a stunning turn of events, Samoa Joe is the AEW World Heavyweight Champion. Joe got busted open minutes into the match and poured blood the entire way though. A Hook heel turn gave Joe the opening to Muscle Buster his way into his second championship reign, ending “Hangman” Adam Page’s run at the top after less than six months.

A more linear path forward for the former champion felt like a reunion with The Elite to match up against The Opps, but AEW has other plans in mind with the sudden return of Swerve Strickland. Saturday’s show went off the air as Page and Strickland stood shoulder to shoulder staring down Joe at the top of the entrance ramp. Joe is at his absolute best in this position, and we already know sparks will fly when Page and Strickland are in the ring together. How AEW navigates balancing the three contenders for the belt in the coming months immediately becomes the promotion’s top storyline to watch.

2. Don Callis Family dysfunction

Takeshita has been teasing a breakup of the Don Callis Family for months, and now it seems like we’ve finally made some progress toward the group’s top stars exiting. After Callis commended Continental Champion Kazuchika Okada as the greatest tournament wrestler of all-time, Takeshita announced he’ll also participate in the upcoming Continental Classic in an effort to fight for the belt.

Kyle Fletcher then interrupted the backstage segment to express frustration over Okada and Takeshita not being there for him when he lost the TNT Championship, announcing he’d also take part in the Continental Classic. AEW’s group with maybe the most absurd number of members at last looks like it’s crumbling from the inside.

3. Kris Statlander is here to stay

The prevailing thought when Kris Statlander won the AEW Women’s World Championship was that her title reign would end at the hands of one of AEW’s two top women’s stars — Toni Storm or Mercedes Moné. In her first two championship defenses, Statlander has now dispatched both of them.

Statlander looked like she hurt her forearm minutes into the match and it felt like that derailed a bit of the pacing for this one. But Moné and Statlander picked things up, with the challenger hitting a whopping 14 consecutive suplexes, one for each title she owns and an extra for good measure. At the end it was Statlander putting Moné out with Saturday Night Fever for one of the biggest wins of her career.

The decision to keep Moné in the chase, while collecting seemingly every other possible belt in existence, feels like the best way to keep things fresh. Recent trends signal this one being a one-and-done rivalry, but right now it’s not clear who could be Statlander’s next challenger.

4. The Elite is officially back

The Young Bucks journey from Executive Vice Presidents to broke, to then beating their former friends to win a million dollars, and circling back to their roots with Kenny Omega, is one of the better stories AEW has told over the past year. The Bucks have seemed on the cusp of reforming The Elite since losing their EVP status at July’s All In pay-per-view, but the actual turn felt underwhelming in the moment Saturday.

I’m not sure if it was the way it happened — returning to the ring to save Omega after winning the million-dollar prize — or the pacing of the card leaving its audience out of energy, but the Bucks didn’t get the crowd reaction I would have anticipated when they hugged it out with Omega. It seems like their rivalry with the Don Callis Family will continue for now alongside Jungle Express, but a move back to the trios division against The Opps feels like the best path forward for the newly-reunited Elite.

5. Mark Briscoe wins another big one

What a run Mark Briscoe is on. As he continues putting on matches that rival Jon Moxley levels of violence, Briscoe hit the perfect mark Saturday with another show-stealer against one of the fastest rising stars in AEW, Kyle Fletcher. Flecher was on the cusp of the most TNT title defenses in AEW history, and it’s a shame Fletcher wasn’t able to break that record and we won’t get to see the shenanigans Briscoe would’ve gotten into as a member of the Don Callis Family. But Saturday’s match was violent, with the duo using a screwdriver, thumbtacks, broken ladders and barbed wire in a showdown that lived up to expectations and more.

Briscoe’s big win felt Mick Foley-esque with its stage, violence, and the crowd reaction it garnered. There’s no ceiling to how high Briscoe can climb right now. My only request would’ve been to space out Moxley-O’Reilly and Briscoe-Fletcher — two very different matches that don’t feel like they’ll get the love they equally deserve since they were sandwiched back-to-back with tons of blood and violence.

Ricky Havlik

6. Jon Moxley’s run atop the Death Riders may be on life support

Similar to Pac earlier in the evening (we’ll get to that), it feels like Full Gear was meant to move Kyle O’Reilly further up the roster as a legit contender. His match was a classic Jon Moxley contest, with the former champion’s signature fork spot taking center stage. The fork was used on both men as they left buckets of blood around the ring. At the end, it was Mox giving up for the third time at a featured event this year after O’Reilly wrapped a chain around his leg and heel-hooked him into submission.

While the Death Riders made their way down to the ring following the match and Moxley got a taste of revenge on O’Reilly after the bell, his time as the leader of the group feels like it has an expiration date. I love the concept of Moxley being so reliant on the Death Riders to help him win that he has to break out on his own to find himself again. That at least feels like the direction we’re headed.

7. Ricochet tastes AEW gold

Ricochet has been on a mission for AEW gold since he joined the promotion, and it’s hard to argue that anyone deserves it more than him. He’s been an underrated bright spot for AEW with his character transformation, and to see him claim a championship feels like great timing against the likes of Bobby Lashley, Orange Cassidy and others in Saturday’s Casino Gauntlet Battle Royal.

It’s hard not to feel a bit underwhelmed at the championship he’s bringing home though.

While it’s easy to follow the history of the National title and make the connection to why it’s being brought to AEW, the amount of singles titles in this promotion feels increasingly bloated and with lessening prestige. At some point in the near future, it’d be great for the Continental and International Championships to officially be consolidated and defended in the Continental Classic, followed by consolidating the TNT and the National Championship.

8. Is this the end of Brodido?

FTR and Brodido put on an absolute war Saturday night that featured everything we’d expect from a high-stakes championship match. Brody King and Bandido have exceptional chemistry as a tag-team and took just about everything FTR had. But one of the greatest tag-teams of all-time showed why they carry such a reputation, putting together an exceptional bell-to-bell match full of drama and insane spots, like King taking a spike piledriver on the apron.

FTR winning the belts signals a return from Edge and Christian any day now, almost certainly with Beth Phoenix at their sides. 

Brodido’s unexpected run to the titles has been one of the surprises of the year, but it’s fair to question if its two stars are ready to embark on singles expeditions. Bandido is right up there at the top of the men’s division, and a focus on his ROH World Championship wouldn’t be a surprise. King has all the makings of a future world champ in his own right, and he shared with me aspirations of holding his own singles championship down the road ahead of Full Gear. Bandido dropping the ROH belt to someone like King and then moving over to compete for one of the AEW main championships feels like something that benefits both guys, and it’s long overdue.

9. The women’s tag tournament feels like a one-team race

When Toni Storm dropped the AEW Women’s World Championship, it really looked like her journey would take her through the tag-team tournament alongside Mina Shirakawa. Picking up another win at Full Gear, this time in the Fatal 4-Way match to earn the right to pick the stipulation of their quarterfinals match, certainly signals a dominant run through the tournament. Without question, the Timeless Love Bombs are the odds-on favorites to be crowned the inaugural tag-team champs.

Tony Khan loves to mix things up and build new stars, and if it’s not The Timeless Love Bombs, it sure feels like Megan Bayne and Marina Shafir could sneak in to snag the belts. Bayne was brought in with the wrapping of being AEW’s next big thing, and the presentation of Shafir mixed with her growth and development as a member of the Death Riders feels like big things are to come for the duo.

10. Pac rises to the occasion

Count me in the camp who originally saw Darby Allin going from the main event to a match against Pac as a step down for a guy who should be competing for the world championship.

In the past few weeks, though, I’ve changed my tune from glass half-empty to half-full, casting an eye toward AEW’s current army of contenders. There’s less separation at the top, and that is only a positive for how stacked the men’s division rightfully feels.

Pac’s new look and gear give off heavy Dynamite Kid vibes and the way he utterly dominated Allin through a chunk of the match made him look like a top contender. I loved everything about this match, including Allin being on the cusp of winning despite the heavy beatdown and Pac needing dirty tactics to pin the contender.