AEW All In 2025 was seven hours of blistering action, and, as always, there were plenty of winners and losers in Arlington, TX.
It is not time to break down the "what" of All In 2025, that's what our fastidious results page is for. We've also already broken down what we loved and what we hated from the show, so now it's time to break down who looked good and who looked bad, who stole victory from the jaws of defeat, and who made winning look like a bad time all around. Some winners are easy to pick, it won't surprise you that Dustin Rhodes is on that list, and some losers can be tough to admit, like Mark Briscoe failing to meet his big moment.
Without further ado, the winners and the losers from AEW's big show in Globe Life Field.
Dustin Rhodes has always been something of an addendum to the Rhodes legacy, even in AEW. While he was pegged as the successor to his father, Dusty Rhodes, his struggle with substance abuse and other personal demons led to much of his career being spent in the wilderness. Enter his half-brother Cody Rhodes, and suddenly Dustin became the "almost was" of the Rhodes family. Despite being a part of one of the most important matches in AEW history, his brutal match with Cody at the inaugural Double or Nothing, Dustin hasn't exactly been a major part of AEW history. If anything, AEW history is often made at his expense, which is what made his win on Sunday all the more potent.
Rhodes showed up on Saturday expecting to be a loyal soldier and wrestle on the pre-show. Unfortunately, AEW TNT Champion Adam Cole was unable to compete, thrusting Rhodes, his tag partner Sammy Guevara, and Daniel Garcia into the spotlight with Cole's challenger Kyle Fletcher. Rhodes was probably the last person anyone expected to win the match, since Fletcher was already supposed to be in the match, Daniel Garcia feels due, and Sammy Guevara might be Tony Khan's favorite wrestler. The 56-year-old Rhodes shocked the world and won the title, his first singles title in AEW, making his own bit of history at All In after years of being on the other end of the equation.
Rhodes cried with his nephews, Wyatt and Wayne Rhodes, making for an emotional moment that fans will not soon forget. It just feels good to see someone as loyal as Rhodes get such a big win.
AEW put Mark Briscoe in kind of an impossible position. The past few weeks have mainly focused on MJF trash-talking the former ROH World Champion, even going as far as saying that he wished Mark had died in the 2023 car wreck that killed his brother, Jay. Mark has delivered some good lines about MJF being a spiritually sick individual and has even gotten some punches in on the former AEW World Champion, but it feels like the AEW Casino Gauntlet was the wrong outlet for this story.
Obviously this isn't over, MJF screwed Briscoe out of the win in Saturday's Casino Gauntlet, but it certainly felt like the uncomfortably intense story between the two men was lost in the sea of chaos that was the multi-man clusterf***.
There's no such thing as "too much heat"in my opinion, but there does reach a point where that heat needs to be paid off in blood. Briscoe has taken MJF's deeply personal insults a little too much in stride. I'm sure that in a few months I'll be eating my words, Briscoe finally dispatching MJF in a bloodbath and getting revenge for all that MJF has said about his dead brother, but as it stands, Briscoe just seems beaten down by the whole ordeal, and having to stand around while any heated interaction gets interrupted by another entrance did him no favors. There's plenty of time to salvage it, but Briscoe came out of the Casino Gauntlet looking like an afterthought, and the bitter feud between him and MJF needed something a bit more focused.
By all metrics, it seemed like it was going to be Mercedes Mone's moment on Saturday. Mone has been on an incredible hot streak in AEW, and it seemed inevitable that she would add Toni Storm's Women's World Title to her growing collection of title belts. It also felt, heading into Saturday, that Storm's time had somewhat run its course. Her eternal rival, Mariah May, left for WWE, and while Storm had managed to twist her "Sunset Boulevard" character into something a bit more Phillip Marlowe-tinged, many thought the sun was setting on her reign.
Then Toni Storm hit a Storm Zero from the top rope and retained her title in a monumental match.
The match itself played on both women's strengths perfectly, and while few saw it coming, it's hard to say the wrong woman won. Mone's inevitability also threatened to torpedo the drama of the match, as AEW seemed poised to let the Women's World Title absorb the TBS Title, further consolidating an already woefully cramped division. Storm's win feels like a vote of confidence in the "Timeless" champion, but it also seems to put a wall between the two title belts. Mone remains AEW TBS Champion, meaning there will still be two major titles to challenge for, instead of the winner-take-all mess that is currently coming for the AEW Unified Champion.
Mone is a massive star, and a competitive loss like this won't hurt her, but the win truly cements that Toni Storm isn't running out of steam any time soon.
There was, pretty objectively, too much wrestling this weekend. Even as I write this, there is still one more show on the docket. From what I understand, on Friday night, Konosuke Takeshita and ROH World Champion Bandido had a hell of a match, supposed to be a real barn burner. I haven't seen it. Athena put her ROH Women's World Title on the line against Thunder Rosa. Again, I haven't seen it; heard it's pretty alright. There was also an entire WWE NXT PLE going on while I was doing live results for AEW All In. You guessed it, I haven't seen The Great American Bash either.
There are only so many hours in a day, and there's only so much wrestling that one man can watch. It certainly feels like ROH and NXT got the short end of the stick this weekend. Takeshita, Bandido, Athena, and Thunder Rosa all got mentions of their Friday night matches during the Casino Gauntlet matches on Saturday's broadcast, but other than those rogue mentions, it was as if ROH Supercard of Honor barely happened. The Great American Bash and Supercard of Honor are two long-running shows that have become something like afterthoughts as the companies that made them famous start to fade away.
When AEW first started, Hangman Page was in the world title picture. He eventually won the title in the culmination of one of AEW's better long-term stories. When he lost the title, he somehow never lost the spotlight. Blood feuds with the likes of Swerve Strickland kept Page a central figure of AEW programming, and now he's won the world title in the main event of AEW's biggest show of the year.
Page's win on Saturday is pretty much what professional wrestling is all about. It might've been more violent than purists would like, and it was an overstuffed match that made "Avengers: Endgame" look restrained, but wrestling has never been a place for subtlety anyway.
Swerve Strickland put his animosity with Page behind him to help him win the title. Darby Allin descended from the rafters of a baseball stadium, officially taking over the vigilante role of his mentor Sting, Will Ospreay got murdered by Claudio Castagnoli, the marathon of violence and easter eggs truly felt like a war for AEW's soul, and having Hangman Page stand victorious at the end cements his status as the company's main character, if that was ever in doubt in the first place.
