AEW Full Gear 2025 was a night of changes. Title changes, changes of heart, changes of allegiance, it was a transformative PPV. New world tag champions, a new TNT Champion, the first National Champion, a new world champion; it was not exactly a show that was content to rest on its laurels and keep the status quo.
We've told you what happened over on the results page. We've broken down what the Wrestling Inc. Staff loved and hated. All that's left is to determine the winners and the losers from Saturday's big event and wrap the November event in a nice big bow.
As always, this will not be a literal breakdown of the "winners"and "losers," as that can get all too literal in professional wrestling. Instead, this can be about who looked good in defeat, bad in victory, as well as those who personified their roles as "winners" or "losers" over the course of the event.
Enough bloviating though, let's get into the Winners and Losers from Saturday's big show in Newark, NJ.
When Hook came back from injury, he had ceded his place in The Opps and joined up with a similarly aimless Eddie Kingston. It seemed that the once hot, young prospect was going to cool off in the pre-shows and the undercard of AEW events. There had been a moment where I assumed they'd given up on Hook.
Then the former FTW Champion rejoined The Opps and helped them dethrone AEW World Champion Hangman Page, a move that will immediately put him at the right hand of the world champion, and in the crosshairs of one of AEW's biggest stars. He is in a perfect position to be catapulted to the main event.
There is something organic about Hook. He's not the cleanest in the ring, his promos aren't cutting edge, and yet people just love the guy. He has that intangible "it factor" that so many stars of tomorrow wish they possessed. It's a very good sign that AEW has not given up on the popular young star. The Opps are becoming a veritable Evolution, with Hobbs and Hook currently acting as the Batista and Randy Orton of the group, respectively.
Kenny Omega and The Young Bucks are reunited and Hangman Page is without a title. The impending reunion of The Elite feels like it could come at any minute, drenched in nostalgia for the pre-COVID days, and that is probably the last thing Hangman Page should be doing.
Page has been the face of AEW for the better part of the last few years. Even as world champions have come and gone, Page has been something of a hometown hero in every town the company visits. He is very much of "the now," and being a part of something from the past like The Elite, will cheapen that. He should have one focus: Getting his world title back, and likely making Hook in the process. Anything other than that could distract him.
It's hard to explain, but they pay me to explain, so I'm doing my best, but Page is in a weird place. The Continental Classic is about to dominate TV, and while that break might give him some time to go away and dream it all up again, it could also give him time to lose his place in line for the world title.
It will be interesting to see if AEW can resist the obvious and keep Page on the independent trajectory he's been on. His first world title reign began in a match that should've put a period on his story with The Elite, and running the risk of undoing a great ending is one of wrestling's greatest pitfalls.
Ricochet has been a lot of bark and very little bite, and while his bark has been very entertaining, he's run the risk of becoming a glorified manager. Luckily, the former IWGP Jr. Heavyweight Champion is now the inaugural AEW National Champion.
It will be an exciting change of pace for Ricochet to be on defense, as opposed to offense, for once. He's been chasing down The Hurt Syndicate or talking trash to MVP, but overall he's technically been an unwanted presence by pretty much everyone he interacts with. What will Ricochet be like now that he has something the whole locker room, and much of the independent world, wants?
AEW has a pretty great track record of obnoxious loudmouths, from MJF to Max Caster to Don Callis, so the National Title will give Ricochet something that makes him stand out from the other braggarts. Will it be an open challenge? Will he run from every challenger? Will he make independent dates and be annoying there? The title opens up a whole world of possibilities for Ricochet to rub the wrestling world the wrong way.
His victory also puts him at odds with Kevin Knight, who has needed some kind of singles angle since gaining tag team success alongside Mike Bailey. Ricochet is a perfect opponent for Knight to show what he can do, and that's just one of the possible title matchs. Add possible Hurt Syndicate matches, or maybe a match with the newly made Kyle O'Reilly. Ricochet feels like the belle of the ball coming out of Saturday.
Big Boom AJ is responsible for some of the greatest moments in AEW history. I'm completely serious, his early work with the company is pure magic. However, the bloom is off the rose, and it's time for AJ to leave the memories alone.
Befumo's match on the pre-show of Saturday's PPV was exactly as fun as his other outings. The guy is a solid professional, and he seems to be genuinely be having a blast with his son and their diminutive friend, The Rizzler, but there's been a Flanderization of the Big Boom AJ persona that has made it grow repetitive. If he were a more regular presence, he could be a Hacksaw Jim Duggan-like figure, except for all things Costco, but as a special guest, the sparkle is starting to dull. The razzle doesn't dazzle the way it did, and it might be time to sit down and say, "I've done what I've done, and the memories speak for themselves."
Like I said, I can't knock the match. It had its spark, and RPG Vice has never had a bad match, but it left me a little listless, which is saying something considering the readership once called for me to be fired for voting his first Full Gear match as one of the best of that year. I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now.
The Wrestling Inc. Staff does predictions before every single PPV, and we keep track of the results as a bit of in-office fun. Usually, at least one person gets everything right, or at the very least, everything minus one match. Wrestling isn't that hard to predict, but Full Gear apparently was.Admittedly, your trusty Winners/Losers writer averages about 50/50 because I dare to dream and am not afraid to look like a fool.
However, fools we all were in the lead-up to Saturday.
The winner of the pick 'em won 6 right, 3 wrong, with a rare few getting 5 correct, 4 wrong, and the rest of the staff averaging an abysmal 4-5 record. It was a bloodbath and we must stand before our trusty public and admit that we did not call this one at all. We were riding the high of Hangman Page's second title win, and Darby Allin's momentum, and also some of us thought it would be fun if Mark Briscoe had to be in the Don Callis Family, and we just completely whiffed it. The only person to correctly pick Samoa Joe winning the main event ended up in the same 4-5 purgatory as the rest of us. We just could not get a handle on this one, apparently, and that is bracingly refreshing.
