AEW WrestleDream 2026 Review
WrestleDream, one of the shows-that-probably-shouldn't-exist cycle along with Dynasty and now Redemption, came on Oct. 17th, hot on the heels of All Out and the heavily promoted Grand Slam France, a very well-received and heavily-promoted show in between. I found at the end of the night that I enjoyed this one much more than the other two I mentioned this year and a big reason why was leaning more into the characters and psychology rather than "story." Of course a big part of why is surely the television break for not one but two tragic memorial shows, for Andy "the Butcher" Williams, who died of an injury at an indie show in early September and the athsma death of Benjamin "PAC" Satterley in his prime just a day after wrestling in the All Out PPV in Chicago. Still, this is the schedule they've decided to stick with and unless they are going to scrap some of these shows at some point this will continue to be a thing.
There's not too much to be said about the preshow apart from they continue to put lesser matches on it which is a GOOD thing. There's already too much on these shows, at least have the decency to put up some slop in the first hour I don't have to care about. We have Divine Dominion mostly dominating Sisters of Sin to kick off and man, Lena Kross is really coming around. She looked awesome here. Lena was someone who had a hard time getting matches and started in the COVID era which was brutal for many (if you don't believe me take a look at the WON ROY votes in 2020 and 2021). She has less matches than you'd expect and I always saw her coming back to Sendai just barely better. Maybe it was a matter of her being so much bigger than everyone she didn't want to lay in in heavy but that final stint where she was mostly tagging with Veny, she really started to show some flashes. Now she's really starting to look like the killer she always could be.
Mone defeated Thekla in their first match and it was in general pretty solid. I had hoped for greatness and it wasn't happening, partly due to some weird chemistry and also maybe came to light after the match when Thekla was sort-of no-selling the finish after she exited the ring. I don't know what the deal is there. Thekla mostly has a great reputation with the office so she needs to watch it. Maybe it was just pushing character a little too hard post-match. It didn't seem like she was sandbagging during the match so maybe this is just a case of someone getting grumpy for getting lit up at some point, which happens. Match was fine, I look forward to another down the road. Rating: 3.5
Young Bucks v Fletcher & Knight was a match I wasn't super excited about as I was pretty sure I knew exactly what this would be, a fun spot fest that was overly long with too many falsies. And yes it was, but when the execution is as perfect as this, it still overcomes the expectations and this joint was perfect. One thing I praise Fletcher for generally is how good he is protecting moves and finishers, and although there was a lot of spot-spot-spot in this, I noted that Fletcher and Knight were doing a great job trying to make it make sense in terms of a match. They were swapping a lot, not eating a ton of heat and moving into a new sequence, which can be a problem with some of these tag matches. This may be the best Young Bucks match since 2020. It was really that well done. Rating: 4.25
The women's four way for the TNT felt like after it was a preview for Aminata/Persephone who were getting all of the fan heat. Luna and Hyan were solid but the crowd didn't know enough of their moves to understand how the match was flowing, especially in a 4-way. A Luna/Hyan preview singles could have done wonders here. Ciampa and Andrade continued the midcard stuff by Ciampa continuing to hate objects. This sounds like a dis but it's not, AEW has the too-much problem often on these shows and they need break-up segments like this badly, I just don't think the match needed to be 20 mins.
Another great trios title match followed between the Swerve/New Level and Hangman/Brodido to add to their great match at All Out (probably the best match of that show). These matches have made the trios titles feel like something of interest. Yes, Swerve/Hangman is a big part of the story here but maybe even better is all the stuff that wasn't. The New Level are having to tap into a more violent side and almost managed to retain the belts by excellent teamwork but eventually are doomed by Page's refusal to fall into Swerve's traps for him, focusing on strong teamwork late rather than his personal grudge and Bandido pins Swerve to swap the titles back to the nominal faces. I don't think this was quite as good as the All Out match but it was very close. Rating: 3.75
An emotionally frazzled Moxley has to contend with AEW's hottest man-mountain Mark Davis in the contintental title match. As a matter of personal taste I probably would have liked to see these guys wrestle and this was more of a straight-up fight. It's brutal and emotional and the last five mins are so are absolutely fantastic but there's a lack of urgency in the wrestling at times as they are probably trying to focus on the story. This is mostly a matter of personal taste that I didn't love this despite my glowing admiration for 2026 Mark Davis. The pace of this kinda made me tired which is not good this late into these long-ass shows. I'd probably like to watch this again later out of context. Rating: 3.5
Last up was Ospreay's rules-fest Clockwork Carnage match. I had seen the EVE prototype for this so I knew it was less confusing that it seemed. Rules matches are what you make of them, you either use it as an effective storytelling device or you just work a boring and confusing match. This one was just a good time, with the suprise eliminations of Mike Bailey and Konosuke Takeshita making the final scoring period a six-man sprint between the champ, Adam Copeland, Darby Allin, Kazuchika Okada, Samoa Joe, and Ricochet. The 15 mins absolutely flew by, in fact I wouldn't have minded 20 on the scoring period. It would be ridiculous to complain about any match on this show being too short but cutting some time off some matches like Andrade/Ciampa and the tag titles (and FTR/MCMG TBQH) would have created the space to do it. There were a lot of small stories that played out, maybe the most significant that Darby and Joe's obsession with trying to kill each other largely removed them from contention in the match. Beyond that a good part of the story was the dynamic between Copeland and Ospreay who are clearly heading for a showdown in the future. This one was fun, if we're going to do weird off-cycle shows we need more of this type of stuff where the matches feel too short. Rating: 3.75
All in all, the show was probably better than the underwhelming All Out but in 2026, AEW has proven 4 or 5 times already the bar is one of the best North American wrestling shows in history so when they're putting up a solid but not-exceptional show it does feel like a dilution of the product a bit. I think the reality is I might start skipping watching these off-cycle shows live so I can stretch it over two nights or something. I think that would have made WrestleDream and All Out more enjoyable.
Ilja Dragunov is going to be such a huge fucking deal for this company it can't even be understood at this moment.