AEW WrestleDream 2025 predictions roundtable: Is this the end of Jon Moxley’s Death Riders saga?
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The third annual AEW WrestleDream event takes place this weekend at the Chaifetz Arena in St. Louis, Missouri. One of AEW's final pay-per-view events of the year, WrestleDream 2025 looks to build on the all-time great year AEW has put together and keep momentum moving forward for Tony Khan’s promotion.
Ahead of Saturday's event, Uncrowned’s Horsemen — Kel Dansby, Robert Jackman, Drake Riggs and Anthony Sulla-Heffinger — gather to examine some of the major matches and talking points.
Before any of you fall asleep and start dreaming yourselves, let’s jump in, shall we?
1. It’s been just over a year since Jon Moxley’s Death Riders faction took over AEW. Will the “I Quit” match be the end of it if Darby Allin wins? What would you grade the run for Moxley & Co.?
Riggs: Why does it feel like much longer than that? Either way, the Death Riders saga has certainly been an interesting one. Sometimes in bad ways, sometimes in good...
With that said, it very comfortably falls in line with a B-. But the minus is heavy.
I'm in the same boat that most are, believing Moxley's reign of terror with the AEW World Heavyweight Championship went on far too long and got pretty lifeless — and even confusing — at times. However, the ultimate saving grace is that all that prolonging became fully justified by one of the most incredible wrestling moments in recent memory: Hangman Adam Page's reclaiming of the title. The impact of such an epic match would've had nowhere near the impact it wound up having if the saga hadn't been what it was. It also gave us that wild Anarchy in the Arena match, so how can I really knock it too much?
Sulla-Heffinger: I don’t necessarily view this as being the potential end of the run for the Death Riders, but instead the end of Moxley’s time with/leading the stable. I think there’s still some life in this story and the group as a whole, especially if we can separate it from Moxley's polarizing championship run.
Drake hits the nail on head (pun intended) here when he mentions that without it, we wouldn’t have gotten the epic match and moment when "Mox" finally dropped the belt to Hangman over the summer. One of the most important things a top guy can do is set up the next-in-line to carry the momentum. Moxley did just that with Hangman and appears poised to do it again with Allin. For all of that, I’ll give the run a solid B — speed bumps aside, it’s hard to ignore the role Moxley and the Death Riders have played in an all-time year for AEW.
Dansby: I was never a fan of the Death Riders faction, and I’m still not sure anyone truly benefited from it. Claudio Castagnoli’s stuck in the mid-card, Moxley’s title run got stale fast, and Marina Shafir was mostly there to interfere — never really chasing the women’s title. I’m hoping Darby wins so everyone can go their separate ways and start fresh.
So yeah, I'm going with a D grade — and that's being kind.
Jackman: There would definitely be a nice circularity to it, given that Darby Allin was Moxley’s foil during the formation of the Death Riders. There have been some none-too-subtle hints in recent months that their two destinies are linked in some way: Darby’s run-in during this year's fantastic All In match felt more personal than the others.
As for the entire Death Riders reign, I can’t give anything higher than an D- on the basis of what the Moxley run did to the world title scene for the first half of this year.
If I’m being charitable here, I’d say it wasn’t that the Death Riders were terrible in and of themselves. They could've run this whole angle without Moxley being champion and it would've been fine. Not great, but fine. But the decision to bet the house on them and hold the entire world championship scene hostage — that’s what really sticks in the craw at this point.
There’s always space for these pulverizing, big-guy factions in wrestling, and it wasn’t like AEW was short of other talents for them to feud with. We saw that from the Lights Out Cage Match back at Forbidden Door, which was probably the best usage we’ve seen from the Death Riders in ages. But it still didn’t make up for the bad stuff.
It would be like if WWE decided to go all in on the new iteration of Solo Sikoa’s MFTs and then have Sikoa himself reign as universal champion for the next year while beating up babyfaces at every PLE between now and WrestleMania 43. I’m shuddering at the very thought, but I do think it’s an accurate comparison.
2. After seeing both babyface and heel runs with AEW, which versions of Jack Perry and Luchasaurus do you prefer? What would you do with $500,000 you won in a tag-team match?
Dansby: First off, I’m just glad the dinosaur got his name back. Jack Perry’s heel run was short and flat — they should’ve kept him in NJPW longer to keep that edge alive. At least the entrance still hits, and they can ride that momentum with a tag win here.
As for the $500,000? I’m turning on my tag partner and taking it all for myself.
Sulla-Heffinger: Jack Perry needed the “Scapegoat” run to somewhat legitimize an inevitable babyface push. The heel run showed us a new depth to Perry and made the audience far more invested in him, but good vs. evil only goes so far in storytelling, regardless of the medium.
For Luchasaurus, I loved the all-black look of “Killswitch,” but I prefer the good-guy version. Monster heels are very easy to sell and something we’ve seen countless times before. Luchasaurus has the perfect mix of character and in-ring ability that makes him naturally easier to root for as a babyface.
As far as the $500,000 question, I’ll forgo the boring “pay off my house” or “save for my daughter’s college education” and say I'd bolster some of my collections, particularly trading/sports cards.
Jackman: At the risk of opening up a whole can of worms here, I think AEW were smart to lean into the, ahem, controversy around Jack Perry with the whole "Scapegoat" angle. In general, I prefer to see wrestler's private lives kept separate from the televised product, but I think what happened between him and CM Punk was such a massive story that ignoring it would have been the riskier option.
As for Luchasaurus, I think Anthony summed this one up perfectly. AEW deserves credit for doing some more interesting character work with him rather than having him relegated to another enforcer-on-a-leash beast character. Following those video packages of Perry reviving his old partner, there’s been some interesting theorizing online about AEW doing some kind of Doctor Frankenstein pastiche.
That might sound too much for some wrestling purists, but, hey, let’s not forget what a stellar angle they did with that “All About Eve” angle between Toni Storm and Mariah May. If someone had suggested that to you two years ago, you probably wouldn’t have flagged it as a potential storyline of the year.
As for the money, well, I’m currently writing this from a rather nice island villa in Dubai (by virtue of my other gig as a travel journalist), and I have to say I’m not sure that would feel like that much money over in this part of the world. Do you think Tony Khan might offer an extra location allowance?
Riggs: They were both wildly different, weren't they? This is going to sound fairly stupid to say — and I'm aware of that — but I found the heel "Killswitch" version of Luchasaurus to be far cornier than when he was just an awesome, weird dude pretending to be a dinoman.
In Jack Perry's case, I liked the edge the "Scapegoat" attempted to provide. It just felt a little too in your face, which really killed it before it even had a chance. Perry never really earned any right to be the way he was — other than just being an a-hole, I guess. So in a way, a mixed version of those two teaming actually could have been cool, but we're here instead and we'll see how it plays out.
3. Is there any case to be made for "Timeless" Toni Storm to win back the AEW Women’s Championship? If not, how would you book her moving forward?
Dansby: Honestly, the case is simple — Toni’s a much better champion than Statlander. Every time they try giving Stat a title, it just falls flat, and this doesn’t feel any different.
The real story is Mercedes Moné vs. Toni for the top belt, and it’s about time Tony Khan starts setting that up.
Riggs: I certainly believe there is, purely because she is Toni Storm. However, if she weren't about to get into a wild hot-potato feud with Stat — which, admittedly, could be pretty sick — then it'd completely undermine all the great work Stat has done to throw the belt right back on the former champ. It'd almost make her title win feel like nothing more than one of those so-called "moments" WWE so clearly seeks.
With all that said, Stat wins clean and impressively this Saturday, leading Storm to spiral a bit against some others — until Mercedes Moné captures the world title. She's been Stat's kryptonite, after all. Then you have super-duper belt collector Moné getting the singular title that's evaded her in wrestling — but with the knowledge that she couldn't get it by taking out Storm, someone she's never beaten.
You're welcome, Tony.
Sulla-Heffinger: Echoing Drake again, the easy case to be made is that she’s Toni Storm and always should be a threat to win any title she competes for. That said, we often see generational stars — which Storm undeniably is — reach a point in their careers where they are bigger than championships. In Storm’s case, she doesn’t need the belt to be among the biggest draws in professional wrestling. Like I mentioned with Moxley above, her role should be elevating other talent after doing so much to raise the profile of the championship and division as a whole.
Moving forward, I think there’s no match or program she wouldn’t make enthralling, but let’s run it back with either Athena or Mercedes Moné, which we have somehow only seen once one-on-one in AEW.
Jackman: I mean, we’ve seen some rapid title pivots over the years, but a Storm win would top almost all of those. They only took the belt off her a month ago, so it'd be nonsensical to swap it straight back.
Like most people, I’m assuming that this is the usual thing that sometimes happens when a champion drops their title in a multi-person match: They then need to lose in a “rematch” against the person who won, in order to square that circle in the eyes of the fans.
It’s been said before, but Storm has been on another level for much of the past two years. What’s more, we’ve seen several times that she has what it takes to elevate other wrestlers with her golden touch. Look what she did with Harley Cameron back at the beginning of the year, for example. Whoever they put her against, it’s going to work out well.
One-sentence bonus: Make the case for Samoa Joe to upset Hangman Page for the AEW World Heavyweight Championship.
Riggs: He's motherf***ing Samoa Joe.
Sulla-Heffinger: Hangman’s going to need an obstacle at some point, why not one of the baddest dudes in the world?
Jackman: He cut one hell of a promo on "Dynamite," which felt as authentic as it was electrifying.
Dansby: I love Joe as a person and wrestler but STOP GIVING 45+ YEAR OLDS WORLD TITLES!
Predictions
‘I Quit’ match: Darby Allin (Dansby, Jackman, Riggs, Sulla-Heffinger) vs. Jon Moxley
AEW World Heavyweight Championship match: "Hangman" Adam Page (Dansby, Jackman, Riggs, Sulla-Heffingers) vs. Samoa Joe
AEW Women’s World Championship: Kris Statlander (Jackman, Riggs, Sulla-Heffinger) vs. "Timeless" Toni Storm (Dansby)
TNT Championship Match: Kyle Fletcher (Jackman, Riggs, Sulla-Heffinger) vs. Mark Briscoe
AEW World Tag Team Championship match: Brodido (Dansby, Riggs) vs. Kazuchika Okada and Konosuke Takeshita (Jackman, Sulla-Heffinger)
Jurassic Express (Dansby, Jackman, Riggs, Sulla-Heffinger) vs. The Young Bucks
Jamie Hayter (Jackman, Riggs, Sulla-Heffinger) vs. Thekla (Dansby)
Trios match: The Hurt Syndicate (Dansby, Riggs, Sulla-Heffinger) vs. The Demand (Jackman)
2025 standings
Robert Jackman: 56-26
Kel Dansby: 53-29
Drake Riggs: 50-32
Anthony Sulla-Heffinger: 48-34
