Swerve Strickland and Real Winners and Losers from AEW Dynasty 2025 Match Card

AEW rolled into Philadelphia Sunday for its Dynasty pay-per-view, a show that featured a loaded card, with championship and Owen Hart Foundation Tournament implications across the board.

The quality of the matches was high, but it was the creative decisions that were of the utmost interest, with some highlighting the talented roster and others leaving fans scratching their heads.

Who were the winners and losers from Sunday's marathon PPV? Find out with this recap.

Anthony Bowens had been off of television since the split between him and Max Caster brought an end to The Acclaimed, but The 5 Tool Player made a triumphant return in response to Caster's open challenge.

Bowens made short work of his former tag team partner, leveling him with a Rolling Elbow to score the win.

The presentation here was extraordinary, with Bowens looking like a future world champion. Gone was any reminder of The Acclaimed, outside of "Daddy Ass" Billy Gunn by his side, and in its place was the makings of a face of AEW's future.

Bowens cut a promo into the camera, telling the fans he was ready to make history. Could a run at the world title be in his future?

Perhaps. For now, a steady build and some key wins are what Bowens needs to build momentum as a singles star. And Sunday's victory over Caster, and everything that went along with it, was a great leap in the right direction.

Imagine signing with a company, finding out a top-tier star was injured and you would be replacing him in a high-profile tournament. Not only that, but your opponent in the tournament would be a wrestler considered one of the best in the world.

That was the scenario facing Kevin Knight when he hit the ring for his Owen Hart Foundation Tournament quarterfinal against Will Ospreay in the opening match of Dynasty.

A lesser competitor would have been overwhelmed by the moment but Knight shined, hanging with Ospreay and never looking out of place or outmatched. In what was the biggest match of his young career, he showed out, performing up to the moment.

In return, he earned a sign of respect from Ospreay, who shook his hand and embraced Knight moments after advancing in the tournament.

This was a star-making performance out of Knight, and it will be interesting to see how AEW follows up on his breakout showing in front of a notoriously hard-to-impress Philly crowd.

Claudio Castagnoli, Wheeler Yuta and Pac are the reigning AEW World Trios champions, but they could not possibly feel less relevant than they currently do, even as The Death Riders dominate the top of the card.

Sunday, despite a phenomenal performance in a fantastic trios victory over Rated FTR, they were side characters in a betrayal by Dax Harwood and Cash Wheeler on Cope.

The champions, the supposed badass partners in the top heel act in AEW, have repeatedly been shuffled to the background, mere sideshows at a time when Castagnoli, Pac and Yuta should be riding high.

Instead, it is Jon Moxley who is the world champion and whose name is on the lips of fans, for better or worse. It is the stars they are in the ring with. It is the angle their match precedes.

There is always something else involving them that is of greater significance than the champions, a trio that has consistently delivered in big-match situations.

It is a shame for them and the quality of their work that they are presented as little more than Moxley's backup and the less-important act in any prominent segment they are in.

After taking a backseat for months and shut out of the AEW World Tag Team Championship picture and primarily backing up Cope in his battle with The Death Riders, Wheeler and Harwood finally returned to the spotlight by betraying their longtime friend and leaving him in need of medical attention.

Moments after losing an AEW World Trios Championship match to Castagnoli, Wheeler and Yuta, FTR attacked The Rated R Superstar, delivering a spike piledriver on a steel chair before executing two Con-chair-tos.

They mocked their former friend, a man who had helped them at a time of need in their shared home of Asheville, North Carolina, and left to a mixed reaction from the fans.

The heel turn was perfectly executed and almost immediately breathed new life into a tag team that had accomplished everything to that point, almost to their detriment as it left them without anything to do away from the title picture.

A red-hot, personal rivalry with Cope will go a long way in rectifying that problem and likely elevate their star on Dynamite and Collision for the foreseeable future.

The question now? Might we see a reunion between Cope and Christian Cage to combat the newly heel FTR?

Megan Bayne dominated "Timeless" Toni Storm Sunday night, tossing her around the squared circle and outwrestling her for the entirety of the AEW Women's World Championship match.

Then came the finish, which saw Storm pull out a small package roll-up to win the match in true flue fashion.

It is one of the worst stories in pro wrestling and one that both AEW and WWE have utilized in the past. The dominant heel almost never benefits the way the promotion thinks they will, their signature stuff looking ineffective enough that a babyface is able to weather it all and catch them sleeping with the most basic of moves.

Bayne does not benefit in defeat. She looked unprepared for a move that Storm has utilized to secure victory on previous occasions.

Imagine if Brock Lesnar had rolled into WWE SummerSlam 2014, suplexed John Cena into oblivion 14 times, then fell in defeat to a schoolboy roll-up. It would have felt cheap and nullified everything the heel had accomplished to that point.

Such was the case Sunday night, with Bayne showing out for three-quarters of the match.

A win would have created a new women's division star. And if Tony Khan and the creative team were concerned about Storm dropping the title so soon after regaining it from Mariah May, perhaps not booking the match this early on would have been a better option.

Bayne did everything she needed to and looked like a star of the future. She was hurt by her creative.

If it was not already apparent that it is time for Chris Jericho to step away from AEW for a bit, refresh himself creatively and physically, it was after his Ring of Honor Championship match against Bandido.

The match was perfectly acceptable until the finish, which saw Jericho benefit from outside interference from The Learning Tree that allowed him to blast his opponent with a baseball bat and secure the win, which would result in the babyface removing his mask, the ultimate indignation for a luchador.

Instead, Bandido's mother and sister alerted referee Aubrey Edwards to the weapon, the match was restarted and the masked competitor scored the win seconds later.

It was an unnecessarily overbooked finish, a dud ending to a match that, despite its general fine-ness, did Jericho no favors in the argument against those who believe he is far past his prime.

The chants of "please retire" are not going away and performances such as this one will not silence them.

Jericho is badly in need of time away and a character reboot.

There is an argument to be made that Swerve Strickland never should have lost the AEW World Championship when he did at All In last September.

The face of AEW and its future, his growth in that role was stunted but he returned to the title picture in time to headline Dynasty, the same show he won the title at in 2024.

That he would have the opportunity to end the long-running nightmare for AEW fans that has been the Death Riders' Jon Moxley's period of dominance at the top of the promotion and rejuvenating the company in the process only enhanced what many thought may have been another triumph for Strickland.

Instead, he fought through the pain of a carefully targeted attack by Moxley and had fans thinking it was his night to regain the gold, only to be taken out by the returning Young Bucks.

Moxley retained, the crowd booed (heavily) and Strickland was shuffled to the back of the line.

Sure, he is going to be prominently featured in a feud with the Bucks that will likely also center on "Hangman" Adam Page, who came to Strickland's aid against The Death Riders Sunday, but it feels like another significant letdown for a guy who has been ready to carry AEW into the future for well over a year now.

He earned better, and the fans who have sat through months of incessant interference from the creative void that is The Death Riders deserve better. There will be some who point to the Bucks feud and the layers that may exist, as reasons to be enthusiastic about Swerve's immediate future, but it all feels like a consolation when a second run with the world title was right there.