Moxley Retains AEW World Title After Emotional PAC Tribute at WrestleDream

AEW WrestleDream took place on Saturday, October 17, in Orlando, Florida, delivering a stacked card that saw Jon Moxley retain his championship following an emotional tribute to PAC, along with a trio of other title defenses, a returning star and the debut of Ilja Dragunov.

Will Ospreay opened the night’s championship stakes by putting his AEW World title on the line in the promotion’s first-ever Clockwork Carnage match, while later in the evening Moxley worked through a visibly charged atmosphere as he and the locker room paid respects to PAC before the champion came out on top to retain.

Elsewhere, the card was loaded with high-stakes action. Mercedes Moné survived a vicious assault on her still-healing broken nose from Thekla, eventually ripping off her protective mask to blast her challenger before finishing her off with the Moneymaker — Moné’s second successful defense since winning the Women’s World Championship at All In London in August.

The Young Bucks turned back Kyle Fletcher and Kevin Knight to record the second defense of their fourth reign as AEW World Tag Team Champions, with Don Callis spending much of the match running from ringside confrontations with Matt and Nick Jackson. Persephone fought off a trio of challengers — Luna, Hyan and Aminata — to retain her TBS Championship with a moonsault on Hyan, after which Dr. Britt Baker, D.M.D. emerged to celebrate with the champion following their earlier team-up at CMLL’s Arena México show. Nigel McGuinness also stepped into the commentary booth in place of Paul Wight beginning with that bout.

Andrade El Idolo held onto the AEW National Championship against Tommaso Ciampa in a chaotic brawl that included a pants mishap, a camera used as a weapon and Ciampa connecting with Willow’s Bell on the title belt itself — none of which was enough to prevent Andrade from finishing Ciampa with a DDT. Andrade still holds his AEW World Championship contract, which requires seven days’ notice before it can be cashed in, keeping him looming over Ospreay’s title reign regardless of how the Clockwork Carnage match played out.

“Hangman” Adam Page, Bandido and Brody King reclaimed the AEW World Trios Championship, defeating Swerve Strickland, Kofi and Austin Creed two falls to one in a match defined by Page and Strickland’s personal issues boiling over throughout.

Jay White made his return from the injury he suffered during last month’s All Out Tailgate Brawl — originally expected to sideline him for one to two months — joining Austin and Colten Gunn, Orange Cassidy, Roderick Strong and Kyle O’Reilly in a twelve-man brawl against Wheeler Yuta, Claudio Castagnoli, Gabe Kidd, Daniel Garcia, David Finlay and Clark Connors. Yuta pinned Colten Gunn to win it, and the match spilled into a mass brawl afterward, with Marina Shafir getting dropped by Willow Nightingale.

Chris Sabin and Alex Shelley took a 1-0 lead over FTR in their best-of-five series after a match that began during the Tailgate Brawl and ran roughly 25 minutes, while Nick Wayne won the rubber match of his series with Chris Jericho via cradle to take a 2-1 lead, building on his win over Jericho at Grand Slam France earlier this month.

With so many titles defended and storylines advanced in one night, WrestleDream set up plenty to watch heading into AEW’s next run of television — particularly Andrade’s dangling World title shot, the Sabin-Shelley/FTR series, and whatever comes next for Moxley after an night defined as much by tribute as by competition.