AEW WrestleDream 2026: Biggest Winners & Losers

The world has finally woken up from its WrestleDream and it’s time to anoint some winners and losers. The show was chock full of wrestling action with multiple title matches and the successful AEW debut of Clockwork Carnage. You can read all about what happened AEW WrestleDream 2026 Live Results pageand the crew went through what they liked and didn’t do AEW WrestleDream Hated & Loveds column.

So let’s talk about the winners, let’s talk about the losers. The great thing about AEW running marathon shows is that there are so many of them. As always the winners won’t be literal, hell they might not be human at all and the same goes for the losers. Winners can lose, losers can win, and the terms of the game take their toll.

Enough of my bloviating, though. It’s time to get into the Biggest Winners and Biggest Losers ranks, where a very clear winner will kick things off.

I was a bit skeptical about the Clockwork Carnage Match. It seemed like there would be a flurry of near misses and eliminations to make up for the fact that all the real drama happens in the last 5 minutes, but I’m glad I was proven wrong.

AEW only has so many conditional matches they can claim. Most of these are modified versions of WWE, TNA or WCW matches. AEW didn’t invent Clockwork Carnage, that trivia belongs to Pro Wrestling EVE, but being the first to bring it to the world stage, it’s now theirs. It’s not reinventing the wheel, it’s like a gauntlet elimination match that ends up being a multi-man Iron Man Match, but it feels perfect for AEW’s skill set.

Let’s be honest, AEW is a complete spin-off from TNA’s X-Division, and Clockwork Carnage is just the kind of fun, high-sport nonsense the X-Division guys were doing in the mid-2000s. It’s just the perfect marriage of gameplay and promotion.

The line-up was also stellar. Adding the soon-to-be-retired Adam Copeland to the game made the game more sentimental than I expected. I’m no Edge-Head, but watching him mix it up with the future AEW World Champions and the various displays of respect helped make the midsection a lot more meaningful than what was on offer.

A home run for AEW and a grand slam for Pro Wrestling EVE, who will be able to promote “the original” as long as they run.

I think Persephone is a huge talent in the ring. I also think the AEW TBS Title Four-Way Match was a very solid match. It just didn’t lack for drama, and it seems crushingly commonplace with Persephone.

It’s hard to describe, but between the overwhelming nature of her competition as well as Britt Baker, it seems like Persephone is in a placeholder situation. Like Thekla’s world title, he’s basically a champion so that AEW can put together the right pieces for whatever plans they have with the next champion. But unlike Thekla, he doesn’t interrupt the show with chaotic promos or work with the word “b****” like the Dutch masters worked in oil and pigment.

It feels like he’s making great plays while spinning his wheels narratively. The nature of his opponents doesn’t provide the drama that might warrant a title reign of “good games” and not much else. I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop, and I’m already bored.

The great thing about Clockwork Carnage is that it broke the fringes of the AEW main event scene. Speedball Mike Bailey, in particular, felt they were lifted by their presence in the match. There were many men in the match who were never AEW World Champion, but they were Kazichuka Okadas, Konosuke Takeshitas and Adam Copelands. Mike Bailey had something to prove to himself and prove he did.

It’s something that wrestlers, promoters and pundits talk about all the time, but it’s very hard to pull off. You surround a man like Mike Bailey with the best of the best, and you push him over the edge into the main event scene. There’s only so much a Dynamite main event can do for someone’s perception. Main eventing a PPV, even one with as many bells and whistles as Clockwork Massacre, is just a different animal, and Bayley struggled to submit to that animal.

I don’t know if Mike Bayley will actually become a world champion, but a lot of wrestlers never become a world champion. The important thing is that in a year, two years after the Adam Copelands and John Moxleys ride off into the sunset, someone like Mike Bailey needs to be in the main event games, and Saturday proved they will belong when the time comes.

I am running out of things to say. AEW f***** this whole Kyle Fletcher/Kevin Knight thing. Steve Borden’s injury kept them out of the game, Saturday’s loss to The Young Bucks just proves my point. Neither of these guys should be in these high profile matches. They are the two main events of the future and AEW is holding them back with this tag team nonsense.

They will thankfully be able to move on, but that doesn’t change the fact that the match did more for The Young Bucks than it did for Fletcher and Knight. Like I said before, they were glorified tomato cans that both excelled at tag team wrestling.

Now they have to rebuild. Fletcher’s prospects aren’t dire. He has enough history with Will Osprey to heat up a world title feud, even if it ends with the Dynamite special, while Knight feels like he’s back at square one. His former partner Mike Bayley wrestled for the world title, while he again failed to win the tag team championship. The whole thing has definitely been an albatross around Knight’s neck, which is a shame. His team with Bayley was cut short as AEW clearly sees singles potential in both men, but Knight is back in the tag division while Speedball is making strides. It’s just sad.

Ilya Dragunov has been fighting on eggshells for the past few years. In WWE, it was clear that his high-intensity, high-impact style was being neutered so as not to break down and shock the sensitive structure of the WWE locker room.

And now he is no longer in the WWE locker room.

It doesn’t matter where Dragunov ends up on the card, undercard, midcard, main event, wherever he is, he promises to bring a fight to any show.

I might be able to eat my words. There are stories of theater-trained actors having to rein in their bulky performances for film, and in doing so the muscles atrophy, leaving them stuck. It’s possible that Illya has been wrestling in the WWE style for so long that his wilder instincts have worn off, but I have a feeling that if he had such an easy time in the WWE style, we wouldn’t be in this situation. He has a number of dream matches at his disposal, and AEW is never shy about signing a new deal (MCMG aside), so it looks like the sky’s the limit for Dragunov right now.

Mark Davis entered AEW WrestleDream with the most momentum he has had in his entire career. I really thought he could pull it off and go from national champion to continental champion. John Moxley looked like he might need a break. It seemed like the time was right.

But alas, Moxley choked out Davis with a blistering play. I don’t think Davis is dead in the water or anything, but it looks like he’s hit a ceiling and now he’s going to have to find another way to break through it. He cheated, he even beat Moxley on TV, but he just couldn’t break through, and in these hours after the show, I wonder if he ever will.

Like I said, this definitely isn’t the end for Davis, and he has a huge storyline now for the Continental Classic, but it still feels like AEW missed the boat on this one. He could be a made man with a win on Saturday, but he will have to wait to get his button. Here’s hoping AEW doesn’t wait too long.