AEW NEWS - NOVEMBER 2025

[AxB]

18 hours ago, SovietShooter said:

There isn't a champion that travels the world from promotion to promotion, defending the title against that area's top contenders. 

A few indie Deathmatch Championships have done exactly that, to be fair. When the H2O Wrestling Danny Havoc World Hardcore Title was defended in England, it was against British Wrestlers. The ICWNHB American Deathmatch World Championship has been defended in the USA, England, Australia and Japan, and been held by plenty of  Americans, an Australian (Joel Bateman), and a Japanese Wrestler (Masashi Takeda; He won it in America and lost it in Japan).

[NoFistsJustFlips]

The truth is World being the term for the top tier title is ingrained in fans. It doesnt matter if your champion travels the world or not. You say so & so is their world champion everyone knows what you mean instantly.

Getting cutesy with different branding of your top title may be more logically correct but it's gonna turn off your fan base. So why is this guy just called National champion. Why is this guy th PA Heavyweight champ. Theres no world champion in this company?

Its just the easiest way to get your point across with the least amount of air time being munched up.

[tbarrie]

24 minutes ago, NoFistsJustFlips said:

The truth is World being the term for the top tier title is ingrained in fans. It doesnt matter if your champion travels the world or not. You say so & so is their world champion everyone knows what you mean instantly.

Getting cutesy with different branding of your top title may be more logically correct but it's gonna turn off your fan base. So why is this guy just called National champion. Why is this guy th PA Heavyweight champ. Theres no world champion in this company?

Its just the easiest way to get your point across with the least amount of air time being munched up.

Wait - surely it's not actually common for indie promotions that only operate in a small geographical area to call their top champion a "world" champion, is it? I thought they generally just went with [[Promotion Name]] Champion, which is perfectly clear.

The absurdity of a league that only runs three city claiming to recognize a "world" champion seems more likely to turn off the fan base than doing the opposite. Not that either is likely to have any real effect, in my opinion.

Of course, if they're doing it deliberately as a joke and lean into it then that's different. "The Podunk Wrestling Association World Champion" does have a nice ring to it.

[SovietShooter]

12 minutes ago, tbarrie said:

Wait - surely it's not actually common for indie promotions that only operate in a small geographical area to call their top champion a "world" champion, is it?

Oh no, they certainly do. Especially if they can somehow shoehorn in a some sort of international credentials to "legitimize" it.  Wrestler X defended the ABC title against Wrestler Y from Canada, so it is now a WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP!!!!

 

47 minutes ago, NoFistsJustFlips said:

The truth is World being the term for the top tier title is ingrained in fans. It doesnt matter if your champion travels the world or not

That's a poor excuse to appeal to the lowest common denominator. Not saying you're wrong, but if you dumb things down for the slowest person in the room this (gestures at the world today) is what you get.

[SovietShooter]

Sitting at a pizza pub eating dinner with my wife, and there is some sort of UFC show on tv.  I noticed that they don't call any of the UFC championships "world" championships.  

So, I think perhaps this whole idea that a company loses credibility if they don't market it as a "world" title is waaaaay overblown. Especially when companies have multiple "world" titles that aren't divided by weight class or anything. 

[Log]

Isn’t it just that “world title” has become synonymous in pro wrestling with “top title” more than anything regarding where it’s defended or whatever?

[NoFistsJustFlips]

You guys are way over thinking it. Its not about credibility. Its about ease of story telling.

I ran an independent promotion. Our title was called the world title. Its as simple as anyone in the world is eligible to come to this promotion and challenge for it. Not a single fan questioned it or got pedantic that it was never defended internationally.

Its an in the bubble semantics thing. By your logic the United States Title should never be defended off of US soil. But it is. World equals top. Specific region means below the top.

Edited November 14, 2025 by NoFistsJustFlips

[NoFistsJustFlips]

2 hours ago, SovietShooter said:

That's a poor excuse to appeal to the lowest common denominator. Not saying you're wrong, but if you dumb things down for the slowest person in the room this (gestures at the world today) is what you get.

Your greater point about the world today isnt lost on me lol.

But its not dumbing it down. Its simplifying it. You want to draw from the largest pool of available fans possible? Dont alienate them with stuff they find weird. Telling them that the Omaha Middleweight Championship is the top title would be fine to die hards that go to every show they can big or small. But if you want people that casually know what wrestling is to understand instantly without being a barrier to entry you use the terms the widest amount of people know.

Our biggest house was just over 800 paid. Not a super indy by any means. But you worked the scene in this area you know how hard 800 paid is to get.

Edited November 15, 2025 by NoFistsJustFlips

[zendragon]

I've kinda assumed in modern day wrestling (pretty much anything post traveling world championship era) "world title" means the promotion is billing this person as presumably the best in the world.

[SovietShooter]

37 minutes ago, NoFistsJustFlips said:

But if you want people that casually know what wrestling is to understand instantly without being a barrier to entry you use the terms the widest amount of people know.

Ok, but if you are an independent promotion, and you have flyers/ads and are advertising the main event for the "ABC Championship", it won't draw as well as "ABC World Championship"?  I find that hard to believe. 

Like, has anyone noticed that AEW calls their championship the "AEW World Championship", and not a Heavyweight championship? A lot of folks seem to think the term "heavyweight" signifies the top title as well, when all it really represents is a weight division...

[NoFistsJustFlips]

I have noticed, but because I'm of the same mind as TK on this one. We omitted the word Heavyweight from our title name on purpose as well. Because weight divisions in wrestling are out dated. What happens if you want to put someone smaller over for that title? This Darby Allin sized dude is not a Heavyweight. It looks bad. You're limiting yourself and setting yourself up for failure when your small babyface gets heckled for it.

Which is in contrast to the word World, which no one ever heckled or cared about (in my experience). I think it's just a generational thing. It annoys people from a prior generation but the current generation grew up only knowing it this way, so it's not that big of a deal.

[NoFistsJustFlips]

7 minutes ago, SovietShooter said:

Ok, but if you are an independent promotion, and you have flyers/ads and are advertising the main event for the "ABC Championship", it won't draw as well as "ABC World Championship"?  I find that hard to believe. 

As for this point, short answer yes.

Long answer, yes. But not only due to that alone. I can only speak to my experiences here. But I helped out in the office for a few different promotions in my area before running something of my own. The title branding is one microcosm of a bigger coordinated effort to brand and market things a certain way. And just in my anecdotal scenario when you crafted the type of branding and actually put time into it, that stuff matters so so so much. The promotion I was part owner of kicked the shit out of anything that had ran here before. And all of that concerted effort on using terms for specific reasons, vs just doing whatever old school stuff the previous owners wanted, made huge difference.

It's lots of stuff tho right. Like maybe an easier analogy. If you just grab the generic indy title of Highspots and slap your logo sticker on it, does that affect how you're seen by he fans? Versus spending the necessary money to have a custom top of the line title created for you from scratch? Like there's a lot of little tiny decisions that snowball into great selling points if you put the thought and effort into the marketing and branding.

Its about positioning how you're viewed by the fans and trying to make your company as appealing as possible to as many people as possible.

[SovietShooter]

I mean, I worked on indys that had nice custom belts and drew under 50 paid, and others that had replicas or poor "homemade" belts that drew hundreds.  The only time I ever saw a physical belt draw anything, was the actual NWA World Heavyweight belt; Ive seen people pay to see that belt in person... although that was 20yrs ago, and they were older fans then, lol

Maybe I'm wrong, I'm not in the biz anymore and haven't been for a long time, but there are so many small indies and small shows and everyone has their own titles... I don't think any of it really means anything.  But I think if I ran a shows right now, I bet I could make up a different name for a title each show and use the same belt each time, and no one would care. 

[NoFistsJustFlips]

24 minutes ago, SovietShooter said:

But I think if I ran a shows right now, I bet I could make up a different name for a title each show and use the same belt each time, and no one would care. 

That's some Richard Arpin energy. And with that you'll be stuck with Richard Arpin draws.

[SovietShooter]

That's former NWA President Richard Arpin, lol 

[Casey]

I love that Pro Wrestling Revolver has a Texas championship even though they mainly run shows in Ohio and Iowa and have only been to Texas nine times out of like 80 shows.

[username]

I'm gonna level with all of you, I've been watching for decades and I still don't grasp exactly what territory the Intercontinental title holder is champion of >_>

[zendragon]

5 minutes ago, username said:

I'm gonna level with all of you, I've been watching for decades and I still don't grasp exactly what territory the Intercontinental title holder is champion of >_>

Pat Patterson won the North American title off Ted Diabase, then he "won" the South American title in the Rio de Janeiro tournament and unified them into the IC title. So the intercontinental title represents North and South American, like the European title represented Europe    

[SovietShooter]

9 hours ago, username said:

I'm gonna level with all of you, I've been watching for decades and I still don't grasp exactly what territory the Intercontinental title holder is champion of >_>

I do think it is kinda fascinating how the territories in the US all kinda went with geographical based championships (US/National/Southern/North American/etc), while Mexico mostly went with weight classes, while Japan went with pseudo-sanctioning from international organizations (or, just hijacking titles from other groups).  

[ExcellenceofAirPollution]

On 11/13/2025 at 10:45 PM, ExcellenceofAirPollution said:

Not sure where to put this but there seems to have been a change to AEW on MAX that happened today.

I was able to watch Dynamite live last night, but I didn't watch the entire show (ducked out before the men's cage match)

Today when I went to finish the show it said I needed to switch plans to a higher tier ($18.99 a month, I'm on the $9.99....soon to be $10.99 with ads) to watch it.  All the older episodes of TV and PPV seem to be available on the cheaper tier still but I haven't gone through it completely

So I'm wondering if it's just the replay not being available for a period of time.....or if I can no longer watch Dynamite live on this tier.  I don't believe I got an e-mail or any kind of announcement about this.  I don't care about any of the sports they have, if AEW is now sports tier pricing I'm out

To follow up on this Collision was available to watch live tonight and the replay went up instantly.....so hopefully just a glitch with Dynamite on Wednesday....

[The Natural]

AEW’s Rebel has been diagnosed with pulmonary lymphoma.

Real name Tanea Brooks, she has been dealing with health issues since May of 2024. She was originally diagnosed with pneumonia but after a year of not getting better with treatment, she sought treatment from the Mayo Clinic, who diagnosed her with cancer of the lungs.

Rebel announced the news in a social media post on Sunday, saying:

“After a year of not getting better, I decided to go to the Mayo Clinic and see if I could get treated by them and they found that it was not cryptococcal pneumonia this whole time and that it is primary pulmonary lymphoma, which is cancer in the lungs. And if there is a best case scenario then I have it so that’s good.”

She continued:

“Tomorrow I start rehab because along this tumultuous journey I picked up a little disorder called functional neurological disorder and it has taken my ability to walk. I now walk with a walker and my ability to speak clearly, I don’t know if you can tell, but it sounds like I bit my tongue.”

Rebel also said that she’s lost some function in her right hand as well due to the neurological condition. She mentioned that the therapy she will be undergoing for it runs Monday thru Friday from 8AM to 5PM, or “like a full time job” as Rebel put it.

Treatment for her cancer won’t begin until she finishes treatment for an infection she is currently receiving IV antibiotics for.

Rebel continued:

“And once that’s finished, hopefully in December, I will go in for a third bronchoscopy to determine what kind of treatment are we having, chemo, radiation, immunology and then we’ll start there and then we’ll kick its ass, OK? So I’m hoping that will start around the first of 2026.”

https://www.f4wonline.com/news/aew/aews-rebel-diagnosed-with-pulmonary-lymphoma/

Horrible news. Thoughts go out to Rebel.

[Technico Support]

God damn, that’s rough.  All the best to Reba.  

[HarryArchieGus]

Does obesity need to be the charge to constitute ‘body shaming’? Asking for a ‘friend’ from Newcastle upon Tyne.

[HarryArchieGus]

On 11/16/2025 at 11:16 AM, The Natural said:

AEW’s Rebel has been diagnosed with pulmonary lymphoma.

Real name Tanea Brooks, she has been dealing with health issues since May of 2024. She was originally diagnosed with pneumonia but after a year of not getting better with treatment, she sought treatment from the Mayo Clinic, who diagnosed her with cancer of the lungs.

Rebel announced the news in a social media post on Sunday, saying:

“After a year of not getting better, I decided to go to the Mayo Clinic and see if I could get treated by them and they found that it was not cryptococcal pneumonia this whole time and that it is primary pulmonary lymphoma, which is cancer in the lungs. And if there is a best case scenario then I have it so that’s good.”

She continued:

“Tomorrow I start rehab because along this tumultuous journey I picked up a little disorder called functional neurological disorder and it has taken my ability to walk. I now walk with a walker and my ability to speak clearly, I don’t know if you can tell, but it sounds like I bit my tongue.”

Rebel also said that she’s lost some function in her right hand as well due to the neurological condition. She mentioned that the therapy she will be undergoing for it runs Monday thru Friday from 8AM to 5PM, or “like a full time job” as Rebel put it.

Treatment for her cancer won’t begin until she finishes treatment for an infection she is currently receiving IV antibiotics for.

Rebel continued:

“And once that’s finished, hopefully in December, I will go in for a third bronchoscopy to determine what kind of treatment are we having, chemo, radiation, immunology and then we’ll start there and then we’ll kick its ass, OK? So I’m hoping that will start around the first of 2026.”

https://www.f4wonline.com/news/aew/aews-rebel-diagnosed-with-pulmonary-lymphoma/

Horrible news. Thoughts go out to Rebel.

Sounds like she's a tough lady and ready for the challenge ahead. I always loved Rebel. Britt Baker lost a lot of what was great about her act when Rebel went missing. All the best to Rebel.

[DreamBroken]

AEW returns to the Hammerstein Ballroom for Christmas week shows.

AEW returns to the Esports Stadium in Arlington TX for a Collision residency in January (Jan 3, 10, 24 & 31).   Makes me wish they'd bring back the standalone ROH tapings like they did there last year.