This is a comprehensive recap of the feuds and storylines currently in progress on All Elite Wrestling programming that are relevant to the Dynamite and Collision tapings on Wednesday, 17 June. I originally wrote this for my friend who's going to the show with me but figured I'd put this blog to good use by posting it here as well.
Men's World title: MJF won the title at Worlds End in December. After defending against Kenny Omega in a marathon at Dynasty in April, Darby Allin cashed in a title shot he earned by beating Andrade El Ídolo that Wednesday and upset MJF in just two minutes. Darby went on a sprint title reign, defending the title every week—sometimes twice a week—in an unprecedented approach that lined up with his approach to life. MJF repeatedly demanded a rematch through this, but Darby wouldn't give it to him until he swore to put his hair on the line if he lost. Max reclaimed the world title at Double or Nothing. Mark Briscoe, who pinned MJF at All Out last year, now feels he's entitled a shot at the title. Max refuses to grant him one, saying he's unmarketable, but Tony Khan has struck a deal—in the main event of Forbidden Door, it'll be a 6 vs. 6 cage match, with MJF and Briscoe each choosing five teammates. If Mark's team wins, Briscoe will earn a shot at the AEW Men's World Championship. Those teams will be chosen this Wednesday, and go on to participate in a traditional tag team match later that night.
Meanwhile, the TNT Champion Kevin Knight—one of the most exciting rising stars in the company—attacked Darby Allin to end Double or Nothing, claiming Darby let everyone down by losing the match. Knight went on to attack his former teammate Speedball Mike Bailey on Dynamite, and later aligned himself with the Don Callis Family, the biggest heel group in the company. Kevin defeated Speedball in a grudge match for the TNT title on Wednesday, and has made it clear to MJF (who has courted Don Callis with a hefty sum of money to convince Don to send his clients to join his side in that cage match) that he'll join Max's side if Max gives him a title shot in the process. Knight has faced MJF twice this year and has gone 1-1 against him.
Fellow Don Callis Family member Andrade El Ídolo is also focused on MJF's title, and is significantly less enthused by Don's continued affiliation with Friedman, believing himself to be entitled a match for the title. Don has been wishy-washy about committing to giving him one, but on Wednesday gave him his word that he would get one soon. Andrade didn't seem convinced, but it's placated him for the time being.
Women's World title: Thekla, the world champion, has made it clear that ahead of Forbidden Door (AEW's big annual crossover event with New Japan Pro Wrestling, Stardom [an all-women Japanese promotion], and CMLL [Mexico's largest promotion]), she wants to humiliate Stardom. Thekla previously worked for Stardom and held several championships in the promotion. Her ongoing feud with the owner of the promotion, Taro Okada, was eventually her downfall as she was fired when she physically attacked him. Thekla put out a challenge Saturday for Stardom to send any one singular top star in the promotion to challenge her for the AEW Women's World Championship at Forbidden Door, and they responded by selecting Starlight Kid.
Starlight Kid, just 24, has been a champion in the promotion more than half a dozen times over already, and is no stranger to Thekla in the ring: they've faced off in matches 32 times over a three-year span from 2022-25. Most of their prior meetings were in tag team bouts, but there is specific precedent here: Starlight Kid has defeated Thekla both times they've faced in singles action, both times doing so in under 10 minutes. It will have been nearly 3 years since their last singles meeting when they face again at Forbidden Door, and the stakes will be much higher. Thekla has made it clear that she wants Starlight Kid's first match in AEW to be her last.
Men's Owen Hart Foundation Tournament: Around the midpoint of every year, both a men's and women's tournament is held. It's an eight-man, single-elimination tournament, where the winner receives a match at their division's respective singles world championship at All In, AEW's biggest show of the year. The finals of each tournament will take place at Forbidden Door. The men's final is already established: Swerve Strickland will face Will Ospreay. Strickland, amidst dissent with Kenny Omega, turned on Omega and began embracing a more vicious side in February. Believing Omega was using his title of executive vice president of AEW to unfairly launch himself to the top of the contendership rankings for the AEW Men's World title ahead of Dynasty, Strickland challenged Omega to put his EVP status on the line in March, 5 weeks after Strickland defeated Omega in a match and brutally attacked him afterwards. Omega was able to win that match and, in doing so, became the no. 1 contender for the title, earning the aforementioned match with MJF at Dynasty.
Strickland disappeared for about a month before a series of promo packages showed him taking aim at the Ring of Honor Men's World Champion Bandido. He would go on to attack Bandido after the latter successfully defended his title at ROH Supercard of Honor, then defeated him in a non-title bout in the opening round of the Owen at Double or Nothing, nearly two months after his last match. Strickland then used underhanded tactics to get the better of Brody King in the semifinal to punch his ticket to Forbidden Door. He's now one match away from booking his first match for the world title since Worlds End in December.
On the other side of the bracket, England's Will Ospreay has been on a run of destiny. After an unsanctioned steel cage match against the Death Riders and (at the time, heel) Young Bucks at Forbidden Door 2025 in London ended with Jon Moxley breaking Ospreay's neck and requiring double fusion surgery, Ospreay returned at Revolution in March and made it clear he was not done with the Death Riders. Still wearing kinesio tape on his neck and evidently struggling with substantial pain in the region, Ospreay overcame perpetual rival and countrymate PAC on 1 April and reunited with the faction in NJPW that he helped found in United Empire. On 8 April, Ospreay and three other members of United Empire--including the new IWGP World Heavyweight Champion in Callum Newman--defeated a contingent of the Death Riders including Moxley in an all-out, anything goes match. Still, struggling with his neck, Ospreay was unable to overcome Moxley in a singles bout for Moxley's Continental Championship at Dynasty in Vancouver.
With neck issues worsening, Ospreay pulled out a miraculous victory against the Don Callis Family's Hechicero on Dynamite Spring BreakThru despite requiring at times intervention from the ringside doctor. Things came to a head a week later, when Hechicero's family mate--and former member of United Empire--Mark Davis defeated Ospreay by medical stoppage. Davis dropped Ospreay on his head twice with piledrivers, and Doc Sampson ruled that the match could not continue. Davis continued to stalk Ospreay after the match, perhaps contemplating further attacking him, when the Death Riders suddenly surrounded the ring and effectively kidnapped Ospreay.
That Saturday, we got footage of what happened after the Death Riders left the arena with Ospreay in tow. Marina Shafir used a towel to adjust Ospreay's neck as he was forcibly sat down face-to-face with Moxley. Moxley offered him a deal: seeing Ospreay's potential, and unwilling to allow it to go to waste, Mox would have Ospreay join Death Riders training sessions. Mox sold this to Ospreay by vowing to make him the greatest weapon professional wrestling had ever seen, and made it clear to Will that it was entirely his choice: "This 'thing' has gotta come to a head one way or another... we can saddle up, and you can be just like everybody else... or you can become everything you were meant to be. Your choice." Moxley took the metal chair he had been sitting on and tossed it into Ospreay's hands before lying completely prone on the ground, allowing Ospreay to reject his offer by clubbing him over the head with it if he so chose.
Will took Moxley's offer, demanding the camera operator leave the area. Over the following weeks, we got brief looks into Will's initially reluctant association with the Death Riders. Moxley made it clear that in order for Will's transformation to be complete, he needed to let go of any and all emotional baggage he still carried, including any feelings he had about him. "I make no promises, I don't produce miracles, but when I make a commitment to something, I see it through all the way to the end. All I ask is the same in return." The week after, Moxley would introduce to Ospreay the concept of "death ground," a position where one cannot leave from and has no choice but to fight. Moxley told him that's where he would end up if they didn't get both his physical neck and his mentality right: "Sure, you can still have a career at AEW--get paid, hang out like the rest of these posers. But that's not what you want. You're not like the rest of these people, man. You're different."
The benefits of Will's training with the Death Riders would manifest in multiple ways: Ospreay's wrestling style would become more well-rounded, relying less on living or dying by high-risk, athletic maneuvers and allowing him to deepen his arsenal with more technical attacks, submission holds, and targeting the limbs and extremities of his opponents. In addition, they would focus on strengthening his neck with intense exercise and physical therapy tactics. This proved to be so effective that Doc Sampson, the same doctor who ruled that Ospreay couldn't continue against Davis, told interviewer Renee Paquette less than two weeks after their training started that whatever techniques Ospreay was using were working and that he would be cleared to return to AEW ring action the next week. Ospreay, for his part, was reporting zero pain in his neck, going so far as to abandon the kinesio tape when he faced Ace Austin the next week. He debuted a somewhat more vicious and intentional style against Austin that match, focusing on attacking the arm of Austin to set up for a flying cross armbreaker submission hold to win the match. Ospreay, fittingly, named the hold "Death Ground."
That led Ospreay to the Owen. Will's been after the AEW Men's World Championship since he joined the company. His only prior match for the title was, fittingly, at Forbidden Door 2024 against then-champion Swerve Strickland; Strickland beat Ospreay in that match to retain the belt. After falling to Hangman Adam Page in an instant-classic match in the final of the 2025 tournament, Will returned with a renewed determination. He dispatched Samoa Joe in his quarterfinal match at Double or Nothing before beating now National Champion Mark Davis in a non-title semifinal match on 3 June's Dynamite to reach the final for the second straight year.
A win in the tournament final at Forbidden Door would send Ospreay to All In London: the biggest show of the year, in front of the fans in his home country, for the AEW World Championship he's been after for years at Wembley Stadium. Ospreay defeated Chris Jericho at the first All In London in 2023, and overcame current World Champion MJF for the International Championship at 2024's event. Ahead of the third All In London this year (All In took place in Texas in 2025), Will must overcome someone who has often been both a friend and a rival to him in Swerve Strickland to punch his ticket for the main event. The two last shared a ring together at All In Texas last year, where they teamed up to defeat then-EVPs the Young Bucks to strip them of their EVP titles.
Women's Owen Hart Foundation Tournament: Both semifinal matches in the women's bracket will take place on Wednesday evening: one live on Dynamite, one taped ahead for Collision to air on Saturday.
On Dynamite, 2025 Owen Hart Foundation Cup winner Mercedes Moné takes on Stardom standout Hazuki in the semifinal on the west side of the bracket. Moné made her surprise return to AEW as the wild card in this tournament against Alex Windsor. Moné, before taking a leave of absence from AEW, had traveled the world collecting world championships from over a dozen different promotions, but her grip started to slip in mid-December. After holding the TBS Championship for a record 584 days, Moné was upset by the woman she had beaten two years prior to claim it in Willow Nightingale on New Year's Eve. After leaving the ring for three months, she would return to various other promotions where she would go on to lose every last one of her remaining championship belts over the course of March.
When Willow Nightingale revealed that a shoulder injury would force her to withdraw from the tournament, it opened the door for Mercedes to return to an AEW ring for the first time in six months, defeating Alex Windsor--who she had previously fallen to in under 9 minutes for the RevPro title.
Hazuki defeated the CMLL World Women's Champion Persephone, who was still nursing an eye injury from a month prior after Julia Hart sprayed poison mist in her eyes, to advance to the semifinal. There was a display of sportsmanship between the two as Persephone was able to put her frustration behind her. Mercedes suddenly attacked Persephone in the ring; the former had claimed that CMLL title off the latter in October, before Persephone won it back in March. Hazuki returned to the ring to run Mercedes off, but it was only temporarily successful, as Mercedes' true intentions were to attack Hazuki. They'll face off on Wednesday with a trip to the tournament final at Forbidden Door on the line.
On the other side of the bracket, it's a matchup of mentor vs. student as the ROH Women's World Champion Athena faces Maya World. Both women are originally from the DFW area--Athena from Garland, Maya from Greenville--and are no stranger to one another. Athena has been on a record-shattering run with the ROH Women's World title: holding it for over three and a half consecutive years, she's successfully defended it nearly 40 times. Her last singles loss came when she challenged for Toni Storm's AEW Women's World title at Forbidden Door last year, and that was without her own title at stake. She went through all of 2024 without losing any of her 20 matches. The vicious Athena refers to herself as the "forever champion," and proudly proclaims everyone that isn't her to be her minions.
Maya World knows what it means to be a minion when it comes to Athena. Just 23 years old and with 3 years of ring experience under her belt, Maya was once taken under Athena's wing as a member of the latter's "M.I.T." (Minion-in-Training) program before splitting off and abandoning Athena's mindset of being willing to stop at nothing--including cheating and injuring her opponent--to retain a championship. Maya is the only blemish on Athena's record in 2026, surviving a 10-minute time limit in a Proving Ground match on 1 March to earn a shot at Athena's title; three weeks later, it would take Athena nearly 20 minutes to put World away. At Supercard of Honor, they crossed paths once again in the main event. In a six-woman elimination rules Survival of the Fittest match for the world title, Maya and Athena were the final two participants remaining, and it's very possible Athena only escaped with the title thanks to the intervention of her visibly reluctant and often abused minion Billie Starkz.
Maya wasn't even supposed to be in this tournament. Japanese freelance standout Sareee was originally slated to face Skye Blue in a quarterfinal match last Wednesday, but a lingering neck injury resulted in her not being cleared to compete. Maya, less than a week removed from the tragic passing of her brother after he was struck by a moving vehicle, made it clear that it was her own decision to participate in the tournament instead of taking time off, and dedicated her performance to her brother. She would go on to upset the assumed favorite Skye Blue in that match, pulling off a flash pinfall victory. It will be an emotional affair on Collision, when Athena looks to escape the semifinal of the Owen for the first time (she's fallen to defeat at this stage twice before) and Maya tries to chart a path of destiny to Forbidden Door.
TBS Championship: As previously mentioned, the former TBS Champion Willow Nightingale, who was slated to compete in the Owen, was forced to withdraw due to a shoulder injury. That same injury also required her to yield the TBS Championship, which has now been vacant without a holder since before Double or Nothing. Ahead of Dynamite in San Diego on 1 July, six qualifying matches are being held for AEW's first ever Survival of the Fittest match to crown a new champion. Two already took place on Collision Summer Blockbuster: Hikaru Shida and Persephone dispatched Zayda Steel and Julia Hart respectively. There are still four spots left up for grabs in that Survival of the Fittest match, and it's safe to assume that on Wednesday either Dynamite or Collision, we'll see more matches to claim those spots.
Men's World Tag Team Championships: Adam Copeland & Christian Cage are the current tag team champions after finally overcoming FTR in an "I Quit" match at Double or Nothing. During their championship celebration on Dynamite the following week, they were attacked by The Dogs, Clark Connors and David Finlay, who believe that they're next in line for shots at those titles. We haven't seen Cope or Cage since the attack, but the Young Bucks believed themselves the worthy no. 1 contenders, and they had a tag team match to try and settle it on Collision. Finlay and Connors used underhanded tactics to cheat behind the back of the referee and win that match, so this rivalry might not be fully spoken for as we try to determine who will be the next challengers for the tag titles.
Continental Champion Jon Moxley and the Death Riders just had a brief rivalry with rival stable Shane Taylor Promotions in which they came out on top. It's unclear if that feud is fully complete, but after defeating members of STP in three consecutive matches including an all-out brawl of a street fight on Saturday, it's going to be a tough sell for them to regroup and continue an assault on the Death Riders.
There is a feud between Tommaso Ciampa and Chris Jericho that is genuinely snooze-inducing. Jericho is obnoxious, can't wrestle anymore, has been cutting childlike promos since his return despite being positioned as a good guy, and just launched an NFT grift in 2026. There are no redeeming qualities to this rivalry.
Kenny Omega will be facing Zack Sabre Jr., one of the greatest technical wrestlers active today, at Forbidden Door. They've not faced since 2018, and Omega, in the twilight of his career and seeking a way to return to the AEW World Championship one last time, hopes to use a victory over Sabre as a launching pad to return to title contention. Sabre is the leader of the TMDK stable in New Japan Pro Wrestling, and Omega overcame TMDK member Bad Dude Tito to open Collision on Saturday.
Will Ospreay and Kenny Omega have long been friends, though Omega has taken exception to Ospreay's affiliation with Jon Moxley and the Death Riders, especially considering clashes the two sides have had in the past. Ospreay has been undeterred, though Kenny is far from the only member of the roster who's unsure how they feel about the union between the two.
