AEW Full Gear 2025: Shocks, Show-stealers, and Story Payoffs from Newark
AEW Full Gear 2025 Results, Highlights & Key Moments from Newark
AEW Full Gear 2025 landed in Newark’s Prudential Center with the kind of card that screams “turning point” more than “just another pay-per-view.” Across title defenses, grudge matches, and multi-man chaos, the show tried to balance AEW’s long-form storytelling with the need for fresh, decisive moments as the promotion heads into 2026.
Below is a match-by-match breakdown of the results, the biggest highlights, and why several key finishes could quietly shape AEW’s main event scene for the next year.
Full Gear 2025 Match Card Overview
While AEW packed this show from top to bottom, the spine of Full Gear 2025 rested on a few marquee clashes: Hangman Page’s AEW World Championship defense, a loaded tag team showcase, and a couple of grudges that finally boiled over on pay-per-view. The pacing favored variety—technical wrestling, wild brawls, and high-flying spotfests all found room on the card.
For fans who treat AEW pay-per-views like seasonal checkpoints, Full Gear once again felt like an unofficial “fall finale” for several storylines that have been simmering on AEW Dynamite, Collision, and Rampage for months.
- Main event: AEW World Championship bout featuring Hangman Adam Page.
- Multiple title defenses across men’s, women’s, and tag divisions.
- Heated grudge matches closing the book on long-running feuds.
- Showcase multi-man matches designed to spotlight rising talent.
AEW World Championship: Hangman Page’s Reign Under Fire
Full Gear has always been a big night for Hangman Adam Page—this is the event where he won the AEW World Championship in 2021, and in 2025 he walked in as champion, defending once again on a card that loves narrative callbacks. The Prudential Center crowd treated Page like a battle-tested ace, not just a cowboy cosplay gimmick, and that matters; AEW’s long-term investment in his character continues to pay off.
The match itself leaned into Page’s strengths: heavy strikes, risky dives, and emotional selling that makes every near fall feel like a potential era shift. Whether you were rooting for Page or desperately hoping for a changing of the guard, the closing stretch was built to have you standing up, pacing the living room.
“Hangman Page is AEW’s most fully realized protagonist — every title defense feels like a new chapter in a long-form Western.”
— Wrestling columnist reacting to Full Gear 2025
From a storytelling angle, AEW used the finish to underline Page’s resilience while planting seeds for his next challenger. There’s a fine line between “dominant champion” and “stale booking,” and Full Gear nudged Page just enough toward the former without tipping into the latter—largely thanks to the match’s intensity and the post-match teases.
Tag Team Chaos: AEW Doubles Down on Its Deepest Division
If the world title scene is AEW’s prestige drama, the tag division is the fast-twitch action franchise. Full Gear 2025 kept that reputation alive with a tag showcase that juggled insane sequences, layered storytelling, and character work that rewarded fans who have been tracking these teams for years.
In classic AEW fashion, the tag matches danced close to the edge of overindulgence—rapid tags, risky dives, referee leniency stretched to its absolute limit—but the crowd in Newark ate it up. The division’s depth remains one of AEW’s quietest flexes, with veteran teams and newly formed pairings all jockeying for screen time.
- Strength: Multi-team chemistry and intricate sequences that feel uniquely “AEW.”
- Weakness: Rules are still more suggestion than structure, which can be alienating for traditionalists.
- Highlight: A closing stretch packed with double-team finishers and perfectly timed breakups.
From an industry perspective, AEW’s continued focus on tag wrestling remains a differentiator from WWE’s oft-neglected tag scene. Full Gear reinforced that identity, even if the sheer pace occasionally overshadowed the emotional stakes inside the ring.
Women’s Division Spotlight: Progress, With Caveats
AEW’s women’s division has long been under the microscope, and Full Gear 2025 did enough to keep hope alive without entirely silencing the critiques. The featured women’s matches brought intensity, a clear sense of personal stakes, and more defined character work than some earlier pay-per-views.
The Newark crowd responded strongly to the top women’s title bout, especially during the submission teases and strike exchanges. The performers delivered; the recurring question is whether AEW’s week-to-week booking will fully support what the women pull off on pay-per-view.
“When AEW gives its women time and stories, the matches hang with anything on the card. The question is consistency, not talent.”
— Analyst on AEW’s evolving women’s division in 2025
From a broader cultural standpoint, AEW is still playing catch-up in terms of how prominently women’s wrestling is presented compared with its male counterparts. Full Gear 2025 showed encouraging signs of course correction, but the promotion needs to treat this as a baseline, not an exception.
Grudge Matches & Wildcards: The Emotional Undercard
Beyond the titles, Full Gear 2025 lived or died by its grudges. AEW has leaned heavily on long-running personal rivalries, and this show gave several of them a decisive blow-off. These matches often lacked the polish of the main event bouts but more than made up for it in raw energy.
Blood feuds and personal animosity have historically been AEW’s way of bringing lapsed fans back into the fold, and Newark’s crowd rewarded that approach, loudly buying into every table bump and post-match stare-down.
- Several feuds reached satisfying payoffs instead of cheap disqualification non-endings.
- Undercard matches gave rising stars a chance to work in front of a big-event crowd.
- Post-match angles clearly set up new rivalries heading into winter programming.
Not every stipulation or run-in landed perfectly, and some segments flirted with overbooking, but as a whole, the undercard did its job: give the show texture and make Dynamite and Collision feel “must watch” in the aftermath.
Presentation & Production: AEW’s PPV Identity in 2025
In terms of look and feel, Full Gear 2025 stuck to AEW’s established playbook: a slightly grittier, more kinetic presentation than WWE’s slick TV sheen, anchored by a lively commentary booth and a crowd mic’d hot enough to make home viewers feel like they’re in the building.
The pacing, however, is still an ongoing balancing act. With so many matches on the card, AEW risks audience fatigue by the final hour, especially for fans watching on a late-night time zone. Full Gear walked right up to that line; depending on your tolerance for four-hour wrestling marathons, that’s either a feature or a bug.
On the plus side, AEW’s camera work and replays did a better job this year of capturing big moments without missing key spots — a frequent criticism in the company’s early years. The show also benefited from tight video packages that reminded casual viewers why each match mattered.
Key Takeaways: Winners, Losers, and What Comes Next
Full Gear 2025 may not radically redefine AEW, but it does reassert what the company wants to be: a haven for long matches, layered storytelling, and a roster that feels more like an ensemble cast than a star-and-supporting-players hierarchy.
- Hangman Page remains the emotional core of AEW’s main event scene.
- The tag division is still AEW’s show-stealer, for better and sometimes for chaos.
- The women’s division is trending upward, but needs weekly TV commitment to match its PPV performances.
- Grudge matches delivered catharsis and clear setup for winter story arcs.
- Show length and pacing remain the biggest structural challenges for AEW pay-per-views.
For casual viewers, Full Gear 2025 is an easy recommendation as a snapshot of why AEW still feels different in a crowded wrestling landscape. For long-time fans, it’s another chapter in a slow-burn saga that rewards patience, attention to detail, and a high tolerance for very long, very loud Sunday nights.
As AEW heads into 2026, the questions raised at Full Gear are as intriguing as the answers it provided: Who finally unseats Hangman? Which tag teams will break out of the pack? And will AEW fully capitalize on the momentum its women’s division keeps earning, one pay-per-view performance at a time?
