Last week, we saw the AEW tag team division well and truly come alive again. The Hounds of Hell, The Don Callis Family, and the return of Austin and Colten Gunn made it seem like The Hurt Syndicate actually have a number of fresh, interesting teams for them to be challenged by. However, the tag team division is in fact not the division in AEW that has needed the most tender loving care, as that prize goes to the often forgotten trios division. It’s a division that is so forgotten that the champions barely ever mention that they are the champions, never wear the belts, and probably use them as coasters at home.
With that said, something has been happening over on “AEW Collision” that, if we did these loves and hates for that show, would have already been mentioned. Since it hasn’t, the trios division has been getting some renewed focus, with actual trios being formed rather than just one guy and a random tag team. The Undisputed Kingdom, Shane Taylor Promotions, La Faccion Ingobrenable, even Daniel Garcia and 2.0 have gotten involved in the action, and that spilled over on to this episode of “AEW Dynamite” with an excellent AEW World Trios Championship match.
While an Undisputed Era reunion wasn’t really my idea of a good time at the end of 2024, having them be one of the frontrunners of the new trios division seems like the perfect place for them right now. Roderick Strong bursts into life in multi-man matches, Kyle O’Reilly bounces from opponent to opponent seamlessly, and after years of claiming he’s going to win the AEW World Championship and not coming anywhere near it, Adam Cole might have found his true purpose in 2025. Then there’s the champions. The Death Riders rightfully get a lot of negativity thrown their way for being a directionless group, but when they are allowed to go out and wrestle, all of them (including Jon Moxley) are still amongst the best that AEW has to offer, and some of the best wrestlers in the entire world.
The ending stretch to this match was the most alive that the trios division has felt since the best of seven series between The Elite and Death Triangle. I’m not saying the titles are anywhere near as important as they were then, but these days, there is at least a semi-competitive division underneath the holders that actually value the belts and want to win them. On top of all of this, you throw in The Ops, the terrible new name for the absolutely not terrible group of Samoa Joe, HOOK, and Katsuyori Shibata, and The Patriarchy, and for the first time since the original tournament in 2022 that crowned the inaugural champions, there is an actual trios division full of entertaining personas, and even more entertaining matches to be had. Tonight was a promising sign of things to come, let’s just hope this trend of multi-man goodness in AEW continues to move forward.
Written by Sam Palmer
