Matt Whittle

I want to start by thanking all of our readers in 2025 — though we only launched about four months ago, it has been extremely exciting to see the site grow and reach more people. It’s encouraging to know that people want to read, especially pieces by human beings. That may be a low bar to clear, but I’ll take it.

I also wanted to thank the contributors to the site. It has been a blast working with some of my favorite wrestling writers, along with people who work in wrestling. Though the initial weekly cadence slowed down, I’d like to believe that the quality remained high. I’m working on some really exciting stories for 2026, and it’s encouraging to know that what I find exciting, so too do the readers.

Now, as for 2025, I’m cheating here with a few of my favorite things. The Hollywood Ending between Mariah May and Toni Storm has to be one of the wildest matches in American wrestling history, and there were few things this year that elicited the reactions in me that this match did.

Another runner-up for me is Mistico and Max’s CMLL match at Arena Mexico. It was truly surreal to see Mistico bleeding the way he did in a once-in-a-lifetime babyface performance that night. If you combine his entrance at Grand Slam Mexico with this match, it would probably take my top spot in totality. What a year for CMLL.

My favorite thing in 2025 wrestling, however, was attending AEW All In. There’s a tendency online to describe All In as “AEW’s Wrestlemania” — it’s an obvious comparison, but WWE also never sold 81,035 for an event.

Instead, it truly felt like I was at the American Wrestle Kingdom. More importantly, it felt distinctly AEW. Wrestling has changed a ton in the last few years, but it’s incredibly important that we never lose sight of the fact that a second major wrestling promotion exists in America (and beyond), in which the main event of their biggest show of the year culminates in a deathmatch with a bed of nails prominently featured. Being there in person for Hangman’s win was something I will never, ever forget.

Phil Schneider

My favorite thing in wrestling this year has been the CMLL of it all. Not just being the promotion of the year business-wise and putting on great weekly shows, but all of the awesome ancillary things involved.

MJF going down to Arena Mexico, trying to take Mistico’s mask and bringing back the blood. Hechicero becoming an AEW regular and having a killer ROH PPV main event with Bandido. Mistico having a cool match in MLW with Austin Aries of all people. 

On a personal level, I got to book two DEAN shows last year with lucha icons like Blue Panther, Virus, Pantera, Euforia, and Averno, in addition to young stars like Xehlua and Neon. There's nothing I love more than great lucha libre, and we got some great lucha libre this year.

Rob Naylor

My favorite thing in wrestling this year was the WWE Vault & AEW somewhat competitively putting up older content on their respective YouTube channels — the wrestling fan wins.

Clark Feldman

For 2025, I'd go with Mystery Wrestling as a whole. Silly stuff like the blindfolded ref match and the No DQ Body Slam Match had me laughing pretty hard.

Tom Lawlor

My favorite thing in wrestling? That I’m not currently in the ring. Let the professionals handle that shit.

Jimmy Lloyd

My favorite wrestling moment of 2025 was The End of a Broski at the Hammerstein Ballroom, when I turned on Matt Cardona.

Alex Zayne

My favorite moment was starting the year off as a surprise entrant in the Wrestle Kingdom 19 Rambo. This was hard to top, with it being my first experience on a Wrestle Kingdom card.

Joseph Montecillo

DPW might have been the most top-to-bottom, functional promotion anywhere in the world in 2025. Buoyed by a wonderful Adam Priest World Title reign, the most talented roster on the indies, and a sharp production team behind them, DPW got about as close to the super indie hype as was possible this decade. I miss them already.

Brian W. Tosh

The Hollywood ending between Toni and Mariah May.