By Colin McGuire, ProWrestling.net Staffer
Welcome to the official McGuire’s Mondays 2025 Double Or Nothing preview! Here you go:
– FTR vs. Nigel McGuinness and Daniel Garcia: Good for Nigel.
– Toni Storm vs. Mina Shirakawa for the AEW Women’s Championship: When is Toni vs. Mercedes happening again?
– Mercedes Mone vs. Jamie Hayter in the women’s Owen Hart Cup tournament final: When is Toni vs. Mercedes happening again?
– Will Ospreay vs. Adam Page in the men’s Owen Hart Cup tournament final: Should be great.
– The Hurt Syndicate vs. Sammy Guevara and Dustin Rhodes for the AEW Tag Team Titles: Sammy still works there?
– Ricochet vs. Mark Briscoe in a stretcher match: That ought to be fun.
And while it’s not official as of this writing …
– Anarchy In The Arena: They better use this to prop Willow up in some way, shape, or form.
And so concludes the official McGuire’s Mondays 2025 Double Or Nothing preview! Thanks for coming!
OK, I apologize (kind of) for the glibness. But I’ve been thinking a lot about Double Or Nothing over the last few days, and every time my mind gets back to it, I have trouble getting past this: Remember when Double Or Nothing felt like AEW’s biggest pay-per-view of the year? Remember when it seemed to really, really, really matter? I understand making All In your WrestleMania – and to AEW’s credit, they really are taking a big swing this year by booking the amount of things they are booking around the whole production – but not only does Double Or Nothing feel lesser than, it feels like Dynasty Part 2.
Maybe that’s too extreme, but you get the point. This is the seventh Double Or Nothing, and let’s not forget that Double Or Nothing was the first AEW PPV, period. The Casino Battle Royale was introduced (Hangman Page won it). Cody vs. Dustin happened. Ryo Mizunami was there. Angelico and Jack Evens wrestled on the main card. It was a time.
From there, in AEW’s infancy, Double Or Nothing became The Thing To Look Forward To each Memorial Day weekend. Stadium Stampede was introduced the next year, which also happened to be only a handful of months into a global pandemic. There was all that drama surrounding MJF in 2022, and people wondered if he was actually going to show up to get squashed by Wardlow. The image of a bloodied Eddie Kingston stumbling down the entrance way with a gasoline can was etched into our brains forever.
Double Or Nothings are great.
This year? AEW is on a winning streak of television shows, and what seemed like a creative low point for the company has now subsided in order to make way for a rebuild that appears to be objectively working, as its fans continue to show appreciation for the momentum Tony Khan and his group have managed to develop. The card so far looks fine, complete with something very great on paper (I don’t know how Page vs. Ospreay will turn out, but I do know it’s almost impossible that they have a bad-mediocre match), and something that doesn’t inspire this viewer at all (The Death Riders, Anarchy In The Arena, et al).
So, if nothing else, I hope that Sunday’s show keeps AEW trending in the right direction and we (or, well, I) aren’t left bitching about another Death Riders-centric main event that’s both disappointing and predictable. We will be, after all, officially on the march to All In once the lights go down this weekend and if there is such a thing as WrestleMania Season, it would be unfair to claim there isn’t such a thing as All In Season, especially with the effort AEW is making to make the show feel like a Big Deal.
As such, I’m rooting for Sunday to be great. Not good. Great. And I want to walk away from the weekend genuinely excited for July 12 in Arlington, Texas. To me, that’s how Double Or Nothing can be meaningful again. It can be more than just The Show With The Big Brawl (a la, Anarchy In The Arena and Stadium Stampede). It can reclaim its value as one of AEW’s top-tier pay-per-views and be a solid Final Big Push for the company’s most celebrated event of the year.
It all boils down to this: At a time when AEW’s immediate future looks brighter than it has in a little while, the 2025 installment of Double Or Nothing needs to cash out a winning ticket more than any other bet the show has made since 2019. Here’s hoping the odds tilt in AEW’s favor.
Tonivs.Mercedes will be at All In.
>>And so concludes the official McGuire’s Mondays 2025 Double Or Nothing preview! Thanks for coming!
OK, I apologize (kind of) for the glibness.<<
That pretty much says what we see here…a lot of people who have a negative view of AEW and aren't capable of giving "that show was good, that show was bad" type opinions. I can already tell you what the reviews here will be, as well as the "hits and misses" column (as always, it'll be misses and and "it's here in the hit section BUT…").
Cry more, Angry Mike.