AEW Dark: Stocking Stuffer Review - December 16, 2025

By Graham "GSM" Matthews

Marina Shafir def. Isla Dawn

Being from the United Kingdom, Dawn was the babyface by default here, and I'm sure it was a nice moment for her to be able to compete in front of this crowd. That said, the outcome was never in doubt here, and it was essentially a glorified squash with Shafir winning within a matter of minutes. Shafir seems to win a lot of these enhancement matches only for them to not amount to much.

The Conglomeration (Roderick Strong and Orange Cassidy) and Mascara Dorada def. Mark Andrews, Kid Lykos and Kid Lykos II

It was announced that Cassidy and Dorada will have a Continental Classic Blue League match on Wednesday's Dynamite, so this was supposed to serve as a small preview of that (even though they were partners and not opponents). I'm not familiar with Lykos or Lykos II, but Andrews is great, so it was fun to see him in action. I didn't have any other takeaways as this was a fairly standard six-man tag team affair.

The Death Riders (Pac, Wheeler Yuta and Jon Moxley) def. Nathan Cruz and Grizzled Young Veterans

This was the longest match of the three on the show, which made sense given who was involved. I appreciated that Grizzled Young Veterans scored some offense before ultimately losing since they've been tucked away on ROH TV for the last year or so. Moxley not teasing any meaningful tension with the rest of Death Riders despite his recent string of losses has been disappointing.

Overall Show

Tony Khan announced last week that this would be a one-off return for Dark to give the crowd in Cardiff something special. I sure as hell hope it doesn't lead to Dark being brought back full-time because the last thing AEW needs is more weekly programming. That said, this was indeed a stocking stuffer with three perfectly fine squashes, making for a solid show on the whole. It's not exactly worth seeking out, but at least the 30-ish minutes breeze by.

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