On a frigid night just outside Atlanta, AEW brought the heat with its sixth annual Winter Is Coming special from the Gateway Center Arena, delivering a show built on history, heartbreak, and high-stakes tournament drama. The Babes of Wrath—Willow Nightingale and Harley Cameron—opened the broadcast by etching their names in the record books as the first-ever AEW Women’s World Tag Team Champions, while Samoa Joe closed the night by forcing an emotional Eddie Kingston to tap out in a world title main event that nodded directly to Kingston’s heroes. In between, Kazuchika Okada and “Speedball” Mike Bailey swung the Continental Classic Gold League standings, Swerve Strickland and “Hangman” Adam Page turned their blood feud into an uneasy alliance, and The Elite vs. Don Callis’ Family—and FTR vs. the Bang Bang Gang—were set on a collision course with huge stakes attached.
Here are the full results
- Babes of Wrath (Harley Cameron & Willow Nightingale) def. Timeless Love Bombs (Toni Storm & Mina Shirakawa) – Tournament Final for the inaugural AEW Women’s World Tag Team Championship
Willow pinned Mina Shirakawa with The Babe With the Powerbomb to crown the first-ever champions. - Kazuchika Okada def. “Jungle” Jack Perry – Continental Classic Gold League
Okada scored the win with a second Rainmaker lariat. - “Hangman” Adam Page & Swerve Strickland def. The Opps (Powerhouse Hobbs & Katsuyori Shibata) – Tornado Tag Team Match
Page hit the Buckshot Lariat and Swerve followed with the House Call on Shibata for the pin. - “Speedball” Mike Bailey def. Kyle Fletcher – Continental Classic Gold League
In the final minute of regulation, Bailey snatched a cross-armed rolling sunset flip for the upset victory and his first three points of the tournament. - Samoa Joe (c) def. Eddie Kingston – AEW World Championship
Joe countered a spinning backfist into the Coquina Clutch, forcing Kingston to tap out to retain the title.
History made: Babes of Wrath become the first AEW Women’s World Tag Team Champions
Winter Is Coming opened with the culmination of the Women’s Tag Team Championship Tournament, and the atmosphere immediately felt like a coronation waiting to happen. The Timeless Love Bombs—AEW Women’s World Champion “Timeless” Toni Storm and Mina Shirakawa—marched in with all the theatrical swagger you’d expect, while Harley Cameron and Willow Nightingale carried themselves like hungry underdogs who’d grown into a unit over the course of 2025.
Early on, Cameron and Shirakawa mixed tight mat work with the kind of cheeky physicality that’s defined this feud, leading to brawling on the floor and a wild cannonball dive from Willow that had the crowd roaring. Storm eventually took over with her signature hot tag, tearing through both Babes of Wrath before Mina wrenched Cameron into a Figure Four, creating a dual-submission visual as both teams twisted each other’s limbs in the center of the ring.
The turning point came when Storm drilled Cameron with Storm Zero and looked to have the match won, only for Nightingale to break the fall at the last possible second. From there, Harley shook off the damage long enough to hit her own big finisher, and Willow completed the story—hoisting Mina and drilling her with The Babe With the Powerbomb to secure the three-count and the inaugural AEW Women’s World Tag Team Championship.
Post-match, Renee Paquette stepped into the ring to capture the moment as Willow and Harley celebrated through tears and blood—Cameron’s mouth visibly busted open after the war. Nightingale spoke about how proud she was of Harley’s growth and how much it meant to finally find someone who had her back inside and outside of the ring, echoing sentiments Sports Illustrated previously highlighted about Cameron’s breakout 2025 and her belief that her “strongest things… are still to come.”
In a show of respect that fit the big-fight setting, Storm and Shirakawa returned to the ring, shook the new champions’ hands, and joined in the celebration as “you deserve it” chants rained down. It was a rare moment where AEW’s often chaotic women’s division unified around a clear, history-defining achievement: the birth of the company’s women’s tag scene with Willow Nightingale and Harley Cameron at its heart.
Backstage, that energy continued as the Conglomeration and even the Timeless Love Bombs toasted the new champions, underscoring how big a deal AEW wanted this new championship lineage to feel from night one.
Okada vs. Jack Perry: Continental Classic drama and Don Callis chaos
The first Continental Classic Gold League bout of the night saw “Jungle” Jack Perry step into his first singles match in over a year, replacing the injured Darby Allin in the tournament to face Kazuchika Okada.
Perry, framed by Renee Paquette’s cut-in as a man returning to high-pressure competition after a long layoff, came out hot, attacking Okada before the Rainmaker could fully settle into his usual deliberate rhythm. Somewhere in the early scramble, Perry appeared to tweak his lower leg, adding a layer of tension as he repeatedly fought through pain to avoid the Rainmaker—countering twice and scoring a near fall with a running knee that had the Atlanta-area crowd believing in the upset.
When Perry finally snared Okada in the Snare Trap, the building rose in anticipation. The Rainmaker responded with a bite to the hand to free himself—a flash of desperation from a usually unflappable ace. What followed was chaos in the most literal sense: Perry bit his way out of a Tombstone attempt, Okada crushed him with a Rainmaker, whiffed on a second, then reset with a tilt-a-whirl backbreaker and another picture-perfect Rainmaker to secure the three points and further strengthen his grip on the block.
The post-match angle might prove just as important as the result. Don Callis slid into the ring with members of his Family and offered Perry both a spot in the group and a bonus carved out of the Young Bucks’ money. Perry responded with his fists, but the numbers were too much—until Luchasaurus appeared, hesitated, and bought enough time for the Bucks to blindside the Callis Family with chairs. Matt and Nick Jackson hit the BTE Trigger on Okada, reclaimed their bag of cash, and left Callis fuming and plotting his next move.
That collision course became clearer later in the show when Don Callis challenged the Bucks and a partner of their choosing to a million-dollar trios match, and the Jacksons ultimately turned to Kenny Omega. Omega accepted—not for the money, but purely for the chance to fight the Callis Family—reuniting one of AEW’s foundational alliances with seven figures and a grudge on the line.
Swerve & Hangman’s uneasy alliance tears through The Opps
If the women’s tag final was about unity, the tornado tag was about weaponized distrust. “Hangman” Adam Page and Swerve Strickland—two men whose rivalry has defined AEW storytelling over the past year—walked through the crowd armed with a chain and a staple gun, looking less like partners and more like separate storms heading toward the same target in Katsuyori Shibata and Powerhouse Hobbs.
Before the bell even rang, Page and Swerve annihilated members of the Opps Dojo in the concourse, brawled through the building, and set the tone for a match that felt like a street fight masquerading as a tornado tag. Hangman put Hobbs through a table and chugged a beer, Shibata picked apart Page with his signature precision, and Swerve’s aerial explosiveness repeatedly bailed his reluctant ally out of trouble.
The match’s defining image came when Page and Swerve, standing chest-to-chest after a flurry of double-team offense, wordlessly decided to channel their hatred into violence against a common enemy—double powerbombing Hobbs off the apron and through a table on the floor before turning their full attention to Shibata. Inside the ropes, a Buckshot Lariat from Hangman into a House Call from Swerve finished the former ROH World Champion and secured the win.
The cameras then caught Josh Alexander watching from backstage, a thin streak of blood trickling down his head—a small but deliberate visual that suggested the Walking Weapon isn’t done with The Opps, nor with AEW’s escalating inter-promotional conflicts.
From there, business picked up across the tag division. Don Callis issued his million-dollar trios challenge to the Young Bucks, while Stokely Hathaway announced that FTR will defend the AEW World Tag Team Titles against the Bang Bang Gang on next week’s Dynamite from Manchester, setting up a busy winter slate for AEW’s championship picture.
Speedball’s breakthrough and a reshaped Gold League
The second Continental Classic Gold League match of the night delivered the kind of frantic, high-impact showcase that makes tournaments feel special. Kyle Fletcher entered with six points to his name, while “Speedball” Mike Bailey was still searching for his first. The story, from the opening lockup, was whether Bailey could survive Fletcher’s size and aggression long enough to bring his full kick-heavy arsenal to bear.
They traded control in dizzying sequences: wrecking-ball ranas, missile dropkicks, moonsault double knees on the apron, and brutal slams—none more vicious than Fletcher hurling Speedball spine-first into the barricade, drawing a collective wince from the crowd. Bailey answered with Time Adventure and Ultima Weapon, only for Fletcher to repeatedly kick out or roll clear, turning the match into a test of heart as much as execution.
As Justin Roberts announced one minute remaining, Fletcher looked poised to grind out another result, but Bailey dug deep, countered a series of attempts, and rolled him up with a cross-armed sunset flip to finally get on the board. The win doesn’t erase Fletcher’s strong start to the tournament, but it injects new life into Bailey’s campaign and compresses the Gold League standings heading into the final stretch.
Joe vs. Kingston: a world title battle steeped in history and heartbreak
For Eddie Kingston, the main event wasn’t just another world title shot—it fell on the 50th anniversary of Terry Funk’s NWA World Championship win, a fact Kingston acknowledged backstage as he admitted he was struggling to stay composed, now 0–2 in AEW World title matches going into the night. Samoa Joe, flanked by The Opps earlier in the show, dismissed the emotion and framed himself as the only true “him” in this feud, promising to bulldoze Kingston on his way to World’s End.
Hook tried to tip the scales early and was promptly ejected by referee Paul Turner, leaving Kingston and Joe alone to settle their conflict. The champion dominated the opening stretches, battering Kingston with heavy strikes and methodical submission work. At one point Joe locked in an STF and saluted the hard camera—a subtle but unmistakable nod to John Cena, tying the world title match into the broader tapestry of wrestling history that has defined this week across both AEW and WWE.
Kingston, as he always does, refused to die quietly. He blasted Joe off his feet, chained together DDTs and lariats, and wound up for the spinning backfist that has ended countless big matches. But Joe had it scouted, ducking the shot and immediately snapping in the Coquina Clutch. With the hold cinched deep and the crowd roaring, Kingston had no choice but to tap, falling to 0–3 in AEW World title opportunities while Joe’s reign marched on, undefeated and increasingly merciless.
After the match, AEW leaned into what’s coming next. “Hangman” Adam Page, interviewed earlier in the night, had already vowed that whoever walked out of Winter Is Coming as champion would have him waiting at World’s End, making Joe’s victory feel less like a finish line and more like the latest checkpoint in a dangerous gauntlet.
Collision Winter Is Coming, title pictures, and women’s division chaos set the stage for 2026
Winter Is Coming also served as a launchpad for AEW’s upcoming schedule. TNT Champion Mark Briscoe and Daniel Garcia escalated their issues in a tense in-ring face-off, with Garcia promising to break Briscoe’s leg this Saturday at Collision: Winter Is Coming in Cardiff before being held back by Wheeler Yuta and Marina Shafir.
In the women’s singles landscape, the Triangle of Madness continued their path of destruction by attacking extras backstage until Kris Statlander—AEW Women’s World Champion—stormed in with a chair, sending Julia Hart and Skye Blue scrambling and signaling that Statlander isn’t going to let the chaos go unchecked heading into 2026.
Layer those threads with FTR vs. the Bang Bang Gang for the World Tag Team Titles next week, the million-dollar trios showdown pitting The Elite against Don Callis’ Family, the freshly minted Women’s World Tag Team Champions searching for their first challengers, and a Continental Classic table that now features Okada still rolling while Speedball finally surges—and AEW leaves Winter Is Coming with more answers, more questions, and a lot of momentum.
On a night defined by snow-covered graphics and icy branding, it was the warmth of coronations and the sting of heartbreak that truly stood out. Winter may be coming, but AEW’s road to World’s End just got a lot hotter.
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