The Opps lost the AEW Trios Championship against Hangman Adam Page, Speedball Mike Bailey, and Kevin Knight on AEW Collision last night. Not only that, but All Elite Wrestling would lose Powerhouse Hobbs as his contract expired on Wednesday night.
Hobbs is expected to join World Wrestling Entertainment. AEW President Tony Khan had been trying to get him to re-sign for months now but couldn’t get him to agree to a deal as per reports.
This would be the second time AEW tried to use the Trios Championship as a bargaining chip. The first time was Penta and Fenix were basically promised to win the Trios Championship with PAC at All In London if they stayed with the company. Here, Hobbs was kept as Trios Champion right to the very last day. I’m sure if he re-signed they wouldn’t have had them lose there.
Before I get into it about Hobbs, I think this is a pretty good indication that Tony Khan really doesn’t care about building a respectable Trios division, and wrestlers really don’t care about the belt as a reward. He had months, literally months, knowing Hobbs could potentially be done. Does he build up a team to beat The Opps? Does he make it a big program? Nope. It’s a last minute addition to AEW Collision in mid January.
I’ve heard all of the excuses. Oh, this is the wrap up of Hangman’s program with The Opps. So why isn’t he doing this with Swerve Strickland? Where’s Eddie Kingston? What does JetSpeed have to do with it? AEW brought up how they teamed with Page before. Yeah, in AUGUST OF 2025. JetSpeed just this month tag teamed with someone else in a trios match, that being Anthony Bowens. That happened just last week!
The booking of this is a complete mess, and it shows me that AEW doesn’t really care about establishing a strong Trios division. The Trios division should be a selling point of either Dynamite or Collision. A way to see a certain style of wrestling (PWG Party or Lucha) every week with guaranteed big time action. Why you wouldn’t go with Jack Perry and the Young Bucks who are having PWG party matches already every week I just don’t see the logic on.
Instead it’s a “here shut up” championship. Hobbs needs a title? Here shut up. JetSpeed can’t win tag titles? Here shut up.
Sorry. I would write an entire article on the booking of the Trios Championship but I guess I’ll wait and see how long it takes for them to have Hangman doing stuff with Swerve and not defending the Trios Championship with JetSpeed before I go further there.
An AEW Original
Back when Powerhouse Hobbs won the TNT Championship I talked about his start in AEW. Fans of AEW are always pushing for something that feels like theirs. Wrestlers they watched built up in AEW and AEW only. There’s a lot of wrestlers from WWE, from TNA, from NJPW, even a guy like Maxwell Jacob Friedman people will point to his beginning in MLW. There’s guys who were well known in Ring of Honor or PWG or Lucha Underground and that’s why we have some pre-built affection towards them.
Powerhouse Hobbs was different. He wasn’t a pure AEW product like say Hook (who was trained in AEW and wrestles essentially only in AEW) but he is someone who didn’t build his name anywhere before All Elite Wrestling. No well known indies like EVOLVE like Darby Allin did. Hobbs came in from the very bottom. He worked AEW Dark during the pandemic doing jobs and made such an impression he was signed to a contract.
Hobbs had to stand out among a roster full of guys who already had pre-established connections with fans. He had to create everything from scratch. When he joined Team Taz he was the only guy in the crew who was a fresh slate. Hook was Taz’s son. Brian Cage came from PWG, TNA, and Lucha Underground. Ricky Starks came from NWA. Powerhouse Hobbs? He was completely built up in AEW and existed on his own name. The fans loved him not because he was in AEW? But because he was made in AEW.
Hobbs climbed the ranks, first working in the tag team division with Ricky Starks before going alone and winning the TNT Championship in 2023. He switched crews multiple times, first with Team Taz, then with QTV (one of the best decisions CM Punk made with his run booking Collision was asking why the hell Hobbs was with QT Marshall), very temporarily with Don Callis Family, before finally being with The Opps where he won his second championship in AEW in the aforementioned Trios Championship in 2025.
Building a Powerhouse
Hobbs dropped the TNT Championship he won from Wardlow back to him after just 42 days. Hobbs was still a member of QTV and found himself on Collision where he was in the Owen Hart Foundation Men’s Tournament. He would lose in the semi final to Ricky Starks. Hobbs then spent a month… working dark matches? I’ll take that credit I gave prior to CM Punk away from him.
Hobbs then won squashes on Collision before having the BEEF match against Miro at All Out 2023, a match which felt like just a throwaway midcard feud but the two men ended up turning into more by getting the crowd so into it they chanted BEEF at the two men. It was clear Hobbs had a connection with the crowd. Miro won the match.
Hobbs spent the rest of September once again working Collision dark matches before having one of his best performances of his career in crushing Chris Jericho. I brought it up in my Jericho article that it was one of my favourite performances by both men in the company. Jericho really went out of his way to make that squash feel like it meant something. Hobbs had joined the Don Callis Family and was starting to feel like a major heel threat.
2024 kicked off with Hobbs beating Sammy Guevara in one of my favourite matches from that year. A match that gets forgotten because people hate Sammy Guevara unfortunately and his great performances will get shuffled aside. But he was great in that bout and so was Hobbs.
I highlight this and the Jericho match because early on, a part of the issue with Powerhouse Hobbs moving up was he wasn’t the kind of dynamic wrestler that AEW usually expects for their top guys. And yet here was Hobbs starting to have very good matches as a heavyweight wrestler. He provided something the company didn’t really have from anyone other than Brian Cage and maybe Brody King. He was big, imposing, intimidating, but could also work.
Hobbs lost a number one contender scramble match, won by Wardlow (who I didn’t name earlier because as much as I like Wardlow? He isn’t a dynamic wrestler) and would later lose to Will Ospreay randomly on Dynamite. Hobbs then would get a match for the IWGP World Heavyweight Championship against Jon Moxley and sadly got injured in the match. Whatever plans AEW had for him? Hobbs would be out for most of 2024.
The Last Chapter
Hobbs made his return as a babyface, fighting the Don Callis Family and blaming them for leaving him to rot. He would be unsuccessful in getting the AEW International Championship from Konosuke Takeshita, in a match I feel Hobbs had showed he could hang with the likes of Takeshita. Hobbs would later get his rematch against Moxley at Maximum Carnage, facing him this time for the AEW Men’s World Championship. Hobbs would lose by referee’s decision.
Hobbs would start a small feud with Big Bill that I was very much enjoying, but it was also becoming clear he was getting lost in the shuffle again. They were sort of trying him out in The Conglomeration, but instead he would slip into The Opps after Hook was injured and couldn’t work the match against the Death Riders. Hobbs took his place and made the group much stronger than if it had been Hook winning that title.
Now teamed with Samoa Joe and Katsuyori Shibata, it was a good spot for Powerhouse Hobbs and did feel like they had some purpose with him. He was now a Trios Champion so hopefully we’d get some big defences from them. At Double or Nothing, The Opps didn’t defend the Trios Championship and instead worked Anarchy in the Arena. Despite winning the Trios Championship in April of 2025, their first defence would not come until July at All In Texas against the Death Riders.
The Opps did have a strong August for matches and defences but then wouldn’t defend the Trios Championship again until October. I feel like AEW would have known at this point of Hobbs intentions not to stay with the company.
Despite working Forbidden Door in August? Hobbs did not have a pay per view match at All Out Toronto.
He did not have a pay per view match at WrestleDream.
He did not have a pay per view match at Full Gear.
And he did not have a pay per view match at World’s End. The Trios Championship took a backseat to Samoa Joe becoming AEW Men’s World Champion.
Once again turning heel, it was pretty clear that there was no upward trajectory for him at this point. One of his own faction members was World Champion, and would soon be losing it to another heel in MJF. There were multiple singles titles to go after but none of them would feel like Hobbs moving up, and many of them were also held by heels. He had the Trios Championship, but clearly the company didn’t care about the title. So where is he to go?
I wonder how everyone felt about his last major match in the company, the falls count anywhere non title match against Hangman Adam Page sandwiched between the Blood and Guts matches. Hobbs and Page had a phenomenal match, the kind of singles match that showed Hobbs could have moved up if the company gave him the space. But it also might have been the biggest signal to Hobbs that this was probably the highest he was going to go.
I don’t know where else to say it, but I’m also sad I’ll never get the Wardlow and Powerhouse Hobbs tag team that was such a slam dunk idea for the two that they even once posed for a photo together. If you want to talk AEW dropping the ball? That’s the one unequivocal ball drop when it comes to the careers of Hobbs and Wardlow. They could have been the perfect power heavyweight tag team of AEW.
Home Grown Products
As you can probably tell I’m pretty down on the loss of Powerhouse Hobbs.
Hobbs was proclaimed last year as one of my prime seven. The seven AEW men’s wrestlers between the ages of 30 and 34 the company should build around going forward. Hobbs, Will Ospreay, Jay White, Darby Allin, Hangman Page, Swerve Strickland, and Anthony Bowens. The only one of those names I look back on and think I might have been off on was Bowens.
I’m not going to say AEW didn’t try with him. They absolutely did. They let him build from being a nobody working Dark to a guy on the roster to an undercard guy to a midcard guy to someone pushing the upper midcard. He had championship runs, he got title shots, and he got television time. They made mistakes with his booking at times, put him with the wrong people, but they also put him with the right people early on and later. Team Taz and The Opps were the right spots for him.
The biggest criticisms of his run in AEW I’ll give is that there were periods of time they didn’t know what to do with him. He was wasted in 2023 after his TNT run doing dark matches. After coming back from injury in 2025, they could have had a better plan for him after losing to Moxley than just being a big guy you could throw in multi matches.
There is a common criticism that AEW doesn’t know how to really book the big guys like Hobbs, as they have struggled multiple times with guys like Wardlow and Hobbs. It’s probably fair. But both guys also share in the fact they were made in AEW. It wasn’t like Samoa Joe where he’s an ROH legend with years of experience as a top guy in multiple companies. It has also been tough for Brody King to be anything more than a tag team or trios guy, and it’ll be interesting to see if he doesn’t go through the same thing Hobbs did in 2025 now as the support for Bandido instead of his tag champion partner. Who knows what push Keith Lee would have had if healthy.
The cynic in me wants to say that Powerhouse Hobbs got as far as he was ever going to get without having a background somewhere else that Tony Khan could have loved. Had he been a PWG guy or was in NXT, would he have had the same run? But I also wonder, even if there’s things they could have done, this and that, maybe this is just a healthy six year run for a pro wrestler in one company and it’s time to go.
In the Rough
I like pointing out that back on July 28, 2020, I called Powerhouse Hobbs a diamond in the rough. It was after watching Shawn Dean and Will Hobbs lose to The Dark Order on AEW Dark. Hobbs had three matches prior on Dark at that point.
Will Hobbs is a diamond in the rough. I just see future world champion every time I see what he can do in the ring.
— Aaron – GrapPro.com (@AaronWrotkowski) July 29, 2020
I wasn’t wrong.
Hobbs is 35, so he’s at that age where he needs to start getting main event work if he wants to become a main event player and make main event headliner money. I see why he left but I don’t have to like it. I’ll never like it when someone goes to WWE since I know they’ll never be properly handled there. He isn’t a former WWE guy returning. He’s a pure AEW guy. We’ve seen how they treat people they didn’t make themselves. That’s why when it comes to all the new guys they’ve brought in the past few years, the best pushed non Cody Rhodes wrestler? It’s Jacob Fatu, who was in MLW. That means nothing to WWE, so they can think he’s a product of them. Hobbs won’t have that luxury.
Maybe I’ll end up wrong that he could have been a future AEW world champion. But I don’t think my instincts were wrong when I saw he had all of the raw tools needed to get to that level.
Hobbs did everything expected of him. He became a better pro wrestler. He got in better shape. His promos got better. His presence got better. He got naturally over as a babyface and a heel. He had a pretty established career in All Elite Wrestling. He did everything it took. And yet it still wasn’t enough.
And that sucks, but one should also realize that this isn’t a business where things are just given to you. It’s not about hitting a bunch of check boxes. It’s more than anything timing and luck. Swerve Strickland was able to come in and blaze right past the likes of Hobbs and Wardlow and so many other guys who everyone thought would one day be world champion. AEW is still a young company, and it only makes sense that now in the seventh year that the recent title reigns have not been firsts but a repeat reign. MJF is on his second reign. Samoa Joe was on his second. Hangman Adam Page was on his second. Jon Moxley was on his fourth.
The four champions prior to Moxley? It was all their firsts. Bryan Danielson, Swerve Strickland, Samoa Joe, and MJF. Almost two years of new champions. Maybe it could have been Hobbs instead of Swerve. Maybe it could have been Hobbs instead of Samoa Joe. Maybe.
The Book of Hobbs Isn’t Closed
For many this will be looked upon as AEW blowing a chance to go all the way with a guy like Powerhouse Hobbs. It emboldens criticisms of AEW’s handling of guys Tony Khan wasn’t a fan of before he started AEW, and AEW’s handling of big power wrestlers. I don’t think it’s unfair to say, but it’s at least arguable. Not so much the people who try to say Khan chose to sign The Rascalz over Hobbs. It wasn’t like that at all. He wanted to re-sign Hobbs. Hobbs didn’t want to stay.
While I’m very disappointed, and really wish Hobbs stayed? I understand his decision to leave. I probably would have done the same in his boots. At 35, you have to look at your options. You already had a serious injury last year. You don’t know how long you have until your body starts turning on you. I’m sure he’s looked at Brian Cage’s constant injuries and wonders if that will be him next. If this is as far as AEW is going to put you, with no plans to go further, and instead saddled with a Trios Championship they couldn’t bother to give to an established trios team when you dropped it?
The only way you can ever increase your value to AEW or anyone else is to depart.
However long this next contract is? At the end of it? It might make sense to return to All Elite Wrestling. Maybe he has his health and hasn’t hit 40 yet. Now he returns with the one thing he didn’t have before. The only thing he was missing was a background: Someone that Tony Khan had watched and enjoyed before. If he leaves AEW and comes back later? He now fills that last thing needed on that checklist. The only thing he couldn’t obtain in AEW.
And if he doesn’t return? I think he can look at his run in AEW proudly, and AEW fans can look at his run and say he had a good one. A very good one. It’s not often wrestlers go from enhancement talent doing jobs to guys much smaller than them to being a television champion and trios champion. He may not have gone all the way, but so far? Nobody else in AEW history can say they had his story. Every single wrestler who now comes to AEW to work enhancement or dark matches will know that as much of a lottery ticket it may be? It’s not impossible to go from nobody to somebody in All Elite Wrestling.
Farewell Hobbs. Hope to see you back in professional wrestling down the road.
