Jon Moxley has a problem; after winning the AEW World Championship for the third time since January of 2020 at Grand Slam, the top dog in the Blackpool Combat Club is running out of opponents.

Sure, there's always MJF, who already has a match booked for Full Gear in Newark, New Jersey, in November, but until then, what is Mox to do with his time? Could he take a vacation? He's been trying to for about two months now, but between the absence of The Elite/CM Punk due to their brawl after All Out and the absence of other stars due to the potent combination of injuries, illnesses, and other suspensions – AEW is in a weird place right now – Moxley suddenly finds himself one of AEW's most in-demand performers for live shows but is running low on opponents.

So naturally, after watching his match with “Hangman” Adam Page end in a victory by referee's decision, Mox requested a camera crew to lay out a challenge to the rest of the roster.

“I should be celebrating,” Moxley began. “I should be at home in the winner’s circle eating an ice cream cone, after all, I just knocked out the number one contender with a shot that would put a hole in a ’57 Chevy, but I’m not happy, I’m not satisfied. I came here to Jacksonville with the sole purpose of walking into the Khans’ office and saying ‘I want to pick up on Dynamite next week right where I left off.’ And then, you only live once, and I’ve wasted a lot of time in life, I don’t want to waste any more. I feel good, I feel healthy, and if there’s anybody left in AEW that I haven’t beaten, I plan on finding ‘em. And that man has got to have zero, zero fear when he steps in th-”

Before Moxley could finish his thought, who would emerge from the back but Pena el Zero Miedo, who, alongside his translater and friend, Alex Abrahantes, decided to step up to the bat for a championship special.

“You say la palabra miedo? Fear?,” Penta began. “You know something? A lunico luchador in AEW contains cero miedo?”

After cutting a firey promo in Spanish, Abrahantes swooped in to provide a translation and give a little extra color to the conversation.

“Penta says he heard the word fear and the only wrestler in AEW who has no fear is Penta,” Abrahantes declared. “Now he knows that you are a great champion but you’ve never faced a man like Penta. So what do you say next week on Dynamite, you go face to face with him for the AEW World Championship?”

“And do you know what?” Penta added. “You are looking at the next AEW Champion.”

Welp, there you go; one-third of the AEW World Trios Champions will take on Moxley for AEW's top honor. A fun, yet predictable match, right? Probably, but maybe not, as Penta is riding high off of a massive match in Lucha Libre AAA that could shake things up in an interesting way.

Penta returns to AEW with momentum after a huge TripleMania win.

Though American fans may most know Penta as a tag team wrestler in AEW for his runs with the Lucha Bros. and Death Triangle, in Mexico, the performer known as Pentagon Jr. is one of the best in-ring performers around, with multiple singles title runs to his credit. At the most recent running of TripleMania, that star power was on full display, as, in the co-main event of a show that also featured Rey Fenix versus El Hijo de Vikingo for the AAA Mega Champion, Penta bested Vilano IV in a Mask vs. Mask match – a match he won.

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Jon Moxley holding the IWGP World Heavyweight Championship belt with a text bubble reading "How far are you willing to go?" with the AEW Dynamite logo as the background.

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Mick Foley with a text bubble reading “Why do I want one more match?” in a wrestling ring.

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Seth Rollins with a text bubble reading “It's kind of sad” next to The Rock with the WWE logo as the background.

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Though this sort of contest is nothing new, as Lucha Libre has been flush with similar matches this year, Penta turned in a particularly impressive performance that culminated in an iconic picture that you can read about below via a write-up by Dave Meltzer of The Wrestling Observer.

There was a lot to the third TripleMania that wasn’t good. But the last two matches, the mask match and the title match where El Hijo del Vikingo beat Rey Fenix to keep the AAA Mega heavyweight title, delivered and then some. The title match was exactly what it should have been, making Vikingo by outshining the greatest flyer in the world at his own game. As Villano IV has done the entire tournament, he comes to the ring, walking like an old man, with his ring costume not being able to hide an out of shape looking body and then the bell rings and the fans can see he gives it his all and many live and some watching on streaming believed this was a better match than the title match. It definitely came across as a more special match.

It was not the “clean” wrestling match with the big moves and high-level wrestling that Atlantis Jr. and Stuka Jr. tried and pretty much succeeded as doing, or what Atlantis and Villano III did 22 years ago. At the beginning, Villano IV used a cookie sheet and a garbage can. Villano IV bled from a number of places, but Pentagon Jr. bled first. There were table breaks. There was a spot where the two just stopped, shook hands with each other, and then started throwing rapid-fire stiff punches to the head of each other in an attempted Frye- Takayama fashion which led to a double knockout.

Then Pentagon had Villano IV in the torture rack, the Atlantida, the same move Atlantis used to beat Villano III. Villano IV tapped, but referee Marty Elias missed it. The idea behind this was that deep down everyone knew Villano IV was losing, and probably knew from the day the tournament was announced. The idea was that him tapping but getting the match restarted was to make people think that he must be winning. Then Villano IV got Pentagon in a submission and he tapped, but Elias missed that as well. Finally, at the 25:41 mark, Pentagon got the pin after two armbreaker spots.

****½

Will this match alone be enough to convince TK to make Penta a double champion? Eh, probably not, but it could provide a good bit more intrigue into the contest, with the potential of a fluky finish presenting new, interesting singles matches for Mox and Penta.