Big Vinny V: What’s next for AEW’s Maya World and the TBS Championship?

Maya World successfully defended her TBS Championship in a four-way match on AEW Dynamite last night. Congratulations! Now what?

The short-term answer to that question is simple enough: later in the show, AEW Women’s Champion Willow Nightingale challenged World to a match this Saturday on Collision. 

In that same segment, however, Nightingale proceeded to threaten Mercedes Mone, her opponent at All In, which makes the Collision match a bit of a foregone conclusion. Perhaps something crazy will happen and World will be added to the Nightingale-Mone match, but even then it’s difficult to imagine her winning.

Which means World will likely be leaving All In without any obvious challengers for her title. How did we get here?

A look at the win-loss records in AEW’s Women’s Division this year reveals some interesting facts. Five women—Megan Bayne, Lena Kross, Jamie Hayter, Alex Windsor, and Nightingale—stand out from the crowd, with a combined record of 85 wins, 20 losses, and two draws. (All win-loss records listed in this piece were found at WrestlingData.com.) The AEW Women’s Tag Team Championship match between Divine Dominion and the Brawling Birds at All In should feel like a bigger deal than it does, but that’s a subject for another day. 

After those five, you have Thekla (14-5) and Toni Storm (8-2), two former champions who have been off TV for a while now. Then you get Mone, who has gone 6-1 in limited action this year. 

You’ll note that we haven’t yet discussed World, nor any of her frequent opponents or partners lately. By winning that four-way, World has finally shut the door on the three women she has been battling for most of the year, but that’s not saying much: Kris Statlander, Hikaru Shida, and Persephone have combined to go 28-22 in AEW this year. 

World herself, for the record, has lost more than she has won in 2026, going 7-10. Even accounting for her TBS Championship, she has spent most of the year defeating and losing to the same group of women, leaving them all hovering in the middle of the card. 

Who can challenge Maya World for the TBS Championship?

Let’s assume that the top women’s programs going into All In—Nightingale vs. Mone and Dominion vs. Birds—will still be going on after that show ends, and that Storm remains out of action. Are there any new challengers on the horizon who could inject some life into World’s championship reign? Thekla would be the most obvious answer, though you run the risk there of the challenger overshadowing the champion. Thunder Rosa and Athena are two other wrestlers who both win and lose frequently (combined record: 10-7), but at least they have championships outside of AEW to add to their credibility. Would Harley Cameron (6-7) return to set up a babyface program? Would Marina Shafir (5-9) step out of the Death Riders’ background to become more of a featured player?

None of these answers are particularly exciting, and certainly not more exciting than what World is currently doing. With so much of their roster trading wins and losses, they have booked themselves into a corner. At this point, their best option would be to let World carry the title for several months while they build another challenger for a big match down the road. It could be a dull journey for a while, but at least there would be a payoff down the road.