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If you enjoyed the last few weeks of AEW Dynamite, including tonight's episode, the shows taped in Georgia were all written by AEW President Tony Khan. The word making the rounds is that Khan, realizing that he was going to have a very small crew due to shut-in rulings around the country, sat down and wrote the last four weeks of TV on the fly at once by himself in a matter of minutes, built around the TNT Championship tournament and the local talents that were available. It was very much a "trial by fire" moment where Khan and his crew had to quickly pivot and come up with something that could work to further company storylines and utilize their reduced resources in terms of crew and talent. Obviously, if you watched Dynamite the last few weeks, you can see that the plan paid off, as the shows have been extremely strong every week, especially given the fact that they were using about 1/3rd of their contracted talent. The tapings had been built around the idea of presenting them similar in nature to old territorial TV (but with AEW's spin on things) as Khan was a huge fan of Memphis and Continental, among other similar promotions.
We are told that Cody was very instrumental in helping put things together as Khan's right hand and has been very hands on with not only his own programs but with helping others. Chris Jericho has also gotten a ton of praise for all his work on commentary (which he did off the top of his head with less than 24 hours' notice that he'd be needed in the role) and with putting together the vignettes for the Inner Circle.
Orange Cassidy and The Best Friends have also gotten a lot of praise internally for their work as they wrestled four times over 24 hours for those tapings and pretty much everyone who was involved, including the enhancement talent, was said to have put in a ton of work to make everything click. It was described to me as a big bonding experience for the talents who were in Georgia. Many of the enhancement talents were brought in by QT Marshall.
AEW will return to live programming next week with the return of a number of performers, including AEW Champion Jon Moxley, who will face Kazarian. Last week, during my interview with Moxley, I asked him to compare pitching ideas between Tony Khan and Vince McMahon and how they react. Moxley commented, " He's really good dude, man. I think he's a friend to a most everybody in the roster. Real easy and approachable, and not in a bad way. A lot of people probably at first wanted to be like, oh, he wants to hang out with the wrestlers. He's just going to be one of those too friendly with the boys type guys. But he's not that at all. I mean, right now he's worked in analytics for the NFL draft and doing all this other business stuff. I mean, he's a really smart guy. He grew up in that family where they have this empire. So he's got a lot of business sense. He's business savvy, but also just an incredibly passionate wrestling fan. He's so easy to get excited, if I go up like, "Dude, I got this idea. What if we did this?" And he'd be like, "Dude, that's awesome. What if we did this then? And then we can do that." And he'll get all excited like a little kid. And I'll be like, "Hold on, tone it down. Tone it down." Which is cool. You want that. Whereas sometimes, I come in and talk to Vince and I'm all excited. I'm like, "Dude, okay, here we go. We're going to do this, this, this. Then this. Then we do this on Raw. And then on pay-per-view this. What do you think?" And it's like talking to a door. Dude, hello, I'm giving you awesome. They're like, nope. We're just going to do the same old crap we always do. I'm like, whatever. But yeah, it's a real good experience where I am. [Khan]'s an honest dude. He's not a carny, and even though he's business savvy, he's not like a shark. He's just an honest, straightforward, good dude."
Matt Hardy will also return next week. There are lots of plans to utilize the Broken Universe in the days ahead. Hardy will team with Kenny Omega vs. Sammy Guevara and Chris Jericho.
Cody vs. Joey Janela is also scheduled for next week's Dynamite.
The 5/23 Double or Nothing PPV will most likely be on a closed set from Jacksonville, Florida. Internally, the hope is to make things up to the Las Vegas fans with the 2021 edition of the PPV.
AEW not being on the road has been an understandable frustration, since they were looking at the biggest crowd (and gate) in the history of the company for the now-postponed Newark, NJ Dynamite taping, but the feeling is that it's out of their hands given the state of the world at the moment.
Since we have gotten emails about this, it should be noted that a number of Dynamite episodes are available for streaming for free at Bleacher Report Live.
Anna Jay, the company's newest signing, had only worked seven matches when she appeared on AEW TV earlier this month.
If you missed this week's "Bubbly Bunch" vignette, it's worth watching as there are lots of fun guest star cameos:
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