Tony Khan didn’t just decide to dedicate AEW Dynamite to PAC and leave the rest of the show alone. According to Dave Meltzer, Khan scrapped the normal version of the September 30, 2026 episode by removing pay-per-view angles, dropping Collision promotion and replacing most of the material AEW had already planned with tribute matches, testimonials and segments built around Benjamin Satterley.
Speaking on Wrestling Observer Radio, Meltzer explained that the rewrite happened because so many wrestlers wanted to be part of the PAC tribute. Bryan Danielson pushed to wrestle, Kenny Omega came back to compete and Mercedes Moné was also among those who wanted to contribute.
“So, like I’ve never seen. And then, you know, the Bryan Danielson insisting on wrestling, Kenny Omega coming back to wrestle. You know what I mean? It’s just like, you know, I mean, just a, you know, Mercedes as well. But everyone, you know, everyone wanted to. So it was, it was something, it was, it was something the.”
That influx of tribute material meant Khan had to make a call about everything AEW had originally planned for Dynamite. Meltzer said Khan chose to remove the company’s usual promotional business instead of trying to cram it into a show that was supposed to be about PAC.
“But yeah, that and all those testimonials and the stuff that again, cut out the fact that Tony, you know, in doing this tribute show, you know, and he, he put it together. So he deserves a lot of credit to the. Everyone, everyone involved deserves credit. But he made the call to do no promotion, no angles for the pay per view, no promotion of the pay per view, no promotion for Collision on Saturday.”
That meant no major PPV storyline advancement, no angles designed to sell the next pay-per-view and almost no effort to set up Collision. Meltzer said AEW stripped the Saturday promotion down so far that he couldn’t even remember a Collision match being advertised.
“You know, other than I don’t think even mentioned a match for Saturday.”
The biggest part of Meltzer’s explanation came next. He said the version of Dynamite that aired was, for the most part, not the version AEW had originally planned at all.
“And, and a lot of what, you know, you know, pretty much everything that was on the show was not planned to be on the show that was all redone.”
So the process was basically this: AEW had its normal Dynamite booked, PAC died, wrestlers wanted to participate in a tribute, Khan removed the planned promotional angles and then rebuilt the television show around those tributes. The original material wasn’t necessarily thrown in the trash either. Meltzer believes a lot of it was simply pushed to the next available shows, specifically Collision and AEW’s event in France.
“So I believe what he had planned for the show is stuff that will be on Collision Saturday and then in France on Tuesday.”
That is where the decision gets messy for AEW creatively. Moving one night’s worth of material sounds simple until the calendar gets involved, and AEW was already working with only three weeks between pay-per-views. Meltzer said that once Khan sacrificed one of those weeks for the PAC tribute, the company had no choice but to speed everything else up.
“And they have to essentially speed everything up because it’s, you know, the other part is it’s a three week between pay per view cycles. You know, usually they’ve never had, other than All In on to All Out. They’ve had, they had quick turnarounds for that.”
Garrett Gonzales pointed out that AEW had once dealt with the even crazier one-week turnaround between All In and All Out. Meltzer agreed, but said losing one week out of a three-week build still creates a serious squeeze.
“Turnaround the one time. Right, right. Which they didn’t do again. But, you know, three week is still very short by standards and they took one of the weeks away by, by doing this.”
That means AEW now has to take whatever was supposed to happen on Dynamite and squeeze it into Collision, France and the remaining television before the next pay-per-view. Matches, angles and storyline progression that had their own night now have to fight for space on shows that already had plans of their own.
The September 30 episode was dedicated to PAC following his death at 40 years old. Satterley had wrestled Andrade at AEW All Out on September 26, 2026 less than 24 hours before his death and later appeared during the Jon Moxley vs. Will Ospreay main event.
So when Meltzer says Khan scrapped the plans, he isn’t talking about changing one match or moving one segment. AEW effectively took its normal Dynamite blueprint, stripped out the PPV build and Collision promotion, replaced the night with PAC tribute material, then pushed the abandoned creative into the next two shows and left itself with a compressed schedule to sort out afterward. That is the real cost of the decision. Khan gave PAC the entire night, but AEW now has to clean up the creative traffic jam that came with it.
What do you think of Tony Khan scrapping AEW’s original Dynamite plans and pushing the abandoned material into later shows so PAC could get the entire night? Let us know your thoughts and feedback in the comments.
This transcript was produced exclusively for Ringside News from the original recording. Republishing the transcription in full is prohibited. When using excerpts, provide prominent credit and a link to this article.
