Real Reason For Major AEW Production Change Last Week (AEW News)

Dave Meltzer explained why AEW intentionally ran with scant little commercial time during approximately the first 50 minutes of so of last week's Dynamite during Wrestling Observer Radio. According to the Observer boss, this was a deliberate ploy from Tony Khan due to the hype surrounding All In at Wembley Stadium in London, England the prior weekend.

Khan wanted to put a big ol' spotlight on Will Ospreay's first in-ring promo as the brand new AEW World Champion, so he organised less ads for the opening hour and put them all on the backend of the show "in the overrun"; Meltzer added: "The overrun would have hurt more than usual, because they had saved commercial time for that overrun period to give them less commercial time in the first hour".

According to Dave, Tony reckoned "there'd be a lot of curiosity coming off [All In]". Khan fancied presenting Ospreay as a massive star who commanded attention, and he didn't want to break his flow by repeatedly jumping to ads like usual. Meltzer says this paid off: "It wasn't commercial free, but [having] limited commercial time in the first hour in particular [to] get a big first hour, which they got".

This probably isn't something that AEW or Tony will be able to swing every single week, but Dave believes it was worthwhile strategy following Will's title win in London. It also gave Ospreay plenty of time to talk about Kenny Omega before setting up a tag-team main event for the episode.

Ospreay is scheduled to wrestle Jon Moxley for his new prize at All Out in Chicago on 26 September.