One of the main criticisms coming out of this week’s AEW Dynamite was that it was not a loaded show.
Given that CM Punk was making his Dynamite debut, it would have made sense to have a loaded card but there were outside circumstances that forced the company to make some changes.
As noted earlier, there was a planned match that did not occur because two people in the match tested positive for COVID-19. The match had not been officially announced yet. Meltzer said that the people in the match were fully vaccinated and were not showing any symptoms.
Meltzer also reported that another change was 2point0 was set for an angle on the show but they were pulled because Matt Lee’s wife gave birth early, a few days before they were about to get time off.
Also, as previously noted, former WWE Superstar Gangrel was set to appear on the show but his appearance was canceled after WWE revived the “Brood bath” with Edge on SmackDown a few days prior. Gangrel says that he had been working on his appearance for months. AEW still went ahead and paid Gangrel.
Meltzer said that Tony Khan had plans to showcase some of the biggest names on the show because they were expecting a bigger viewership number but he knew that they could not deliver four+ star matches because of some of the changes made to the show.
