The road to Montreal is looking like a pothole-filled nightmare
AEW is barreling toward Redemption in Montreal next week, but the guest list feels more like a casualty ward than a wrestling mega-card. We have major names sitting on the sidelines, forcing Tony Khan to shuffle the deck while the clock ticks toward July 26. It is the kind of chaotic energy that makes you wonder if someone broke a mirror inside the writer's room.
We already know seven marquee AEW stars will miss the event. Losing that level of star power isn't just a minor programming adjustment; it is a full-blown crisis. When you are paying for premium tickets in a city that usually brings the noise, getting a watered-down roster is a tough pill to swallow.
Boston gave us a snapshot of the current state
If you caught the Collision results from Boston this past Saturday, you saw the contrast. Will Ospreay putting away Adam Brooks was a solid display of high-flying mechanics. Ospreay is the glue holding things together right now, consistently working a level that makes everyone else look stagnant. But for every Ospreay masterclass, there is a lingering emptiness regarding who is actually going to be on the marquee in Montreal.
The reliance on the same rotating cast while others are conspicuously absent is getting stale. You can only lean on your top-tier workers for so long before the engine starts to overheat. Ospreay is great, but he cannot carry the entire narrative load by himself, especially with the shadow of All In looming in London.
Looking past the short-term chaos
The conversation is already shifting toward Wembley. It’s hard not to think about the optics when you remember that Jon Moxley lost his World Title to Hangman Adam Page at last year's event in a brutal Texas Deathmatch. Everyone wants an encore of that kind of grit, but the current booking approach seems to be allergic to building long-term momentum.
The creative team has a habit of throwing darts at a board and hoping for the best. When seven big names disappear right before a pay-per-view, the booking feels reactive rather than planned. It creates a disjointed product that leaves the audience guessing for the wrong reasons. We want to be surprised by a title change, not by a press release saying someone is off the card two days before the show.
My biggest gripe? The lack of clear stakes for the people who *are* showing up. If you are going to prune the roster, at least elevate the undercard guys who actually get their hands dirty. Instead, we are left wondering if the Montreal show will be remembered for the matches or just for who didn't fly into town. It is 2026, and frankly, the level of organizational inconsistency is getting old for a company with this much talent.
If the plan is to wing it until the big London pay-off, they might be in for a rougher ride than expected. AEW needs a win in Montreal, but with the current injury list and the strange reshuffling of talent, they are fighting an uphill battle against their own bad luck. The 8 announced matches are just window dressing if the headliners aren't there to deliver the goods.
