Opening Dynamite with a boardroom meeting was a massive miscalculation

A Pacing Disaster in Portland

Tony Khan made a choice on Wednesday night. It was the wrong one. You do not open the final television broadcast before a major pay-per-view with a backstage video package. AEW rolled into Portland, Maine for the 346th episode of Dynamite. The crowd inside the Cross Insurance Arena was primed. They bought tickets to see a fight. Instead, they got Chris Jericho and the Young Bucks standing in a hallway, comparing notes and strategising.

This is a fundamental failure of wrestling television mechanics. The go-home show for Double or Nothing demands urgency. Sunday is approaching fast. The match is set for May 24. The audience needs to feel the tension bleeding through the screen. Opening with a pre-taped segment featuring three executives plotting their next move is the exact opposite of urgency. It is administrative. It is cold.

Wrestling operates on momentum. The first five minutes of a broadcast dictate the energy for the next two hours. When you open with high-calibre in-ring action, the crowd stays hot. When you open with Jericho monologuing while Matthew and Nicholas Jackson nod in agreement, you actively tell the arena audience to sit on their hands. You could watch the energy drain from the building. Portland is a gritty, working-class market. They do not want corporate synergy. They want a brawl.

The Jericho Vacuum

We need to talk about Chris Jericho's current deployment. His ability to reinvent himself is well documented. But his current iteration is a drag on the broader roster. He operates like a black hole for television time. Every time a new talent starts generating heat, Jericho attaches himself to the narrative. It works out nicely for him. It stunts the growth of everyone else in the ring.

Placing him alongside the Young Bucks at this specific moment feels entirely defensive. Jericho knows how to survive. By aligning with the EVPs, he guarantees his segment gets top billing. He ensures his face is the first one seen on the HBO Max simulcast. But what does it actually achieve for the product? Nothing. It slows the show down to a crawl. His promos have lost their snap. He relies on slow delivery, demanding the audience hang on his every word. The problem is that the words simply are not compelling anymore.

This strategising segment lasted entirely too long. Every second spent watching them formulate a plan backstage was a second stolen from an undercard talent who desperately needed the television time. AEW has the deepest roster in the world. Sticking three men who have been on top for five years in the opening slot of the final show before a pay-per-view is a lazy booking crutch. It shows a lack of faith in the younger generation to carry the opening quarter-hour.

The Streaming Metric Reality

The broadcast distribution model changes the math on segments like this. AEW is now pushing this product across TBS, HBO Max domestically, TSN in Canada, and MyAEW internationally. Streaming audiences are notoriously fickle. They do not have the embedded loyalty of a traditional cable viewer. If you do not hook an HBO Max viewer in the first three minutes, they will click over to a movie or a different series.

A cold open featuring a high-stakes singles match hooks that viewer. The visual of two athletes tearing into each other translates across every demographic and language barrier. A backstage segment featuring three middle-aged men in expensive jackets talking about tactics does not translate. It requires context. It demands patience. The modern streaming viewer does not have patience.

By leading with the Jericho and Bucks summit, AEW practically invited the casual viewer to tune out. It was a self-inflicted wound on their most important metric. You have to program for the platform you are on. Tony Khan is still programming Dynamite like it is a 1998 episode of Monday Night Raw. The viewing habits of 2026 simply do not support that structure.

Tactical Implications for Sunday

Look past the poor television production and consider what this alliance actually means for Sunday. The Young Bucks are meticulous. They do not align with Jericho unless there is a specific mechanical advantage to be gained in the ring. This tells us exactly how their upcoming match at Double or Nothing will be structured.

Expect severe overbooking. The strategising we saw in Portland is the narrative justification for outside interference. When the EVPs and the inaugural champion get together, they do not plan to win clean. They plan to cheat. We are going to see ref bumps. We are going to see weapons pulled from under the ring. We are going to see a match that runs twenty-five minutes but features only ten minutes of actual wrestling.

This is the antithesis of the original AEW philosophy. The promotion was built on the promise of athletic, sports-based presentation. What we are getting on Sunday is a sports entertainment melodrama. Jericho will dictate a painfully slow pace. He will spend early minutes stalling on the outside. He will use the Bucks as physical shields to avoid taking bumps. It is a highly effective heel strategy, but it produces dreadful pacing.

The Defensive Architecture

Watch the geometry of that backstage segment again. Jericho stood dead centre. The camera framed him as the focal point. Matthew and Nicholas stood slightly behind him, flanking his shoulders. They created a physical wall. This is deliberate. It visually communicates that getting to Jericho requires going through the EVPs.

This defensive architecture is incredibly hard for babyfaces to penetrate. To beat this faction, an opponent needs overwhelming crowd support and usually a numerical advantage of their own. But because the group holds so much backstage political capital, opponents often end up looking foolish. The heels outsmart them at every turn. The strategy session was just a preview of the trap being set for Sunday.

The opponents walking into this match at Double or Nothing are walking into a meat grinder. The Bucks will handle the high spots. Jericho will handle the rest holds and the illegal chokes behind the referee's back. It is a formula they have perfected over decades. But perfecting a formula does not make it entertaining to watch.

A Predictable Pattern

We have seen this movie before. The go-home show features the heels looking dominant and plotting a scheme. The pay-per-view features the babyfaces fighting valiantly, only to be undone by the exact scheme the heels plotted on Wednesday. It is booking by numbers.

Portland deserved better. The crowd in the Northeast is educated. They read the dirt sheets. They understand the mechanics of the business. You cannot feed them a pre-taped vignette and expect them to react with anything other than apathy. The silence in the arena during the broadcast was deafening. It was not the silence of rapt attention. It was the silence of a crowd waiting for something, anything, to happen.

If AEW wants to maintain its edge, it needs to stop relying on the crutch of the veteran strategy session. Put the talent in the ring. Let them tell the story through action. Double or Nothing will undoubtedly draw a massive gate. The pay-per-view buys will likely be strong. But the creative foundation heading into Sunday is shaky.

Final Thoughts

The Bucks and Jericho got exactly what they wanted on Wednesday. They secured the opening segment. They dictated the narrative. They framed themselves as the masterminds of the promotion. But they sacrificed the momentum of the entire broadcast to do it.

When the bell rings on Sunday, all the backstage scheming will not hide the miles on Jericho's tires. The Bucks will bump like crazy to cover for him, but the cracks are showing. A strategy session might look smart on paper, but it cannot mask a slow step in the ring. We will see exactly how much gas is left in the tank at Double or Nothing. Based on Wednesday's performance, expectations should be kept firmly in check.