The following is opinion-based and reflects the views of the author and not our website.
No wrestling company in the world has a higher ceiling than All Elite Wrestling. On any given night with the right combination of intent and a bit of restraint, it’s the most exciting place this wonderfully silly medium has to offer.
The matches hit harder, the risks feel real, and for a few hours, everything clicks into something special. Even their average output is fathoms above what the monolith of the industry embarrassingly tosses out on Mondays and Fridays, and that’s been the case for a while.
But sometimes it’s a self-inflicted struggle to reach such great heights. For every moment of clarity, there’s another that feels strangely undercooked: stories that drift, characters that stall, ideas that arrive half-formed and linger longer than they should. The ingredients are almost always there. The discipline is not. I have exhaustively covered every major AEW show except one – something I am beyond grateful for and never take for granted – and I am still pleading with them not to add multiple matches within hours of bell time. I do have a family.
Dynasty is a reflection of all this: a card full of wrestlers operating near the peak of what they are capable of, just enough uncertainty to warrant a head tilt, and too many matches added the week of the show. Kyle Fletcher’s injury clearly threw a wrench into everything planned, so I magnanimously offer grace during this trying time.
Let’s run through the card as announced through Friday night.
AEW Dynasty 2026 preview & predictions
Chris Jericho vs. Ricochet
Jericho is back and he is once again doing…something. Whether that something is good remains an open question. Absence, in his case, has not necessarily made the heart fonder, but it has made my digital pen more willing. Everyone needed a break from the persistence of Jericho. The man would roll into a show, and his ten minutes would feel like humidity in the middle of July: heavy, pulpy, and begging for relief.
Working down the card with someone fun and willing is the proper use of Jericho at this point. Steering clear of the people whose best moments are still ahead of them is wise. What I worry about is Jericho looking across the locker room and spotting Mike Bailey or Kevin Knight, someone with enough motion to set off a neighborhood’s worth of Ring cameras, and licking his chops. And please, for the love of god, keep him far away from Fletcher.
Ricochet will not be broken by his time across the ring from Jericho. His progress won’t stall. For now, this is fine.
Prediction: Jericho
Casino Royale battle royal for the vacant TNT title
Best wishes to Fletcher, who hopefully makes it back for All In this summer. He had long outgrown the TNT Championship, but having him reliably carry the midcard made an enormous difference in weekly television. His absence creates a void, but it’s also a significant opportunity to do something exciting.
Someone like Rush or the earlier-mentioned Bailey and Knight would be inspired choices to carry the gold. All three can be counted on to deliver weekly, and in entirely different ways. These matches are always impossible to predict with any real confidence, but Tony Khan, I beseech you: take this as a chance for genuine growth, not a moment to rest on your laurels and reach for the old reliables. The person who steps into this vacuum has a chance to matter.
Prediction: Someone inspired (please)
Kazuchika Okada & Konosuke Takeshita vs. The Young Bucks
The “can they coexist” trope is one of my least favorites in all of pro wrestling. It’s right up there with a random tag team calling themselves “best friends.” At least this question answers itself immediately (they cannot!) and we’re spared the indignity of being asked it seriously.
The more honest conversation this match opens up is about Takeshita, who has been adrift in AEW for long enough now that it’s hard to ignore. He floats in and out of the Okada rivalry, something that should have been definitively resolved months ago, and engages and disengages without direction, without urgency, and increasingly without consequence. The moves are still big, the bombs still land. But it feels hollow.
Elite execution is being asked to compensate for a story and a character that’s lost all urgency. Consistent, clear, and most importantly, expedited direction would do wonders. Booked with the conviction AEW showed with Fletcher, Takeshita could heat back up and step directly into the space his stablemate left behind.
Prediction: Okada & Takeshita
Darby Allin vs. Andrade El Ídolo
Allin occupies a specific and invaluable position in professional wrestling: a perverse, almost irresponsible, bumper who gives everyone their very best match. Good stories and solid creative always help, but nothing helps a career more than working with Darby. He should win the big one once before his body inevitably makes the decision for him (and make no mistake, it will eventually make that decision) but not now, and not like this.
His value isn’t in wearing gold and everything that comes with it; it’s in what he extracts from whoever stands across from him. There are still so many AEW wrestlers who would be significantly buoyed by a program with him.
Right now, that person is El Idolo, whose ceiling remains stratospheric even without Darby’s help. The clarity and sharpness he’s carrying into every match right now suggest a man screaming toward an astonishingly high peak. Every match and every moment on screen has the texture of someone who finally knows exactly what he is. Don’t slow that down. Don’t complicate it. Point him upward and get out of the way before he decides he’s done enough and, again, starts to coast on his natural gifts.
The neon flashing sign points to a clear destination: Darby vs. MJF at Double or Nothing. Fine on paper, but not where I’d steer the ship. I’m spoiling myself here, but I think Kenny Omega is winning this main event. I don’t have much stomach for the inevitable procession of wheezy MJF promos about Darby’s fragility, his possible imminent death, and whatever other standard-issue material gets excavated from the vault, but somehow, I’ll endure.
Prediction: Darby
AEW World Tag Team Champions FTR defend against Adam Copeland & Christian Cage
If this is the ceremonial last run at the top for two genuine legends of the business, then sure, fine, whatever. AEW has always had a complicated relationship with its legend types, and Copeland is the most complicated of all. His career is a collection of great moments more than great, sustained work. It’s highlights assembled into a reel, admittedly a long one, which gets mistaken for a collective body of work. AEW asked its audience to receive him as a top-tier attraction, but some of us did the math on our own.
It takes about two minutes of honest thought to understand why Cope’s retirement tour feels so fundamentally at odds with Sting’s. Part of it is personal preference; Sting was a resonator. I can point to discrete moments where he made me feel genuinely alive as a wrestling fan. With Copeland, I can point to cool moments: mostly highspots, but calorically empty.
The second part is less subjective: Sting belongs in a rare and specific pantheon of performers by any reasonable objective measure. Copeland does not and not by a small margin. Always better as part of something rather than singular, Cope’s legacy will surely endure, though it won’t be what he sees in his head when he closes his eyes at night.
The funniest part is that when it’s all over, FTR will likely be remembered more fondly and have done more for tag team wrestling than their opponents. But we all know where this is going. Whether Dynasty takes us there is the question.
Prediction: Copeland and Christian win the titles
AEW Continental Champion Jon Moxley defends against Will Ospreay
Ospreay came back from a surgery serious enough to make people quietly question his future. The big return has already happened and his direction is clear. This is a simple revenge story with all its emotional infrastructure already in place; it just needs the right villain standing across the ring.
That villain needs to be Moxley, unambiguously and completely, not the tweener the audience has been cheering for the past few months, and certainly not the antihero. We need the version of Mox who tried to kill someone with a plastic bag, a real piece of garbage without qualification. The tweener run served its purpose and reminded everyone why they loved him in the first place, but this program only reaches top gear if Moxley is genuinely dangerous and Ospreay is a serious, aggressive hero with a neck to protect and a score to settle.
When the bell rings, Ospreay needs to initiate the action. He needs to wrestle with purpose and belief. If there is a superhero counter sequence at any point during this match, the groan I’ll let out will get me evicted.
The ballsy booking decision, one that would show genuine conviction, would be to structurally run back Moxley’s match with CM Punk with Ospreay coming out on top. What will likely happen instead is Moxley mercilessly working the neck until Ospreay comes roaring back like nothing happened (derogatory), before a hold-your-breath finishing stretch (mostly derogatory, slightly complimentary).
Ospreay shouldn’t win this. It’s too early, and taking a title isn’t the point. He needs to beat Moxley in something more violent, more permanent, down the line.
Prediction: Moxley retains
AEW Women’s World Champion Thekla defends against Jamie Hayter
Hayter is still finding her way back. Her injury cost her more than time, halting her momentum at the precise moment she seemed ready to cement herself as a permanent fixture at the top of the card. She’s just now beginning to be what she once was, and her partnership with Windsor is a big part of that. It gave her a credible partner to play off, a vehicle for consistency, and, most importantly, a reason to show up every week with something specific to do.
Knowing that you’ll be on the show and performing every week goes a long way toward staying sharp and staying engaged. You can see her finding herself again inside that dynamic. Behold the power of friendship.
Thekla arrives here with all the momentum Hayter once had. She has been a transformative force the moment she arrived in AEW, and nothing about her current trajectory suggests that will change. Right now, she’s the best thing going in AEW’s women’s division. I understand if her brand of promo and mic work isn’t for everyone, but in a world where so many people do so many things the same, something different – and something remarkable – speaks to me. I remain, unequivocally, a fan of the spider.
This is a match that could significantly overdeliver if these two really lay into each other, but there will be no title change.
Prediction: Thekla
AEW World Champion MJF defends against Kenny Omega
If there is any justice left in professional wrestling, let Omega have one last run before he can’t anymore. He has earned it in ways that are somehow both difficult to fully articulate and impossible to overstate; a modern legend whose fingerprints, for better and for worse, are all over the current state of pro wrestling. Every match now carries the particular weight of potentially being one of the last true Kenny Omega matches — something I write in every column and will continue until I can’t.
Here is one possibility worth sitting with: MJF drops the title to Omega here, giving Omega the last reign he deserves heading into AEW’s biggest date on the calendar. The road to Wembley becomes a drive toward Ospreay vs. Omega, a rematch the wrestling world has been circling for two years, finally given the venue and stakes it warrants. Two maximalists, in London, in front of eighty thousand people, for the AEW World Championship.
That makes a whole lot of sense and will sell a whole lot of seats. And wouldn’t it be nice to see MJF struggle with having a short title reign and the fallout that comes with it? Joys abound for us all.
Omega was a catalyst; someone instrumental in building something from nothing. He proved that another kind of wrestling company wasn’t just possible, but that it could achieve tremendous success. It should be Omega until the wheels fall off.
Prediction: Kenny Omega
