AEW Dynasty is in the books and as we head into Wednesday’s Dynamite, the first show to build toward Double or Nothing 2026 kicks off a six week stretch toward the end of May. Dynasty featured a number of returns, mostly title retentions and a sprinkling of new champions crowned.
There are certainly some questions we need to ask on the cusp of that six week run up to Double or Nothing. The chief one in my head centres around the AEW championship and who will be challenging for the championship — or what the composition of the match is going to look like — at one of AEW’s flagship shows. And while most championships were retained, the two new champions are somewhat overshadowed by injuries to the former champions. What those developments mean in the coming weeks can only be guessed at with Kyle Fletcher and former trios champion Gabe Kidd out of action.
Meanwhile you have FTR, Cope ‘n Cage and the Young Bucks seemingly hurtling toward some sort of housewares-focused triple threat for the tag team titles, with Kamille, Chris Jericho, Kyle O’Reilly returning with mixed fanfare and results. The show was packed with developments to build from, but here are five key takeaways from AEW’s 2026 edition of Dynasty as we head into Dynamite tonight.
The AEW World Championship
Starting with my biggest question heading into Wednesday’s Dynamite, never mind Double or Nothing, is what they’re exactly booking for MJF. The champion’s defeat of Kenny Omega for the second time shouldn’t have come as a surprise. In my opinion MJF is the most important wrestler in AEW right now. Others have their place and are important too, but MJF’s second reign has more potential in the coming months to continue and cultivate good-to-great TV for AEW. He is a key, central figure in the company who checks off all the boxes. He’s a great wrestler whose mic skills equal that skillset, and he’s doing the work for media and appearing in other smaller promotions to make himself, the championship and the company as visible as possible. The long game perspective is that this is all a net positive.
Three things have been accomplished since his return in late 2025. Leaving the simple function of becoming champion again aside, since December he has fully exorcised his loss to Samoa Joe, removed his biggest threat in terms of visibility with Hangman Page unable to challenge again, and has just turned away the man who holds the second longest AEW title reign in Kenny Omega. Darby Allin and MJF will be wrestling on Wednesday’s Dynamite for the championship. That could change as soon as the show starts and MJF is like, “na, I’m not doing that,” or some other type of shenanigans go down. Conversely, it can occur and lead to either result, which begs the question of what that means going forward.
If Allin wins, I think you need to build toward a rematch at Double or Nothing. While I don’t agree with switching the title on a seemingly random Dynamite, where I think we were all expecting this match up for Double or Nothing itself, the goal of having them wrestle at DoN is still accomplished with Allin as a short term champion. The question is what happens then? I would assume MJF takes it back, but who knows. A short Allin reign feels on brand for sure, but is that the best move? Unless there’s a larger plan for DoN, such as Andrade challenging MJF in May, I would imagine MJF retains tonight. I’d also have to wonder if they’re hotshotting the Allin title match now and he loses, what sort of greater timeline is MJF’s run on?
Omega and MJF put on a good show in my opinion. Some might be sour on it, but it’s hardly a Mox-Omega deathmatch ending. I think at a minimum they’ve earned the moment to cook over the next six weeks. And if it’s trash, then it’s trash. I think they could go either way tonight, and whether it’s tonight or at Double or Nothing, I’d suspect the Callis family gets involved and Andrade makes the save to set up MJF vs. Andrade given the ending of the Allin-Andrade match at Dynasty.
Curse of the Bullet Club — the injury bug bites again
If it’s not Omega fighting for his life, it’s Juice Robinson’s back, whatever’s going on with the Gunns, Gabe Kidd’s shoulder, and of course Jay White’s injuries to his hand and shoulder that have kept him out for a year. It feels like no one formerly associated with the NJPW faction can stay on TV long enough to gain any momentum. It’s at the point where I’m thinking AEW needs to just link up David Finlay and Clark Conners with the active members of the Bang Bang Gang to maintain some semblance of consistency on AEW television. Even if there’s baggage, let’s be honest how many people remember who recruited who and who hit who with a shillelagh on their last night in NJPW?
I think Finlay and White are going to cross paths at some point in AEW, but in the meantime, I don’t think having two separate ex-Bullet Club factions active with limited lineups, when you’re not even using the branding, makes very much sense. For the time being it’s not the worst idea unless White is ready in the very near future. Until then, an alliance makes sense because Kidd’s injury is bad timing, and the optics of a 24-hour trios title reign for the War Dogs doesn’t look great. At a minimum it gives the members some direction, and that’s not a bad thing.
The AEW Tag Championships
I wasn’t joking up top. AEW Housewares Match is surely coming, right?
For the entire time FTR and the Young Bucks have been signed together in AEW, one of the two teams has been orbiting the tag team championships. Typically when the two of them come together it’s for a good reason, and in this case it feels like a setup for some sort of gimmick triple threat between themselves, Adam Copeland and Christian Cage. I’m not sure what the consensus is on what a match like this is in 2026, especially if we’re being honest about Copeland’s recent injury history.
All of that considered though, we’re in a moment though where the tag division needs something on the marquee, and it doesn’t feel like another team is ready to step up into the spotlight and occupy the same real estate the three teams do. What I’m unsure of is how we get there. With FTR defeating the Bucks and Cope-Cage on consecutive PPVs I’m not sure how you can make an argument for a triple threat when both of FTR’s wins were relatively clean. I suppose you could do a number one contenders match between the Bucks and C+C that ends without a clear winner, but I think that’s indicative of the division’s current state.
A showdown between the three teams has felt like an inevitability for quite a while, with it really just feeling like only a matter of Copeland returning. I’m not sure that’s the best position for the division where that match — which I frankly think ends with Copeland and Cage as champions — becomes the culmination of this sweeping story spanning decades of history for all teams. If that happens, where does the division go with Copeland and Cage on top? That’s the reality that’s potentially on the horizon, and I don’t think it can be understated how telling FTR’s relatively clean wins over both are.
Kevin Knight crowned TNT champion
The new TNT champion has truly broken out since arriving in AEW. Even though this is due to the injury to Kyle Fletcher, choosing Knight to pick up the ball and letting him run with it shows AEW is trying to capitalize on his on-screen momentum and build him up with his TNT title run — however long it lasts — to test the waters for his future
Knight is going to get the chance to demonstrate what an AEW show looks like with him as a central piece of the program. As unfortunate as Fletcher’s injury is, the silver lining is them getting a look at Knight on TV while bearing more responsibility, never mind doing so while holding a championship with as much history behind it as the the TNT championship does. However long his reign lasts, kicking the tires on him now is smart, and I think having him be one of the only title changes on Dynasty helped increased his visibility. The ending itself was executed well, and it’s not like it was drowned out by other title changes, such as C+C winning, Omega taking the AEW title, or Thekla dropping the women’s world title. His win gets to stand out, and that puts him in a good spot for Wednesday’s Dynamite and beyond.
Thekla and the AEW women’s championship
As I’ve said before, I’ve been following Thekla since her earliest days in Stardom and how well she’s taken to North American wrestling and specifically AEW is not too surprising to me. She was standout alongside Maika behind Giulia in her stable and one I just enjoyed watching. That was especially the case when she returned after a layoff and slid into her current character. With that persona — dialed up slightly more than her Stardom days — Thekla has accomplished the same thing Toni Storm has, albeit walking a slightly different path to get there.
This goes for all the championships in AEW, but I think a fair criticism of the AEW women’s championship specifically is that the champions haven’t always been that interesting. You could say the same thing about a lot of the TNT champions too. However I think the spotlight is always going to expose holes in the world championship titleholders more than anyone else. With AEW it’s expected to focus more on the in-ring dynamics, but tangibly we still need strong characters or personalities to keep us held in place. Wrestling has never just been about the in-ring work. I think it’s important to tell those stories through the physicality, but the personalities are what hook you and keep you.
With AEW’s women’s division I think the world title has not always had someone at the top who can draw people into this corner of the wrestling space. You could start from the beginning and run off names like Riho, Nyla Rose, Shida, Britt Baker or Thunder Rosa (who I really like), but you’d have to ask yourself if they’re comparable to what Toni Storm did, what people Kris Statlander evolved into, how Jamie Hayter carried it, and presently what Thekla is becoming during her 60+ day reign and counting. Even think back to the most memorable storyline and we’re still discussing Toni Storm and Mariah May/Blake Monroe in the conversation for great title runs with a great story when narrative and physicality matched each other. That’s what Thekla is bringing to the table right now, albeit obviously without a long term story of that scale.
Right now, if Toni Storm was the larger than life protagonist of AEW, Thekla is becoming the over-the-top super villain of AEW and I think having a solid character backed by someone who’s also pretty good in the ring is a good thing for the women’s division. Similar to the men’s division and MJF, it gives the division a lightning rod and situates them as someone who needs to be taken down. However they’re also someone who skates by and wins one way or the other like she has against Statlander and now Hayter after Dynasty.
With Storm out for whatever reason she’s sidelined, the pickings are slim for someone to come take her out, but I’d assume the obvious choice down the road is Mercedes Mone since she’s now beltless. Like it or not, Mone and the world title are going to walk hand in hand at some point soon. But for now I’m enjoying Thekla’s reign and I think she’s been good for the division before her title win, and especially now two months in as we head into the spring run of major shows.
