Tony Khan was primarily responsible for putting together Wednesday’s special edition of AEW Dynamite in honor of PAC.
The entire show was dedicated to Benjamin “PAC” Satterley, who died at 40 on September 27, just a day after wrestling at AEW All Out. The wrestlers who appeared on that episode of Dynamite did so voluntarily.
According to Dave Meltzer on the latest edition of Wrestling Observer Radio, Khan personally put the special together and decided to cut anything booked with WrestleDream in mind, along with any promotion for Saturday’s AEW Collision.
Meltzer said, “Tony put it together. So he deserves a lot of credit. Everyone involved deserves credit. But Tony made the call to do no promotion, no angles for the pay-per-view, and no promotion for Collision on Saturday.”
Almost nothing that aired on Dynamite was part of the original plan, Meltzer added. The show was reworked after several wrestlers, including Bryan Danielson, Kenny Omega, and Mercedes Moné, expressed interest in being involved in the tribute.
Much of what was originally planned for the show is expected to shift to tonight’s Collision and to Grand Slam France, which takes place in Paris on Tuesday, October 6.
That leaves AEW with little time to ramp up its top storylines. WrestleDream is set for October 17, only three weeks after All Out on September 26.
Even with no promotion for the pay-per-view, the PAC tribute show drew 899,000 viewers on TBS and delivered Dynamite’s largest audience in the 18 to 49 demographic since April 2024.