Report: Changes Made To AEW Dynamite For Jay Briscoe Tribute Match

The January 25 edition of AEW Dynamite featured an emotional main event, as Mark Briscoe battled Jay Lethal in tribute to the recently departed Jay Briscoe.

The match was Mark’s AEW TV debut, after Tony Khan successfully lobbied for Briscoe to appear after a long-standing ban of the 13-time ROH World Tag Team Champions from appearing on Warner Bros. Discovery programming. A subsequent report from Fightful Select stated that Briscoe’s appearance was very last minute, and until Tuesday, January 24 it didn’t appear as though the match would take place, with AEW moving several planned segments around to make the match a reality.

The report also states that ROH lead announcer Ian Riccaboni was booked Tuesday and didn’t fly into Dynamite until hours before the show. Originally the TNT Championship match between Darby Allin and Buddy Mathews was set to main event, but was shifted and had time shaved off of it to accommodate Briscoe vs. Lethal. It’s also believed that the Acclaimed/Gunns video segment was shortened.

Sources in AEW told Fightful that it was impressive how AEW managed to give Briscoe and Lethal so much time without compromising what was already advertised for the show, and that some in AEW are ‘very happy’ with how the show panned out.