Big Vinny V: Will Ospreay’s Dynamite promo shows how AEW has wasted 2026

Will Ospreay’s promo hyping up All In on the go-home episode of Dynamite was, on its own, excellent. At the same time, however, it showed how AEW has mismanaged the main event of its biggest show of the year.

Ospreay came out before a packed crowd in the OVO Hydro Arena in Glasgow, Scotland, and cut a tremendous babyface promo. He talked about how he started wrestling in the United Kingdom and had to work construction jobs to make ends meet. He discussed his time with the legends of British wrestling, some of whom have departed. He moved on to Kenny Omega, his opponent at All In on Sunday, and said he was the best wrestler of the decade. However, Omega had crossed a line when he mentioned Will’s son, and Ospreay promised every member of his family that he would “bring it home.” This was the version of Will Ospreay we should have seen all year. 

Now let’s look at what Ospreay did NOT say. There was no mention of the neck surgery that had put him on the shelf for six months. He never talked about returning from injury to challenge Jon Moxley, only to lose to Moxley at Dynasty in April, and then lose again to Mark Davis 10 days later on a ref stoppage. There was nothing about overcoming the defeats and the injuries to win the Owen Hart Tournament in June. 

And he certainly didn’t talk about how he joined the Death Riders, the same men who had (in storyline) injured his neck in the first place. No speech about how they had made him better, no discussion of the “death ground” submission hold he was briefly using as a finisher, no admission that he had been wrong about the Death Riders and Omega had been right all along. 

This wasn’t by accident. As Ospreay entered the ring on Dynamite, Tony Schiavone assured us he was in the best shape of his life. “Forget about any injury, any neck injury,” were Schiavone’s exact words. “Forget about his time with the Death Riders.” Apparently, Will did. 

Ospreay returned to AEW in March, which means the promotion has had half a year to build to the All In main event. But when it came time for the big emotional speech to sell the show for the last time, Ospreay focused on his early days in wrestling, a decade and a half ago. The only bullet point he had from 2026 was one line from an Omega promo last week. And when he mentioned Omega’s name, the fans in the United Kingdom, Ospreay’s home country, cheered.

Which brings up another problem: AEW’s complete and utter failure to establish Omega as a heel. He had been a straight babyface until Redemption last month. That’s the show where he beat Kevin Knight in the main event, only to be laid out by Moxley and the Death Riders. Ospreay then turned on the Death Riders, only to immediately be laid out by Omega. 

Things were tense between champion and challenger after that, until last week’s Dynamite, when Omega played cool heel for all 12 minutes of a sitdown promo with Ospreay, then wrestled like a pure babyface in the main event, only to firmly turn heel by putting Ospreay through a table … thirty-plus minutes into the overrun and long after most viewers had turned off the show. 

The video package that closed Dynamite addressed some of these issues, with several shots of the plastic bag incident that occurred at Redemption. But even then, the focus was on matches between the two in prior years, in PWG, New Japan, and AEW. It’s almost as if they had never crossed paths since that cage match at Forbidden Door last year that led to the Death Riders’ attack on Ospreay. 

Maybe none of this matters. AEW has reportedly sold over 40,000 tickets for All In already, and the match itself should be one of the best of the year. But Will Ospreay challenging Kenny Omega for the AEW World Championship at Wembley Stadium should FEEL like one of the biggest matches of all time. And I can’t say that it does.