Hm, going back and checking the dnf log, I believe the old kernels disappearing was due to chrooting in a few times before, in my efforts to try to force it to

Hm, going back and checking the dnf log, I believe the old kernels disappearing was due to chrooting in a few times before, in my efforts to try to force it to install the older kernel. perhaps it cleaned the package cache or otherwise uninstalled/ran autoremove.