AEW Saturday Collision

[JLM]

Collision round up. Spoilered to try and keep this post even slightly manageable in length. I do appreciate reviewing the older shows might be screaming into the void a little, but I'm in the habit of putting some thoughts down after I watch the shows now. Also helps to break them up when I have a backlog and let them sit a little bit, so they don't all blur together. My hope is also that I can refer back to my own posts at the end of the year to remember what was good and actually nominate some stuff for the awards this time, rather than going "ohhh yeah that was good wasn't it?" reading everyone else's picks. 

Collision steadily got better as April went on. As @LaGoosh says it is in such a good place as the B Show right now. Good mix of snappy promos, reminders and smaller developments for the main ongoing stories and a consistently strong set of matches. 

Collision 06/04/24 

Spoiler

I am extremely cold on Top Flight these days, but felt confident their match with FTR would be a good one. It was indeed good. Not amazing, but definitely good. Favourite bit was Cash (not legal) pushing Dax out of the way of a flying cross body to take it himself, then rolling out. Interfering to take the hit because he wasn't the one who could be pinned. It's always the little touches with FTR. The finish was also delightful, catching Dante in mid air with the shatter machine. I'm enjoying the FTR I have left because it might all be over after Cash's court appearance. What a catastrophically stupid thing to do. If he was waving a gun at people due to road rage he deserves what he gets, but I will sorely miss FTR.

Continuing to love everything Pac does at the moment. Sounded great again here calling out Okada. What a match up that is. 

Lionhook... sigh. Best bit was Hook hitting a massive t-bone suplex on Shane Taylor. I had forgotten Ogogo was still employed despite seeing him live at All In last summer. I like adding him to Shane Taylor Promotions. A stable should have at least three members. I'm all for more Shibata on screen, but maaan imagine if just Hook on his own got jumped by Shane Taylor Promotions and Shibata stepped in, and we could have Hook/Shibata was the super team up for a bit instead. Hook defending his FTW title against an array of monsters in hardcore brawls, Hook and Shibata vs the world, the list of better things Hook should be doing instead will continue to grow. 

Sensational promo video from Dustin Rhodes challenging Joe. Fantastic stuff. Love that he acknowledged that Joe is under no obligation to give him the shot before going on to make his case so beautifully. Joe's response was perfect, naturally. 

The Osprey/Danielson interviews with Renee were a good change of pace. They've done the big promos already. In both cases I liked that they kept it very respectful but both snuck in a little snipe, Danielson being salty about AEW's TV director saying Osprey's the best wrestler in the world, Osprey throwing in that he conquered Japan which Danielson has never done. The match sells itself but they've done a a simple and effective job building it, giving both of them plenty of air time to explain their motivations going in.

HOB vs Daniels/Sydal/Keith and everything after it was very standard stuff. It was fine. Claudio vs Butcher was also fine. 

Roddy was amusing answering Rocky Romero's challenge. I like the contrast from OC's reign, going from everyone gets a shot back to eliminator matches. 
Similar to The Kingdom promo on ROH this week, they are hinting that Wardlow thinks everyone in this group is a dickhead. He'll work it out in his own time but it's nice to see signs of life from him.  

Happy to see Yuka Sakazaki back. I read she is either moving or has moved to the US permanently this year. She is the pluckiest of competitors. Would love to see Emi Sakura come back soon too. Sakazaki is a perfect opponent for Serena Deeb, like that match up a lot.

Short and sweet hype promo from Garcia and Daddy Magic. Love these guys, I want a belt on Garcia before the year is out. 

Delightful main event from Penta and Komander. Happy to see Penta in featured matches on the main shows, but a shame it was obvious he was beating Komander here so he can obviously lose to Copeland on Dynamite. I bloody love Penta and am forever wishing they'd do more with him.

A decent Collision. 

 

Collision 14/04/24

Spoiler

Good opening promo from BCC. Thought "it's easier to beat us than hurt us" was a great line. 

HOB vs Top Flight-ish was fun. HOB are at their best in these sprinty trios scrambles.

Toni Storm promo was great again, liking the Mina Shirakwa spanner in the works angle. Her match with AZM was tremendous. I'd only seen AZM doing the bonkers high speed matches against similarly small and speedy opponents, but she was great here as the much smaller underdog. 

Taz enters the Jericho vortex. I'll miss him. 

Good match between Moriarty and Shibata. Again, I consider every Shibata appearance to be a treat.  Ogogo on commentary was comfortably better than Mercedes Mone. He was obnoxious in a heelish way, he hit all of his talking points and you were very aware of his presence.

Athena, Lexy and Billie Starkz promo on Collision! This made me very happy. Athena's "I'll show the world what they'v been missing" was the realest line of this episode. 

Garcia vs Angelico was a match. I'd have liked Garcia to beat him more convincingly, or for him to be facing someone more notable. Don't forget about Daniel Garcia! 

Fantastic promo from Pac. Outstanding delivery and brilliant content. Also he said "Yer CRAP!" to Okada. 

Red Velvet promo on Collision! What a time to be alive. Very high energy promo not saying very much. It was OK. She accused Athena of stirring up the pot and that it was a mistake to come into her house. Too many cooks etc. 

Briscoe promo was excellent as usual. 

Thunder Rosa promo was all over the place. She has a similar probem to Claudio, where she can lose her train of thought and you see her scrmabling to pull the sentence back on course. Also similar to Claudio, she'll hit a crescendo or land on a line that feels very much like the end of the promo, then continue talking for like thirty more seconds. There was a good 45 second promo buried omewhere inside these few minutes. By contrast, Deonna Purazzo was short and sweet and had, quite literally, a snappy ending with "I'm gonna break your arm". 

Main event was a blast. Everyone on top form clearly determined to but on a belter. Claudio and Hobbs is a wonderful pairing, the closing stretch was tremenodous and the post match brainbuster on the ramp from Takeshita looked devastating. 

Really enjoyable episode that. As others have said, this is the sweet spot for Collision as the B show. Keeps the main storylines ticking over without doing anything too earth shattering, then a good mix of vignettes/back stage promos/live promos and very high quality matches. I also got a big kick out of seeing Athena and Starkz on an AEW main show, even if only for a minute. 
 

Battle of the Belts 14/04/24 

Spoiler

Hook vs Shane Taylor was excellent. Shane Taylor is a perfect opponent for Hook. He really gets how to be a heel big man. Talking shit, taking his time wearing the opponent down, great looking offense. Hook excels against large opponents and it's always spectacular hen he starts throwing them around. SO of course he's feuding with Chris Jericho. 

Romero/Roddy was a fine match. Rocky has good babyface fire. Despite never being involved in any stories he can usually get the crowd behind him during the match itself. The big anti air knee to end it looked tremendous, excellent finish. 

Strong match between Athena and Velvet to finish. I really hope Athena creeping closer and closer to the main shows is a sign of something. 50 and 0 now in eliminator matches and title defenses. Aminata looked great making the save. I don't think I've seen her do an air raid crash before but it looked superb like everything else she does, properly threw herself back into it. Sign me up for Aminata vs Athena. 

Collision 20/04/24

Copeland/Briscoe/Kingston vs Top Flight and Andretti was a cracking opener. Great choice to do the whole thing at 100mph, crowd red hot throughout, and it was immensely satisfying watching Action Andretti get smashed by everyone's finishing moves at the end. 

Delightful squash from Hobbs against an especially sorry looking jobber. POWERHOUSE HOBBS TO WIN THE IWGP TITLE ON DYNAMITE??? Probably not like. 

I have to be honest, I thought Jericho's promo about the FTW title match was good. I hate the direction, I would rather Hook be doing many other things as I've stated repeatedly, but Jericho's disingenous tone here (and how many fucking times he said 'The Learning Tree') were spot on.

Acclaimed vs Gunns was great as well! Frantic pace, wall to wall shenanigans. Mind-boggling how they were able to time everything so well with the interferences and misdirections when the whole thing was done as a sprint. Best thing The Acclaimed have done in weeks, and it would be a throwback match against the Ass Boys wouldn't it? BCG will make fantastic unified trios champs, I hope those titles become relevant and we get belting Collision main events for them. 

Toni Storm promo was excellent. A lot more serious than the usual Timeless Toni promo, really cool to see she can do that whilst still playing this whacky character. 

Bunkhouse brawl was yet another belter on this show. Nigel was hilarious during this. His Clamdigger disclaimer, claiming Hobbs was not 100% in his fight with Moxley because he had a "match" earlier, he was relentless with it. Credit to this match and the very satisfying BCC post-match revenge that they were able to power through the ever-annoying "we want tables" chant. That chant is "What?"-esque to me at this point. They're putting on a barn burner here guys, shut up about bloody tables. That said, the crowd overall was brilliant throughout this episode, so I'll let them off this one time. Excellent go home promo from Danielson afterwards.

Hirsch/Skye Blue was an OK little TV match with an unfortunate slip from Hirsch at the end. The big flipping German suplex type thing off the top from Hirsch looked devastating. 

Main event was incredible! Phenomenal six man tag, crowd once again red hot for the duration. Loved Pac being ready for the Bucks sneak attack at the start after Dynamite. I'm a sucker for little nods to previous matches like that. I also like how The Bucks do cowardice on Okada's behalf a lot of the time, like they'll pull him out of the ring by the legs to get him out of trouble etc. rather than him running away. But yeah, all six on fire in this one, amazing match to round off a near perfect episode of Collision. 

[LaGoosh]

7 hours ago, JLM said:

I do appreciate reviewing the older shows might be screaming into the void a little,

No way, I love reading your show reviews!

[Hannibal Scorch]

I thought it was a really strong episode of collision.

Swerves promo was fine. I feel he’s still finding his feet a bit with this new gimmick but it wasn’t awful. 
 

BBG vs Top Flight was decent, definitely more back and forth than I’d expected but really enjoyable 6 man.

Fenix vs The Beast Mortos (former Black Taurus) was superb. Opening few moments were a little patchy, but once they got going, they didn’t stop. One of my favourite TV matches this year.

Was not expecting Martin Stone to make his AEW debut but here we are, shame it was in a 1 sided squash to a returning Rush who reminded us how exciting he can be even in a squash. Glad he’s back.

Storm vs Anna Jay was another decent match, I’m a fan of both and thought they both did well. Nice little story bits with Mariah May here, sowing seeds. 
 

As great as it was to see Grizzled Young Vets, losing to The Acclaimed seemed a waste considering how not over they are. They were great, Bowens was great, Caster can sod off to NXT. I hope this wasn’t a one and done for GYV but I’m assuming them losing was probably for that reason.

The main event was never in doubt but Swerve/Claudio was as enjoyable as you’d expect with swerve making the most of the Daily’s Place set up. 
 

So Tony can’t travel and Omega returns next week, and the new Elite will also be there…. What’s gonna happen?

[LaGoosh]

Both Collision and Rampage were absolutely ace this week. After a lackluster Dynamite you can always count on Collision to cheer things up.

Fine promo from Swerve, though I feel without a strong story for his character to get stuck into he might start to flounder quickly. Come home Hangman! Epic match with Claudio.

Fenix is back, hooray! The Minotaur guy was sick as hell, hope he's booked more.

GYV were good and feel like a natural fit but AEW feels very light on babyface tag teams right now, unless they want to make Shibata and Garcia a full time team - which I would be happy with. They were loads of fun together and the match with STP was brilliant. I'm not sure you can call The Acclaimed a babyface team anymore, this act is absolutely dead.

RUSH! RUSH! RUSH! Wonderful. Love his brand of violence. Giving Martin Stone a kicking was the perfect return. 

Without really making a big deal out of it AEW have really started booking the women a lot better. Feels like there's lots going on there now.

Parking Lot Brawl was my type of thing. Trent put in a hell of a performance. Not sure I see him with the Don Callis Family though. That crew feels like a gang of super athletes - it doesn't really feel like a natural fit. But if it's a way to get to a Takeshita/Orange Cassidy match well that's fine with me. 

I'd be happy if Rampage got folded into Saturdays going forwards. It's worked well the past 2 times. Tremendous nights of wrestling. AEW can be so great.

 

Edited April 29 by LaGoosh

[Supremo]

I thought the Grizzled Young Veterans were an absolute revelation. They’d spent so long acting out HBK’s weird goth fetish on NXT that I’d genuinely forgotten how good they were! If this was an audition then they passed with flying colours.

James Drake’s running Dropkick that he does to the opponent on the outside waiting for the tag is incredible! They should incorporate that into their finish. Hit a big move on the legal man, Running Nutcase Dropkick to the guy on the outside, 1, 2, 3. GYV and Motor City Machine Guns, with The Young Bucks as champions? Tag division is cooking again.

They’re three for three with Daily’s Place Parking Lot Brawls. Delivered once again. Always a brilliant, violent scrap.

Frankly, the best thing about these three-hour Saturday Night blocks is that it means another hour of Nigel McGuinness’ banter. He’s quickly became my favourite commentator in the business. Always funny. Always hates Bryan Danielson. Brings a brilliant energy to the show. It was a real blink-and-you’ll-miss-it thing in the main event, but the camera cut to the commentary desk just as Nigel had made a silly joke about wanking and it was a genuine joy to see him and Schiavone giggling like school kids. A small glimpse of what makes them such a great team, Tony trying to play it straight and Nigel spending all night long trying to pop him.

”He could have broken his hand!”

”Oh well, Daniel Garcia’s gonna have to use the other hand tonight!”

Look at these scamps tittering away.

How do you not immediately book Ospreay vs. Fenix, now Fenix is back. Would take all the will-power in the world.

Swerve vs. Claudio was exactly what Swerve needed. A big, meaty Title defence that makes him look amazing. Nice to see the prophecy come true, too; he looks the business with the belt. Real cool motherfucker.

Most exciting thing on the show was Swerve calling out The Elite for attacking Tony. Although the story beats suggested Hangman will  eventually come back as a babyface to topple The Elite, I wonder if AEW will do one of those clever swerves and actually bring him back as a heel still. Like a rabid dog let loose. He doesn’t have to rejoin The Elite, he can still be a loner on Lost-The-Plot Island, but I love the idea of Nicholas and Mathew responding to Swerve’s insults by just bringing Hangman back to kill him. “Slag us off, will you? Fine. You’re facing Hangman at Double or Nothing, Exploding Barbed Wire Deathmatch.”

Edited April 29 by Supremo

[BomberPat]

36 minutes ago, Supremo said:

Most exciting thing on the show was Swerve calling out The Elite for attacking Tony. Although the story beats suggested Hangman will  eventually come back as a babyface to topple The Elite, I wonder if AEW will do one of those clever swerves and actually bring him back as a heel still. Like a rabid dog let loose. He doesn’t have to rejoin The Elite, he can still be a loner on Lost-The-Plot Island, but I love the idea of Nicholas and Mathew responding to Swerve’s insults by just bringing Hangman back to kill him. “Slag us off, will you? Fine. You’re facing Hangman at Double or Nothing, Exploding Barbed Wire Deathmatch.”

They definitely seem to be hedging their bets on Hangman - Kenny was "fired" from The Elite, while Hangman was only suspended, so either in kayfabe or out they're keeping their options open, or keeping some intrigue around whether he's going to side with them.

It would be very AEW for the pay-off ends up eventually being a Kenny & Hangman vs. Young Bucks rematch at Revolution next year, but there's still plenty of twists and turns before they get there, and Swerve getting involved is definitely interesting - aside from the history with Hangman, why wouldn't the champion of the company be commenting on something like that? It makes the whole show feel more connected, which has long been an issue with AEW, that stories tend to exist in isolation from one another, but realistically everyone in the company would be talking about Tony Khan getting attacked, and while many of them might be afraid to speak up out of fear of getting punished by the EVPs, Swerve as the champion should be close to untouchable.

[Supremo]

Yeah. It’s very Hangman and The Elite for Nicholas and Mathew to manipulate Page for a bit, using him to their advantage. Encourage him to go even crazier. Grow an even bigger moustache.

He can eventually see through them later in the year and eventually turn babyface with Kenny. Better to get most out of it first. Plus, it’s not as if your competition isn’t experiencing the biggest boom in decades and selling out every single venue thanks to a similar storyline with Sami Zayn being used and gaslit by The Bloodline. Copy that home work!

Six months of edging us, only for Hangman to eventually take a Gillette Fusion 5 to the ‘tash, revealing himself as the healed, clear-headed, clean-shaven Hero Cowboy? Inject it straight into my veins. The best a man can get.

[Factotum]

Hangman can just play the obsessed with Swerve character, where he's not necessarily a heel but he fucking hates Swerve and can't understand why the fans love him after what he has done before.