AEW Saturday Collision

[Lion_of_the_Midlands]

Danielson is going to die in the ring. I find it uncomfortable to watch him now, which is heartbreaking because I've seen him wrestle either live or on TV everywhere from Cleethorpes (Live) to Chicago (On PPV) and everywhere in between. He has always come across as a thoroughly decent man, and I don't think I've heard a bad word said about him. 

[Loki]

8 minutes ago, Lion_of_the_Midlands said:

Danielson is going to die in the ring.

That’s my worry too.  There was this feeling after the Eddie/Benoit era that wrestlers had got a bit smart to the longer term dangers of their profession, and to their credit WWE made some changes to their product such as banning chairs to the head etc.

 But Danielson, and a few others of this generation seem to have bought back into the macho bullshit again.  I don’t think Danielson is forcing Yuta to do hindu squats until he pisses blood, but it does feel like he’s engaged in a race to see what ends his career first, a planned retirement or crippling injury.

Edited November 12, 2023 by Loki

[HarmonicGenerator]

I’d forgotten we were meant to get Danhausen this week! Unless he was under the devil mask this is a big disappointment!

I enjoyed, amongst the G1 thing, them announcing Danielson will be at Wembley next year. It’s 90% certain he’ll be injured again by then, so I’m not counting on it. Glad they’ve not forgotten that PAC and Jamie Hayter missed out on Wembley too - wrap the three of them in cotton wool til August please.

On the show, Julia vs Willow lived up to my expectations, good match and let’s get that title onto Hart at Full Gear. I didn’t get much Copeland vs Archer, but a fun main event and it’s still surreal to see Edge in an AEW ring.

Edited November 12, 2023 by HarmonicGenerator

[The King Of Swing]

Honestly I'm starting to find watching some people wrestle, very uncomfortable at times. 

There was one match not so long back, where Omega did his big dive to the outside but seemed to fall a little short of his opponent and pretty much landed flat on his back. Don't care how good someone is, that's going to really mess up your body.

[LaGoosh]

There's no PPVs currently scheduled between World's End and Revolution in March, feels like that would have been a good time for this big tournament. Something fresh and exciting to start the year off.

[Infinity Land]

Collision gets a bad wrap at times online. I don't know how much of that's because of the ratings discourse. It's often my favourite show of the week. Part of it because you get to see more of the roster that would otherwise be squeezed out by Dynamite's pressure to chase ratings.

Early days but this week is what I was hoping for from Sting's retirement tour. The match against the Outrunners and the main event of the show with Edge added to the mix against The Righteous and Archer. It doesn't all have to be all plunder matches and jumping off things. Still got them v. Christian's crew to forward to next week ? Start rotating out a 3rd man as a partner. Team with Omega against the Callis Family. Hangman v. The Mogul Embassy. Eddie/OC v. the BCC. 

Andrade v. Garcia was a strong opener. I'd avoided spoilers in part because of this match announcement. As both guys really could do with the win. Crowd were into it which really helps. Andrade has Miro hovering and Garcia needs the next step in this arc he's on. He's not someone I would have in the Continental Classic unless he makes the finals/Final.

Dalton/Wayne, Roddy/Darius, LFI/Workhorsemen. Nice simple progression through in-ring action. Maybe a trios for Christian & co v. Dalton & The Boys. Roddy's comedy bits work so much better when wrestling around them. LFI are a beast, admittedly thats 100% Rush. 5% Jose being quite hateable. 5% Preston looking boss draped in the Mexican flag. -10% Dralistico.

Willow v. Julia Hart was good and kept the story going. After WrestleDream I wishfully thinking Shida v. Willow for the World Title at Full Gear. Yeah ?Wins the Owen. Wins the NJPW Strong title. Despite all that Willow's a contender for worst booked wrestler of the year. Had a look at Willow's TV/PPV singles wins this year: 3x Owen Cup matches (Nyla/Athena/Ruby Soho). NJ Strong defense against Emi Sakura and another match against Emi Sakura, then Diamante & Robyn Renegade. No wins on PPV. 3x Losses to Toni Storm, 2x Losses to Julia Hart, losses to Shida, Statlander, Saraya, and Ruby Soho. Can they do an injury angle to write her off the rest of the year? Strap the rocket in 2024.

Goes into the matches set up for Full Gear. Statlander v. Julia Hart v. Skye Blue/Red Velvet should be a lot of fun. We can all probably guess Skye's the 3rd person to move on the story they've been building. Would happily see Red Velvet there though instead. Minimise the spooky bollocks and because the couple of return matches have been really fired up.

Starks/Bill v. FTR v. HoB v. LFI for the tag titles. No one! Not one single person, Tony Khan included, had this match booked in their head after WrestleDream. It was all aboard for FTR v. Young Bucks III. I would much rather have this 4-way than the attempt at EPIC tag team wrestling we could have had. It's going to be glorious chaos. 

After getting a bit of a push. Kyle Fletcher looked like an extra doubling up as a security guard during the Callis promo. The Callis Family has reduced every single wrestler associated with it.

 

[RedRooster]

8 hours ago, LaGoosh said:

There's no PPVs currently scheduled between World's End and Revolution in March, feels like that would have been a good time for this big tournament. Something fresh and exciting to start the year off.

Granted, I didn’t watch Collision, so I’m possibly making unfair assumptions here - but can a tournament in AEW of all places ever feel ‘fresh and exciting’? Has a winner of a named AEW tournament ever gained much of anything from it? 

The fact Willow Nightingale and Ricky Starks won the Owen Hart Cup is all-but forgotten about now, and the same goes for Britt and Adam Cole the year prior, although he did get injured, to be fair.

[Infinity Land]

39 minutes ago, RedRooster said:

Granted, I didn’t watch Collision, so I’m possibly making unfair assumptions here - but can a tournament in AEW of all places ever feel ‘fresh and exciting’? Has a winner of a named AEW tournament ever gained much of anything from it? 

The fact Willow Nightingale and Ricky Starks won the Owen Hart Cup is all-but forgotten about now, and the same goes for Britt and Adam Cole the year prior, although he did get injured, to be fair.

Ignoring ones for titles.

Kenny Omega winning the 1st Full Gear World Title Eliminator. Challenges at Winter is Coming becomes champion and starts the Belt Collecter reign.

Danielson winning the 2nd Full Gear World Title Eliminator. Continues the path of destruction through The Dark Order on the way to the title shot. Has the time limit draw and then rematch at the 1st Dynamite on TBS.

Honourable Mention: Starks winning the Full Gear World Title Eliminator, into the Diamond Ring Battle Royale and Winter Is Coming title shot tee'd him up as a potential main event player into 2023.

Honourable Mention: Samoa Joe winning the Grand Slam Eliminator. Having lost to Darby, Wardlow, and Punk during the year. I do think it helped reheat him as World Title threat.

Honourable Mention: Blind Eliminator Tag Tournament. The odd couple of Cole and MJF may well have been forced through regardless. It was the excuse of this tournament that gave it the framework.

 

 

 

 

[LaGoosh]

1 hour ago, RedRooster said:

Granted, I didn’t watch Collision, so I’m possibly making unfair assumptions here - but can a tournament in AEW of all places ever feel ‘fresh and exciting’?

If they actually do it properly and announce the 12 best wrestlers available possible for it then...yes.

[RedRooster]

47 minutes ago, Infinity Land said:

Ignoring ones for titles

When I said a ‘named tournament’ I perhaps should have worded it differently- what I mean is a tournament for a tournament’s sake (eg. The Owen) - but you’ve highlighted what a crutch tournaments are for Tony Khan. I hate them, personally. In AEW, the winners are often made clear during storylines beforehand. Ultimately, I’m not sure there’s much value in a tournament for the sake of a tournament; but if you’re going to do something like that, don’t have more than one each year. 

[andrew "the ref" coyne]

3 hours ago, RedRooster said:

When I said a ‘named tournament’ I perhaps should have worded it differently- what I mean is a tournament for a tournament’s sake (eg. The Owen) - but you’ve highlighted what a crutch tournaments are for Tony Khan. I hate them, personally. In AEW, the winners are often made clear during storylines beforehand. Ultimately, I’m not sure there’s much value in a tournament for the sake of a tournament; but if you’re going to do something like that, don’t have more than one each year. 

Apart from the Owen Hart ones, which for me never had a obvious winner, what other 'tournaments for tournament sake' have there been? All I can think of is the women tag tournament they had on YouTube.

[RedRooster]

7 hours ago, andrew "the ref" coyne said:

Apart from the Owen Hart ones, which for me never had a obvious winner, what other 'tournaments for tournament sake' have there been? All I can think of is the women tag tournament they had on YouTube.

So there's two separate points here, and perhaps I should have separated them better when I wrote the post. When it comes to named tournaments, that's what I'm referring to - the four Owen tournaments, and the women's tag tournament. It's fair to ignore Adam Cole from the list of winners given that he quickly got injured; but no one has been better off for winning any of these tournaments. The Owen Hart Cup could easily have been a launching pad - a signifier that the company is serious about the winner, and that they are going to get a serious push from here on. Baker remained in the same position that she was (although these days, she's far less prominent than she was), Willow - despite her obvious potential - is back to where she was before the tournament and the same could be said about Ricky Starks. As for the women's tag tournament, I'm not sure why it happened; but clearly, the winners gained nothing. 

As far as obvious winners go, I mean AEW tournaments as a whole. There have been, according to Wikipedia, 20 tournaments in AEW's four year history, and that's excluding the Continental Classic. I'm not saying that this is the case all of the time, or even the majority of the time - but AEW does have a tendency to telegraph winners by setting up feuds ahead of time - adding a sense of predictability to what's going on. But even when the tournament isn't predictable, generally the match that results feels like it's lacking build; and that it would have been better off it had been treated as a standard feud. 

Obviously there's a degree of subjectivity to this, but 20 tournaments in four years - soon to become 21 - feels a bit ludicrous. 

[Infinity Land]

A lot of those I wouldn't consider "tournaments". Even if they were. I'm not really sure what criteria they've used to judge it as things would be missing.

The All-Atlantic is in there and that was 4x Qualifying Matches into a 4way match. Yet at least one of the Face of the Revolution Ladder matches had qualifying matches into the multi-man match. That's missing.

There's several "semis" into a "final" formats. Including 4 Pillars Tournament being there. Which was a bye to the Final and a semi. Yet the way the two World Titles came into being: a singles match and Casino Battle Royale aren't considered tournaments.

[Lion_of_the_Midlands]

9 hours ago, Infinity Land said:

There's several "semis"

That's why Tony needs the old Colombian marching powder #RIPOutOfContextThread. 

[Supremo]

A bad day for Colliders…