AEW TV 2025 Discussion

[Richie Freebird]

I'm sure its been mentioned before by now, but I love how much Takeshita's music sounds like the old Nitro theme. 

[The King Of Swing]

10 hours ago, Richie Freebird said:

I'm sure its been mentioned before by now, but I love how much Takeshita's music sounds like the old Nitro theme. 

Fuck me I never noticed that until reading this and now that's all I'm going to hear. 

Another good episode of Collision. AEW is on one hell of a TV run right now. 

Immediately jobbing your newest Woman's tag team (that only last week was teasing a feud with another team) out to a thrown together tag team was absolutely baffling booking. 

Two random local jobbers could have easily filled that spot. Nixon and her partner (says it all that everyone seems to immediately forget her name) already feel dead on arrival.

Would have had them score the upset win and take Bayne and Marina's place in the tournament, since they are obviously not winning it anyway.

Maybe they'll turn it around but a rough start for the new team. 

Enjoyed Mone Vs. Olympia. 

Okada & Takeshita Vs. Not The Acclaimed was good fun. 

Tremendous main event. 

Casting Call was fine I guess. They need to mix it up with some mixed matches, if its going to be a long term thing.

Despite the shit build I'm actually excited for the women's Blood and Guts. Putting pretty much every main name in it was a smart move and it can be used to further the Statlander/Mone feud. 

Am I having a brain fart or are both Blood and Guts matches going to be on the same show? Absolute madness if so. Just have one main event Dynamite and the other Collision. 

Statlander has that weird thing going on like Darby, where she is not particularly good on the mic but it doesn't seem to hurt her with the fans. 

Edited November 2, 2025 by The King Of Swing

[LaGoosh]

On 10/31/2025 at 10:44 AM, LaGoosh said:

I can't wait for this match. Absolutely inspired booking.

It didn't disappoint. Easily the best "CAN THEY CO-EXIST" I've seen and they sowed it into every fabric of the match. If I could break it down into the stuff I loved:

- Bowens reacting to Caster coming out with a plaque of his imaginary accomplishment by carrying around like 5 plaques of his legitimate accomplishments is just perfect.

- Caster going from despicable heel to a loveable loser and Bowens thinking he's going to be a beloved babyface but turning into a jealous, petty and pathetic heel in response is brilliant storytelling. 

- Unlike most "can they co exist" tag matches where it basically is ignored until the finish it played out throughout and was key to everything that happened. 

- Takeshita/Okada should have murdered them quickly but kept getting in eachothers way which opened them up to Bowens/Caster come backs.

- the usual TV tag formula of the match breaking down and a final stretch of big spots never happened because due to the constant infighting on both teams neither of them could get enough momentum to get into a higher gear at any point.

- Caster instinctually going for Acclaimed double teams but Bowens not being there for them. At one point Caster literally drags Bowens into position against his will for a double team maneuver. 

- Takeshita doing the suplex/powerbomb spot intentionally to hurt Okada.

- Takeshita is always on the verge of exploding on Okada but Okada can't help himself. He loves being a dickhead!

- Bowens and Caster actually getting into a scrap with eachother in the match itself rather than after it ended. In fact everyone getting more and more pissed off with eachother as the match went on was great.

- Takeshita/Okada get the win but there's no real victory for either of them because they hate eachother so much no one is happy...except Don Callis.

It wasn't a match which will get the typical rave five star reviews but it told multiple stories through good in ring action getting over four different characters all at once and I'll take that over a big multi man spot fest any day of the week.

 

Edited November 2, 2025 by LaGoosh

[RedTwoster]

1 hour ago, The King Of Swing said:

Immediately jobbing your newest Woman's tag team (that only last week was teasing a feud with another team) out to a thrown together tag team was absolutely baffling booking. 

Two random local jobbers could have easily filled that spot. Nixon and her partner (says it all that everyone seems to immediately forget her name) already feel dead on arrival.

As far as I’m aware, they’ve not been signed - I think this was effectively a tryout. There’s no shame in losing to Bayne and Shafir, and if they are signed they can easily pick things up and move forward if they decide they want to push them. It took The Acclaimed, for example, a while to progress and the same goes for Toni Storm - before she was ‘Timeless’ she wasn’t much of anything. Liv Morgan was a jobber-to-the-stars before she found her footing in WWE, while Cody Rhodes was Stardust and Drew McIntyre was a jobber in 3MB. It doesn’t look like they’re being positioned as a hot new tag team, but if Khan was impressed by them in that match, he could make that switch pretty quickly and this defeat would quickly be forgotten. They could - and likely would - even play into it if the two teams faced off in the future.

[The King Of Swing]

Ah right I was under the impression that they had been signed.

I still would have used someone else for that match though, simply because they had already teased them and TayJay. Guessing it was a short notice reaction to Ford's injury and they needed to try and get Bayne and Marina over as a threat, quickly. 

Not a massive deal though if they are not actually been signed. 

[LaGoosh]

I didn't think they showed very much promise and was fine with them being squashed. Dyed hair punk rock chicks is the most boring gimmick a female wrestler can have. Decent squash though. Shafir may never be good enough to have 20 minute singles matches but that's ok. They have loads of wrestlers who can do that. She's unique, a believable character and brings her own chaotic, violent and unpredictable energy to things and I'd rather see that personally. 

The Mercedes match was great and perfect B-show stuff. Exactly what I like to see on my Collision.

Main event was incredible. Bandido is one of the best babyface wrestlers on the planet. I have no idea what the limit is for him. Is he future World Champ material? I don't know but I'm excited to see. He's definitely a guy worth putting in a top slot and bulding the company around though I think. A top four babyface squad of Hangman, Swerve, Ospreay and Bandido sounds fucking tasty to me.

The womens Blood and Guts...it's an incredible line-up and a huge shame that something that looks this good has been booked so poorly. I think it highlights Tony Khan's strengths and weakness as a booker big time. He's great at putting together incredible matches but often terrible at building and maintaining the momentum needed to get there. There's more than enough story and layers between all the people involved in this that it should feel like a huge deal and they could have been telling multiple over-lapping stories over the summer and autumn to build this up and reach a boiling point but instead they've just kind of slowly limped towards it then thrown it all out at once. AEW...the best and most frustrating promotion ever.

Edited November 3, 2025 by LaGoosh

[BomberPat]

1 hour ago, LaGoosh said:

The womens Blood and Guts...it's an incredible line-up and a huge shame that something that looks this good has been booked so poorly. I think it highlights Tony Khan's strengths and weakness as a booker big time. He's great at putting together incredible matches but often terrible at building and maintaining the momentum needed to get there. 

Someone wrote recently about how Tony is a great matchmaker but a poor booker, and I think that distinction absolutely nailed it. They used the example of Kris Statlander having this potential star-making moment in turning down the Death Riders, where the logical follow-up would have been a match with Marina Shafir, but instead they just moved away from that entirely and did a feud with Toni Storm - on paper, the Toni Storm match is bigger, but in the moment, Marina would have been the right choice to capitalise on the momentum of their interaction. 

[Supremo]

I think he might be the best.

[Chris B]

1 hour ago, BomberPat said:

Someone wrote recently about how Tony is a great matchmaker but a poor booker, and I think that distinction absolutely nailed it. They used the example of Kris Statlander having this potential star-making moment in turning down the Death Riders, where the logical follow-up would have been a match with Marina Shafir, but instead they just moved away from that entirely and did a feud with Toni Storm - on paper, the Toni Storm match is bigger, but in the moment, Marina would have been the right choice to capitalise on the momentum of their interaction. 

I think it depends if you see the TV main events as being a big deal or not - and I think Khan still does. So the 6th anniversary show, where Stat put Shafir feet-first into the thumbtacks was meant to be that moment. And it was a rare match where the women were in the main event for a big gimmick match. For all his faults, I do think Khan's been slowly, steadily building women into more main-event style matches.

I don't know that a singles match would have been a bigger deal, and it did give Stat a pretty big social media moment on the way to her Toni Storm feud.

[LaGoosh]

I think Tony Khan is very much set on having lots of big 20 minute + title matches. That's very much what he likes. Which of course, yeah that's good. However there's also room for more variety in wrestling. I know what I'm getting with Statlander/Storm and while it's guaranteed to be good the idea of Statlander vs Shafir interests me way more because I have no idea what that match looks like and there's loads of different creative ways you could present it.

[Chili]

37 minutes ago, Supremo said:

I think he might be the best.

Has he accidentally posted Hangers home address there?

EDIT: Actually it appears to be Daily's Place. Nevermind.

Edited November 3, 2025 by Chili

[HarmonicGenerator]

33 minutes ago, LaGoosh said:

I think Tony Khan is very much set on having lots of big 20 minute + title matches. That's very much what he likes. Which of course, yeah that's good. However there's also room for more variety in wrestling. I know what I'm getting with Statlander/Storm and while it's guaranteed to be good the idea of Statlander vs Shafir interests me way more because I have no idea what that match looks like and there's loads of different creative ways you could present it.

It's one of the things that might make the Hollywood Ending my MOTY. It had so much in it, but it was over in less than 15 minutes, and I think that made it much more intense and, well, better, than if they'd done the same thing but added an extra 10 to lie down / look shocked between spots/nearfalls.

[LaGoosh]

I know it's definitely a good thing that Jericho is 99% going back to WWE in the new year but I wouldn't mind him turning up to do a short farewell program in AEW. Yes, Jericho has been really shit and awful to watch for ages but he was also a key figure in the first few years of AEW, did loads of great work and they probably wouldn't have survived and thrived without him. Feels a bit sad for him to just disappear and never return again. If they ran a four week title program with Hangman playing off the history of the first AEW World title match and finished up at Worlds End I'd be pretty happy with it. Unlikely to happen though.

Edited November 4, 2025 by LaGoosh

[Chili]

39 minutes ago, LaGoosh said:

I know it's definitely a good thing that Jericho is 99% going back to WWE in the new year but I wouldn't mind him turning up to do a short farewell program in AEW. Yes, Jericho has been really shit and awful to watch for ages but he was also a key figure in the first few years of AEW, did loads of great work and they probably wouldn't have survived and thrived without him. Feels a bit sad for him to just disappear and never return again. If they ran a four week title program with Hangman playing off the history of the first AEW World title match and finished up at Worlds End I'd be pretty happy with it. Unlikely to happen though.

If his exit was Big Bill absolutely smashing him to bits for in story wasting his potential, instead of just swanning off and putting nobody over I'd be fine not seeing him again because it would have put somebody over in the short or long term. But I'm also fine not seeing him again. 

[Hannibal Scorch]

22 hours ago, Chili said:

Has he accidentally posted Hangers home address there?

EDIT: Actually it appears to be Daily's Place. Nevermind.

Hangman proving on the one hand he’s a great human and on the other hand abusing the work place internal postage service so he doesn’t have to queue up at the post office