AEW TV 2025 Discussion

[Lorne Malvo]

I'll be the bearded guy in the black t-shirt. See you there!

[Lorne Malvo]

Sorry for the double post;

AEW have uploaded Cardiffs Dark taping to their YouTube, complete with Taz/Excalibur commentary! I've missed this show. I absolutely love the commentary teams 50% calling the action and 50% shooting the shit.

Excalibur also confirmed the Diamond ring battle royale will come down to the final two winners who will face each other next week for the ring. I've never liked that gimmick, just feels unnecessarily stretched out.

[tiger_rick]

42 minutes ago, Lorne Malvo said:

I'll be the bearded guy in the black t-shirt. 

Should narrow it down to about 4,000 men! 🤣

[Lorne Malvo]

48 minutes ago, tiger_rick said:

Should narrow it down to about 4,000 men! 🤣

I'm actually clean shaven and in a white t-shirt, but couldn't resist the easy gag.

[2Xtreme_lives]

1 hour ago, Lorne Malvo said:

Sorry for the double post;

AEW have uploaded Cardiffs Dark taping to their YouTube, complete with Taz/Excalibur commentary! I've missed this show. I absolutely love the commentary teams 50% calling the action and 50% shooting the shit.

Excalibur also confirmed the Diamond ring battle royale will come down to the final two winners who will face each other next week for the ring. I've never liked that gimmick, just feels unnecessarily stretched out.

Was Taz and Excalibur doing the recording remotely. Was seamless if so

[Supremo]

Heading off to Manchester shortly. Really excited. This is a cracking TV Card. Hoping we get the proper Elite entrance with, “Carry On my Wayward Son.” Elite lore on TV can get in the bin, but live? Bring it on! I hope they can co-exist.

I’ll be wearing a grey hoodie and swooning over Hangman Adam Page.

Please don’t talk to me.

[HarmonicGenerator]

Will post specific thoughts in a spoiler box, as I’m not sure exactly what’s airing tonight and what’s on Saturday’s Collision and what was for ROH TV and what was just a dark match.

Overall, I had a great time with better shows than Glasgow (it helps knowing so much of the card ahead of time) but these tapings are an absolute marathon. Mrs HG hit the wall at the 4 hour mark and I found my own attention span gone not long after. So we tapped out and left after

Spoiler

Mercedes Mone vs Alex Windsor, which finished just after 10.45pm, after getting into the arena just as Wheeler Yuta vs Nigel McGuinness started at about 6.15pm.

I think that means I’ll have only missed Okada vs Kevin Knight and the final “Tony Khan talks to the audience” bit, but please let me know if there was anything else.

Favourite parts of the night and other thoughts were:

- Mrs HG, having never heard Hook’s terrible new music, asking me why he has such terrible music.

- Seeing the Continental Classic matches live. It’s such a brilliant thing. PAC vs Fletcher was definitely my match of the night, and I was so happy the Bastard won - I hope it comes across well on TV because it was bloody good live - but OC vs Dorada was also loads of fun.

- Seeing a classic Elite sprint match was ace as well. Very very entertaining, and the crowd loved Kenny. (Though Toni Storm, who was a firm favourite in Glasgow, didn’t get half the reaction tonight. It’s this Mina team. It’s no good for her) Okada vs Takeshita is going to be so, so good when it happens.

- I thought Mrs HG would like the Babes of Wrath but she was put off by the fact their entrance video is basically a perv’s dream with shot after shot of their bums and chests. The women’s tag match wasn’t her thing either, afterwards asking “is that all Toni’s going to do?” Fair point considering she was front and centre on the event posters and billboards.

- Contract signing was pretty exciting stuff, I won’t spoil how it ended but everything there seemed to work well in the room. I want Hangman to win, still - I bought a Hangman T-shirt tonight, other than having his name it doesn’t look like wrestling merch at all, ten stars - but don’t know which way it’ll go at all.

- Battle royal was a bit weird to watch live, I don’t think they were ever all in the ring at the same time. Luchasaurus has been added to Mrs HG’s favourite wrestlers, but she’d lost patience with it all and gone for a wander when he came back on Collision, so she missed Lucha Claus.

- Aside from the Continental Classic matches, all of which were good or great, some other highlights were: Bandido doing so well in the battle royal, Eddie Kingston appearance, Jamie Hayter getting a singles match, Omega and Okada sharing the ring, Hangman and Swerve sharing the ring, and some great near falls in the tag title match (so pleased Juice has grown his hair out again). But the story of the night was the CC. PAC, Fletcher, Speedball, Perry, OC, Dorada, Moxley, even Roderick, all were on their A game tonight.

Completely non-spoilery, we had a great view of the ring this time, and best of all, no annoying wans nearby! None! The worst it got was a guy who shouted “ask him ref” every time anyone got anyone else in a hold! That was as annoying as it got! Well done, Manchester.

I love watching AEW live, and we got some great matches tonight, but I’d think twice about going to a TV taping again… it’s a lot of wrestling, guys.

Edited December 17, 2025 by HarmonicGenerator

[BrodyGraham]

Was sat behind 4 proper bell ends who spent most of the evening just loudly trying to pop themselves.

It's a miracle that I didn't get myself thrown out during the Elite match and I still had 4 and a half hours to go after that!

I'm gonna watch it on fite in a sec where I can appreciate it without contemplating getting a criminal charge.

I think a PPV in that building would be fun. It's big without sacrificing tightness and I think a show with more stakes would do well there.  I was able to get away with both All-In's at Wembley a lot better than this in terms of fatigue despite being miles away. But yeah 5 hours for a TV taping is a bit much!

Edited December 18, 2025 by BrodyGraham

[digforvictory]

It was definitely too long but overall it was a fantastic night of wrestling. So many great matches,  some big surprises, pretty much all the big stars there and I thought the crowd stayed hot the entire time. Definitely dipped by the end but they were still pretty loud I thought.

Really impressed by the arena, looked cool and the seat was comfy, plus genuinely good leg room. The M.E.N arena has shocking leg room in comparison. Beer prices were fucking ridiculous but I expected that going in.

All in all a really fun experience. Interested to see what it looks like on telly. 

Maybe I got lucky but I was sat in a section with nice normal friendly fans, no bad smells, no weirdos trying to start dodgy chants. Very enjoyable!

[Lorne Malvo]

I'll post more detailed thoughts when I'm back home but just wanted to agree with the consensus that these tapings, while really good, are just too much of a marathon to keep anybody fully invested for the entire time. If you're going to do a full Dynamite and Collision back to back, maybe leave the ROH matches? And the less said about them throwing fucking Serpentico out there for a dark match the better.

But I really enjoyed it for the most part!

Now because I'm an idiot I've got a 3 hour wait for my coach to turn up.

[Supremo]

A fun, if ridiculously long night.

Tony Khan’s Billionaire excess is funny to watch from afar. Not so funny when you’ve got to suffer through it in person. I understand there are certain requirements when you’re making TV, and I assume taping extra stuff allows people more time off the holidays, which is nice, but fuck me. Format your show better so it doesn’t feel like it peaks a solid two hours early, becoming an endurance exercise as time goes on. 

Assuming none of this aired live anywhere and you could record it in whatever order you wanted, they should have saved the hottest stuff for last. As it was, it became clear in the last hour or so that they were just filling time for a throwaway Collision and the amount of people grabbing their coats for an early dart was wild. I’ll be interested in how it looks on TV because there were countless empty rows of seats by the time the final bell of the final match.

We arrived to discover we had literally the worst seats in the house. Behind us was the curtain, but we were as high as could be. The view was fine though, and certainly nothing to complain about for thirty quid, so what could possibly go wrong?

Then an absolute whopper sat down in front of us just as Jon Moxley made his entrance, and was immediately shouting bollocks at the top of his lungs to pop his idiot mate. Defcon One. Worst case scenario. If the lad from section 315 is reading this, please know you’re nowhere near as funny as you and your mate think you are and the girl who we assumed was your partner looked mortified to be with you. She has all my sympathies. Sometimes, I hate wrestling fans.

We lasted less than a match before deciding we’d end up killing him if we stayed. Having read someone on here doing something similar at another AEW show, we checked what tickets hadn’t sold on Ticketmaster and just went to sit in them instead. Dream scenario. Jackpot achieved. Surrounded by a bunch of normal folk earnestly enjoying the show. In front of us was now a Dad with his three kids, all having the best time, where he spent the majority of the night filming their reactions to stuff, winding them up when their favourites lost, or having a deep discussion on whether they thought it was a tooth or a tonsil stone that went flying when Dax Harwood sold a punch by spitting into the air. If you’re the Dad from section 112, please know you rule.

I might write more later when I fully recover from Tony Khan’s onslaught of content, but for now just look at him. My beloved. He’s winning that belt back whether he wants to or not.

Edited December 18, 2025 by Supremo

[RedTwoster]

I’m a little surprised there’s not been more backlash to MJF comparing the company’s only ever Black world champion to P Diddy - I mean in general, as opposed to on here, I can understand people forgetting after enduring that length of taping. I thought that was an awful thing to say, and not in the way he intended. That should never have made it to air.

Edited December 18, 2025 by RedTwoster

[RIDDUM_N_STYLE]

What I don’t get is why they did the live show as a joint Dynamite/Collision but still taped another episode of Collision to air on Saturday instead of just doing two separate 2 hour show tapings

FYI, because I don’t know if they promoted it during the show, but the ROH matches taped on Saturday and last night are being billed as a Global Wars show on HonorClub tonight

[Hannibal Scorch]

2 hours ago, RIDDUM_N_STYLE said:

What I don’t get is why they did the live show as a joint Dynamite/Collision but still taped another episode of Collision to air on Saturday instead of just doing two separate 2 hour show tapings

College Football is on all afternoon to midnight on Saturday, so Collision got an hour slot Saturday afternoon before the Football starts. Hence the two hour show being split into 2 1 hour episodes 

[RedTwoster]

4 hours ago, Hannibal Scorch said:

College Football is on all afternoon to midnight on Saturday, so Collision got an hour slot Saturday afternoon before the Football starts. Hence the two hour show being split into 2 1 hour episodes 

I was really confused when Mone challenged someone to a match on Collision and I can’t have been alone. Even though she said ‘on Saturday’, I thought she’d fucked up given that it was a double episode. Perhaps they mentioned the split somewhere in the show, but I completely missed it.

They’d have been better off treating it as a three-hour Dynamite rather than splitting Collision in two, I reckon.

Edited December 19, 2025 by RedTwoster