AEW TV 2026 discussion

[LaGoosh]

Fun Collision. They've made a massive error having Team Ospreay vs DCF for Blood and Guts. A Deathriders/Conglomeration vs The Final Outfit/Cut/Whatever feels way more fitting and exciting. Would definitely be a better match!

Particularly enjoyed Claudio Castagnoli in the Superman babyface role this week. He looked fantastic!

[Lorne Malvo]

Wasn't a massive fan of this Collision after really enjoying Dynamite. FTR/MCMG and Death Riders/Shane Taylor Promotions were both really fun (Carlie Bravo seems to have come on a fair bit since I last saw him) but I could leave the rest.

AEW having a heel turn then not following up on it for ages was an old trope that used to really annoy me, so it was nice that a lot of this episode of Collision was based on the follow-up to Jay White & Friends turning heel. That opening promo went on forever and was boring as sin, mind. 

Andrade is up there with Jay White for me in terms of being really good inside the ring but they just leave me completely cold. 

 

[The King of Old School]

23 hours ago, LaGoosh said:

Fun Collision. They've made a massive error having Team Ospreay vs DCF for Blood and Guts. A Deathriders/Conglomeration vs The Final Outfit/Cut/Whatever feels way more fitting and exciting. Would definitely be a better match!

Particularly enjoyed Claudio Castagnoli in the Superman babyface role this week. He looked fantastic!

Yep, if they were going to go down this route they really should have held off with the Blood and Guts announcement.

Even if they announced Death Riders vs The Cut this week it would feel like even though its a last minute announcement at least it makes sense.

Ospreay and pals vs DCF feels quite shoehorned.

[LaGoosh]

I wish they would bring Rampage back. The roster is so stacked now that there's loads of people who are fucking brilliant who will never get consistent and substantial TV time. They have the roster now where Rampage would be ace.

[Lorne Malvo]

They just need to do away with having Blood and Guts as a fixed yearly show. You'd like to think AEW would steer clear of such a WWE-esque booking crutch but unfortunately they've embraced it.

In kayfabe terms, it's incredibly lucky for Tony Khan that all of these wrestlers have decided they now hate each other enough to challenge each other to a Blood and Guts match a few weeks before they've got a show called Blood and Guts!

[The King of Old School]

11 minutes ago, LaGoosh said:

I wish they would bring Rampage back. The roster is so stacked now that there's loads of people who are fucking brilliant who will never get consistent and substantial TV time. They have the roster now where Rampage would be ace.

I'd even accept Dark or Dark Elevation back.

Film it in month blocks at Universal Studios like they did a couple of times previously.

[SoloJones]

I'd love a return of Dark, essentially a much more fun version of the current Ring of Honor (which I find mostly unwatchable due to the dead crowd and flat commentary) to give people something to do and try out new talent.

[RedTwoster]

1 hour ago, Lorne Malvo said:

They just need to do away with having Blood and Guts as a fixed yearly show. You'd like to think AEW would steer clear of such a WWE-esque booking crutch but unfortunately they've embraced it.

In kayfabe terms, it's incredibly lucky for Tony Khan that all of these wrestlers have decided they now hate each other enough to challenge each other to a Blood and Guts match a few weeks before they've got a show called Blood and Guts!

If they're going to do it annually, I'd prefer they treat it like classic Survivor Series matches, where it's people in separate feuds teaming up for the sake of this one match; or maybe you have two 'team captains' who draft their teams or something, with some kind of incentive for winning the match, even if it's another trophy. 

I'd happily do away with it completely though, I hate War Games-style matches. But if they really must...change the format somehow. 

2 hours ago, Lorne Malvo said:

Wasn't a massive fan of this Collision after really enjoying Dynamite. FTR/MCMG and Death Riders/Shane Taylor Promotions were both really fun (Carlie Bravo seems to have come on a fair bit since I last saw him) but I could leave the rest.

He's great! He's a brilliant shithead lackey heel, you really want to see him get punched in the face. 

1 hour ago, LaGoosh said:

I wish they would bring Rampage back. The roster is so stacked now that there's loads of people who are fucking brilliant who will never get consistent and substantial TV time. They have the roster now where Rampage would be ace.

I think their programming has improved enormously since Rampage died, and I do wonder if it's partly down to Tony Khan not having to spread himself as thinly as he clearly did. Maybe there are other reasons. Collision more than fills the void for me, but if they were to add something new, I'd rather it be instead of ROH, with it being a show on which you see up-and-comers make a name for themselves. A show that gives wrestlers time to find their characters in front of an audience and try out new things kind of like how Dark once did (would The Acclaimed have risen in the way they did without it?)

 

[LaGoosh]

35 minutes ago, RedTwoster said:

think their programming has improved enormously since Rampage died, and I do wonder if it's partly down to Tony Khan not having to spread himself as thinly as he clearly did

I doubt it. Rampage looked like Tony Khan booked it in about 20 seconds most weeks.

[Statto]

1 hour ago, RedTwoster said:

If they're going to do it annually, I'd prefer they treat it like classic Survivor Series matches, where it's people in separate feuds teaming up for the sake of this one match; or maybe you have two 'team captains' who draft their teams or something, with some kind of incentive for winning the match, even if it's another trophy. 

I'd happily do away with it completely though, I hate War Games-style matches. But if they really must...change the format somehow. 

A million times this (or these, I guess).

War Games matches are inherently flawed and generally suck. AEW doing it when it was Cody resurrecting his father's creation was OK, I guess. Now WWE also do it... please sack it off. 

And I've said this every year at this time for several years now but yeah - if WWE don't want the far superior traditional Survivor Series concept, nick it. Do it over a special week of TV - All Elimination Week.

RE: bringing back Dark/Rampage - I'd definitely favour Dark coming back as a "for the sickos" show you can watch if you want but won't miss anything crucial (except possibly the genesis of a future top act) if you don't. Standalone tapings in a studio setting. And if TK's too busy between booking the rest of AEW/RoH/Jaguars/Fulham/posting here... surely the ideal opportunity to test something else out and let Danielson or Omega or Jarrett or Dutt or Chuck Taylor or someone book it?

[BomberPat]

I don't object too much to Blood & Guts being a calendarised thing - War Games was a Fall Brawl gimmick for six straight years, and a Great American Bash one before that, and there's always enough of a heel faction around to warrant it. I think the women's match suffers more for always being a random assemblage of wrestlers rather than two factions, or a heel stable and the babyfaces united to beat them. I think this year is particularly odd because the same night they announced the competitors for Blood & Guts they kickstarted a completely different faction warfare storyline, and because Will Ospreay has had a long-running storyline of building his own faction, yet none of those guys are in the team he's presumably leading in Blood & Guts. That's just odd.

The problem with Blood & Guts and War Games today is that they were traditionally built on heat, and modern wrestling is built on tension. Two heels ganging up on a babyface at the start of a War Games match works when you're invested in seeing that babyface defy the odds, and a dastardly heel being locked inside a cage with the babyface they've been tormenting, finally getting their comeuppance with nowhere to run, works when there's a catharsis or satisfaction to watching a face beat up a heel. But that's not really the language of wrestling any more, it's all escalation and near falls, so you have this long stretch of wrestling where there can't be any pinfall attempts, there's no tension, because there's no sense that anything important could happen.

[Chris B]

I wonder if you could do something that slightly amends the rules, allowing pinfalls during the build section - or if that would just cause wider problems. I'm thinking maybe it's like a team Iron Man match until 5 minutes after everyone's in. At which point, it goes to sudden death for the reminder of the match if a winner isn't declared.

[WyattSheepMask]

11 minutes ago, Chris B said:

I wonder if you could do something that slightly amends the rules, allowing pinfalls during the build section - or if that would just cause wider problems. I'm thinking maybe it's like a team Iron Man match until 5 minutes after everyone's in. At which point, it goes to sudden death for the reminder of the match if a winner isn't declared.

Keep things simple. As it is there’s no stakes until everyone has entered. If you were to have Eliminations be possible up until the final members of each team have entered then go to one fall finishes it, that adds something. Teams could be level or someone goes into the final stretch with an advantage 

Edited 16 hours ago by WyattSheepMask

[Chris B]

1 minute ago, WyattSheepMask said:

Keep things simple. As it is there’s no stakes until everyone is has entered. If you were to have Eliminations be possible up until the final members of each team have entered then go to one fall finishes it, that adds something. Teams could be level or someone goes into the final stretch with an advantage 

I was thinking that, but there's the difficulty with the numbers advantage making the heels look weak. 3 against 2 is one thing - but if they eliminate one, it's 3 against 1. Iron Man Pins do the same thing, but at least the numbers difference isn't so big.

[HarmonicGenerator]

I suppose part of it is that there’s still a regular length match once everyone’s entered. If the build section was such that people are getting progressively more beaten up, so that once the second part starts, someone can be defeated really quickly because they’re so exhausted already, that would give the first part some stakes?