Review: AEW Collision (11-16-2024)

Collision was not live from Albany, New York!

Alright! Had a whole bunch of stuff come up, and now we’re about to cook with gas. Get ready for a NEWSLETTER ASSAULT!

The MVP Arena! Formerly Knickerbocker Arena, which it was called when the building hosted Royal Rumble 1992. The venue also played host to the 1999 beer hose assault by Stone Cold Steve Austin on the McMahons and Dwayne Therock, No Mercy 2000, and New Year’s Revolution in 2006.

• Arriving: Anna Jay, who faces Mariah May in a no DQ rubber match! Also, Mariah May, who faces Anna Jay in a no DQ rubber match!

Harley Cameron vs Mina Shirakawa

Here’s one for the real fans. Harley’s a serious contender for Most Improved in 2024; obviously she plays to her looks but if you don’t fixate on just that comedically sensual stuff, you can see she’s taking the more serious aspects of her craft seriously, too, kind of in the same vein of Mina, actually.

So, you know, yes, Harley uses an angry motorboat as an offensive maneuver. But she also throws herself into her bumping, grabs a chinlock like it actually means something, covers like she’s actually trying to win the match. Her actual offense is getting better. She’s becoming a very solid wrestler and getting her clear of Saraya is good, her efforts deserve more than being a good sidekick to a main act that has reached the ceiling in a hard way.¹

Good opener! Cameron looking good, Mina is Mina so she can go. Glamorous Driver hits, Mina wins as she should, but you come away with the feeling that Harley is getting closer to actually winning some matches at this level. ***

• Outside: Jungle Jack arrives in his silly bus-truck.

Johnny TV vs Daniel Garcia

Garcia will face Perry at Full Gear, so he’s here to tune up, basically. I’ve questioned Mr. TV every time he’s been on my TV of late, but I do like his low-midcard comedy chemistry with MxM, who accompany him to this match as advertised the week before.

Magic Matt joins commentary for this one because he knows Daniel Garcia and can provide some extra analysis, and some concern that Garcia may be looking past TV and ahead to Jacholas. Mansoor distracts the ref and Madden chokeslams Garcia to give TV an early edge.² Moments later, they both put the boots to Garcia on the floor.

After break, TV hits a nice old man dive to the floor, you can sense that sort of thing still makes him feel alive. Meanwhile, Jack Perry appears from the crowd to attack Daddy Magic at commentary and take him out of here through the aforementioned crowd. “Fans, we’re gonna hopefully give you an update or follow this or something,” Tony offers. Thank you, Tony. That is reassuring.

Garcia gets on the roll, hits a swinging neckbreaker for two, then submits TV moments later with the There It Is, He’s Got It On submission that like the commentators I have, at best, forgot the name of. Fine story-moving match with decent action, useful filler.

• Post-match: Garcia realizes now that Magic is gone and he asks Tony and Nigel about it. Tony fills him in. Now on the big screen, we see Jack Perry and Daddy Magic fighting backstage. Perry is winning clearly but Magic is still trying to fight. Garcia races off to find them.

• And now we go outside: To the JackBus! Perry tells Magic that he’s “holding (Garcia) back” and again says Garcia is “not ready.” Jacholas smiles at the camera through a bus window while fetching a chain, which he intends to use to drag Daddy behind the bus. Garcia arrives in time to attack Perry and save his friend. Magic wants the camera and we go to break.

• Video: Another Lio Rush promo. A good one. Someone on BlueSky recently pointed out to me that Lio is someone who sorta moves the way Kevin Von Erich does, when I was saying Kevin had such unique movement and style, and I do think it’s true. I think you might put Tama Tonga in there, too, not quite like Lio but in the sort of realm. They’re obviously all very, very different overall workers, but the way they move has some similarity.

• Back to the bus: Jack Perry is chained to the hood and Daddy Magic takes off, we have the POV from behind him inside the bus. Tony Schiavone’s like, “Damn that’s crazy. Anyway to our next match!”

Komander vs Shelton Benjamin

Komander is fixing to get hurled. Hey good news this match is brought to you by some poker app. Is your increasingly crippling gambling addiction not totally fulfilled by losing money on sports? Lose more of it on poker.

Yeah, Komander is being hurled. Shelton’s size in AEW is borderline comical, and he uses it without it being the only thing about him. Komander is able to finally find an opening, and hits a great dive to the floor. This match is basically everything it should be, an obviously and reasonably dominant Shelton Benjamin, Komander’s speed and aerial skills the only thing that might keep him in the match. And when Shelton catches hold of him again he just thrashes him, angered and even slightly embarrassed that Komander even got any offense in on him. A spiteful man. And he takes Komander apart from there and finishes him off. ***¼

• Post-match: Shelton means to unmask Komander, but Alex Abrahantes, a brave man, pleads for this to not happen. That gets him laid out by MVP.

• Backstage: Renee is with Kris Statlander, who continues to have my favorite loudly bad style of all time. Stat plans to become the new TBS champion. Here is Hikaru Shida. She wishes Stat good luck on beating “Mercedes’ bony ass.” And Shida wants to be Stat’s first challenger when she does win. Stat is up for that, but has another idea: Wednesday on Dynamite, they’ll wrestle with nothing on the line. Sure!

• Backstage: Lexy is with The Acclaimed. She wonders where Billy Gunn is. Bowens is sick of Caster’s dumb jacket about being the Best Wrestler Alive, but Max keeps standing with his back to the camera. I kinda love that they’re pushing that this is an absurd claim from Max Caster. MVP and Shelton are now here. They wish the Acclaimed luck. MVP speaks to Max specifically: “Use your size, use your strength. Big opportunity!”

Bulk Bronson vs Powerhouse Hobbs

The Iron Savages’ act is incredibly small room. It’s sorta charming, but also pretty tired already. Pretty much a squash, as Hobbs trucks the lot of them in fairly short order. Bulk gets torture racked — they’re calling it the Argentine Backbreaker, you can’t say “torture” anymore because of woke — and that’s that.

• Backstage: Lexy is with Roddy Strong, Taven, and Bennett. Roddy speaks to MJF, whom he’ll face at Full Gear. Not a lot to it, really. Plans to show him what’s for at Full Gear.

• Private Party are here to watch the next match.

The Acclaimed vs Rush & Beast Mortos

Jake Snake is actually with Rush and Beast. Mr. Ass is with the Acclaimed again. My guess here, even if the better winner for future momentum is LFI, is that Acclaimed are going to win and give that Full Gear four-way one former title-holding tandem to go with Private Party as new champs, Black and King as refreshed contenders, and the Outrunners as surging serious contenders.

Rush is a more resourceful dickhead than Caster, so Caster gets whipped with some cord. Caster reeling for a bit before Bowens gets in and changes the tide. Dive to the floor from Bowens has no flair but it’s a big man throwing his body at another guy, in this case Mortos, and ultimately that’s as easy as it needs to be to matter.

All four guys wind up down after a little brawl bit. Rush and Bowens go at it pretty good after that, Rush almost punches the referee and then gets arrogant toward Bowens, that backfires a bit. Mortos is a smart tag team wrestler, though, and is able to help his partner and get into position to tag himself in. You can see in the more desperate moments, where their instincts kick in over their current squabbles, the Acclaimed still have a lot of reliable ability as a tag team, and that exact thing helps them pull out a hard-fought win. ***

• Backstage: Lexy is with Mina Shirakawa. Mina has about one thing to say and starts flailing her jugs about and that’s it.

• Video: MxM have one note but boy are they going after it, and using it to potentially sell ugly t-shirts!

• Backstage: Lexy is with three members of the Conglomeration: Tomohiro Ishii, Mark Briscoe, and Rocky Romero. Lexy asks Ishii how he’s feeling. He says nothing. Mark: “Lexy, if I may please translate what my man Big Tom is exuding with his energy here…” Mark cuts the promo and Rocky is just enough in the shot to make faces. Rocky also gets to talk a bit. He wants to know the word of the day. It is a menagerie of words of the day! It’s “tenacious, tenacity, ferocious, velocity, ferocity.” Briscoe is sure Ishii will win the fake ROH title on the Thanksgiving Eve Dynamite.

• Backstage: Lexy is with FTR and wants to know where their heads are. Renee getting kind of a half-day this week. Cash admits they just haven’t been able to regain the AEW tag belts for a year, despite having chances. “Maybe it’s us.” Dax is willing to admit that when House of Black beat them, the best team on the night won. Dax putting over the Outrunners and says they’re pulling for them at Full Gear.

• Video: Right to the Outrunners! They do their usual stuff.

Mariah May (c) vs Anna Jay

AEW Women’s World Championship - No Disqualification Match

Both bring some plunder to the ring, and Anna dropkicks Mariah off the apron to get us going before May can even get into the ring. Anna kicking ass around the ring and Nigel is upset about what’s happening, particularly when the beating gets near him.

To their credit, both have the accents of being dressed for a street fight sort of match — a sensual street fight sort of match, erotically.³ Anna dominant early, but Mariah drags a ladder out from under the ring, and then we get real weapon-y. Anna had a gym bag that has a crowbar, a wrench, a chain, some other crap, and she succeeds in using none of it immediately.

Chairs and ladders and trash cans that haven’t been used as actual trash cans in 30 years, now exist only to be sold to wrestling companies. Crowd wants tables and Nigel, in one of his worst great jokes ever, says, “We want tadpoles?” This is, like, Travis McElroy level comedy.

Very fun match! AEW women’s division “hardcore matches” are a pretty safe bet to deliver, and Mariah and Anna are both physical and mean enough to make it connect. I don’t think it’s among the very best of these in AEW history, but it’s a good one.

May power bombs Anna through a table. Bicycle rack gets set up on some chairs and Anna superplexes Mariah onto it! Jesus, that’s a vicious spot. After eventually recovering, Anna finds a bit of barbed wire to wrap around her forearm. She has some protection, kinda, with a bit of fabric on her forearm, but locks on the Queenslayer sleephold with the barbed wire! May is able to counter with some hairspray or the like to the eyes. Storm Zero on a chair! Mariah retains. ***½

• Backstage: Deonna Purrazzo and Taya Valkyrie are upset. They were also shown watching the match at one point. Not sure that’s a great direction for anyone other than Deonna, who has struggled to get moving in AEW.

• Post-match: Mina Shirakawa makes her way down to celebrate with Mariah. This is a nice wrinkle. Everyone likes Mina, and Mariah is deeply hateful and loathsome, but they also get along personally. Lots of people you know will have friends you do not like or understand the two of them being friends, but those people have a history and a personal chemistry that just doesn’t apply to what anyone else thinks of either of them. That’s what we’ve got with Mina and Mariah right now.

• Outside: We’ve got Jon Moxley and Marina Shafir.⁴ Moxley expected, when he broke Chuck Taylor’s neck, to get one of two things from Orange: Either he’d break down into a depression, or he would turn into an animal. Neither happened, and now Mox sees what he’s got: “I don’t think he even went to the hospital with Chuck Taylor. He acts like he’s so sad (about Wheeler Yuta), but he doesn’t care. … Orange Cassidy is a snake. Cold-blooded. Reptilian. Unnerved.” Orange faces Wheeler on Dynamite this week, so Moxley wants to know how he’ll deal with that. This all puts Orange over AND baits him. “I wish I was cold-blooded, but I’m not. I feel everything.” This is a terrific promo. I figure plenty of people don’t like it, but I clearly don’t like wrestling the way a lot of people do, especially when it comes to promos and angles.

• Main event video package: It’s set to “November to Remember,” like the ECW used to do but this is made with money behind it. The video package rules.

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GRADE: B

Every match delivered what it was meant to deliver, then a good Mox promo and the terrific video package as we hit the final week before Full Gear.

Three Stars of the Show

1. Shelton Benjamin: Just absolutely love watching Shelton right now. Have mentioned this but sorta forgot how much rip-roarin’ fun Shelton is outside of WWE where they had him crazy limited compared to what he can really do. You want to get into the conversation of him not winning a world title in WWE? There’s a few things there. (1) He’s not the best promo, (2) it’s WWE, and (3) they never wanted him at that level. Never truly let him be his full self. Not in the first run, not when he came back. And he cashed those good, steady checks all the same. Shelton’s WWE career was fine. But he is better basically anywhere else, and we’ve proven this repeatedly now.

2. Harley Cameron: Same reasons as said before, she’s just making so much sincere improvement. Also seems to have zero ego; I mean, not zero, everyone in wrestling has some, but she’s gung ho as hell for anything character-wise, including looking dumb. Maybe she never becomes the division’s ace, but she’s got the attitude and determination to be a player a long time.

3. Jon Moxley: I don’t think the angle is flawless or anything, but he’s doing a phenomenal job putting over the match with Orange Cassidy, the stakes of that match, and Orange himself.

1. I like current Saraya on-screen more than many do, but I wouldn’t recommend pushing her in any notable way again. Ever.

2. They can be funny in general either way, and you can accept them making the audience laugh either way, but everyone should have a clear face/heel alignment, and we’re being very clear that MxM are heels. I mean the alignment with TV could do that alone, in theory, but if there were any doubts, them interfering against Garcia puts those to bed.

3. Not being negative here. It’s part of the presentation for both and it’s not inherently a bad thing. But I am not terrified of the sensuality being part of someone’s presentation, nor do I have the tick in my brain that assumes this means they’re not good or serious.

4. We got into this a bit in comments on an AEW post last week, but say it here, too: I like Marina and love her presence in these things, but eventually she has to do something other than stand there and look cool, right? It’s very awkward in the group brawls how people have to keep stepping around her. She doesn’t have matches at all. Again, all for her being the group’s standing badass, but it’s one of those things that subverts an expectation and then does nothing more with the idea — so far.