Review: AEW Collision (6-29-2024)
Collision was TAPED days ago in Buffalo!
It’s gonna be a busy day here on this … “newsletter,” as I’ve got this to catch up with, June’s Classic Review will hit shortly, and then Forbidden Door is tonight, which will be back on the “live” tip, with the review going up minutes after the show ends.
On that note, if this next-morning review of a taped Collision feels a little skimmed by me, well, then, let me tell you something: Yes, basically.
Shane Haste & Robbie Eagles vs Orange Cassidy & Tomohiro Ishii
Cassidy faces TMDK leader Zack Sabre Jr at Forbidden Door so here we have a total nothing reaction to Haste and Eagles to get this started, but they’ll get there, having Orange there helps. Eventually noise will be made.
Maybe not, actually. The match is mechanically solid and all that. Orange working house show-y. Nigel can’t help but point out how stupid it is for Ishii to get a hot tag and then so quickly tag back to the guy who spent all that time getting his ass kicked, but it’s wrestling so it works out fine for long enough before the match has to go another, different way. Orange pins Eagles. ***
Here’s a video package wherein Hangman Adam is an alcoholic again. I think this runs an incredibly high risk of sucking, not because an explorative character study of a man struggling with disappointments, addictions, and an inability to hold things together can’t be great Storytelling material, but because this is professional wrestling and 99 percent of the time, everyone is really quite bad at Storytelling when you start comparing their work to anything but other wrestling, which is why generally it’s advisable to not get terribly serious about much of anything. What’s lucky for wrestling writers/bookers/whatever is that so much of the audience really doesn’t wander outside this space and similar lower-tier spaces in other media, so they start thinking the original “Bloodline” run is, like, prestige TV.
Backstage, Jericho walks with Bi Bill and Bryan Keith. I continue to apologize, but Jericho’s delivery — and Bill’s — is really funny with this shit. My punishment for acknowledging this is sometimes Jericho still has to be in matches and that sucks.
Lady Frost vs Stephanie Vaquer
Hey, they managed to get Vaquer in for a match that airs a day before her PPV match. Mercedes sits in a pretty nice office chair at ringside, out by the entrance. I suspect the positioning will play into the action.
Mercedes is going to talk a lot but that’s just how these Hollywood people are. She’s “in Star Wars,” as you may well know. Surely you know. If you don’t know, give her a day or two and her small role on “The Mandalorian” will be brought up again, probably by her.
Vaquer and Frost do fight out by Mercedes, but no physical involvement yet. Mone vocally rooting for Frost to “soften her up” ahead of Forbidden Door. “I really like Stephanie Vaquer,” Nigel says. Me too, Nigel. Vaquer wins with a package backbreaker. This was about getting Vaquer out once in an AEW ring to further set up the FD match, and Frost got to be competitive enough. ***
Post-match, Mone and Vaquer stare it down, but Vaquer dips. Then Zeuxis returns to attack Mone from behind. Best news I heard all day. Mone gets the better of that, but Vaquer comes in and lays her out with a superkick. One thing Excalibur figures is if you call it a “thrust kick,” it’s not the 17,000th person doing a superkick.
Backstage, Penta and Fenix are here. They are joined by Hiromu Takahashi and Titan. Anyway, the announcement the Lucha Bros were trying to make is that they’d have Mistico as part of their trios team for Saturday’s prelims show. This sends Hiromu — who will team with Titan and Yota Tsuji against that trio — into what sort of appears to be a terror, but in fact Hiromu is super excited to wrestle against Mistico.
Serena Deeb vs Kelly Madan
Alright man I know it’s not 1998 anymore and that “go-home shows” are not what they used to be, nor do they generally need to be, but brother there HAD TO HAVE BEEN a better way to use this time than a goddamn Serena Deeb squash
Oh my GOD she’s doing a PROMO after the match TOO. Does she have something on Tony or somebody? Why are we doing this? Why are we having her get on a mic and go, “I know I lost the big match as always, and then a couple other big matches after, but I REFUSE!!!!!!!” and so on, like, who cares? Ah, she’s “the best” BELL TO BELL IN THIS RING, etc. You’d think she’d win a notable match once in a while if that were the case. We gotta stop letting every third wrestler claim to be “the best.” She issues a challenge for someone on her level. She gets Riho, who gets a nice reaction from the percentage of the audience who remember when they liked AEW better.
Backstage, Jericho makes a fellow go wash his hands after using the toilet.
Backstage after break, Jericho teaches Bill and Keith about Zambonis. Jericho opens a door and finds Samoa Joe, Hook, and Katsuyori Shibata, so now we have a brawl. That spills out to the ring in time. Here comes Jeff Cobb! He throws Hook like the tiny child he is. Shibata gets thrown. AW FUCK IT’S COBB AND JOE DOING THE BIG FELLA STARE. They go toe-to-toe. Cobb slams the shit out of Joe with ease. Well, Jericho’s found his trios partner for Saturday.
Backstage after break, Orange Cassidy is with Lexy Nair. It’s a good promo, Orange stepping outside of his usual zone and showing a bubbling anger because he feels Zack Sabre doesn’t respect him. Sabre does show up and says he actually does respect Orange, which is why he challenged him. Sabre believes he has gotten into Orange’s head, and may be right.
Hechicero vs Kevin Blackwood
Hechicero gets to show off some of his technical wizardry and Blackwood is a good foil for that. Squash.
Backstage with Lexy, it’s The Patriarchy. Christian says they’re focused on the trios title. So I guess he’s kinda given up on that Swerve rematch. Speaking of, here are the Bang Bang Gang. Jay White lays down his stuff, and Christian just lets him run through it, no interruptions or anything, just holding his presence for White to bounce this off. “Your new wife and dinosaur” got me.
The Butcher vs Daniel Garcia
This is “The Battle of Buffalo,” because these guys are from Buffalo, and this show is in Buffalo. This is an enjoyable local novelty. Butcher, in control, does the Dan-ce, which fires Garcia up but not for long.
It’s a Butcher match that Garcia has to work with, not vice versa, and that’s usually what the idea should be in a matchup like this. Garcia with a nasty short piledriver for the win. Allie Katch’s influence strikes again. ***
Backstage, Lexy Nair is with Will Ospreay. Will, is it personal with you and Swerve? Yeah, but no. Great stuff. Here’s Don Callis and the Family. Ospreay again does not want any help from the lads. Except then he wants help from one lad, Kyle Fletcher, because Swerve will have his crew at the “weigh-in.” Who? Prince Nana? Ospreay’s worried about Prince Nana? Callis gives his blessing for Kyle to go with Ospreay. But now here’s Rush. And then we go to commercial.
After break, Lexy is with Jack Perry. He doesn’t want to be in this trios match tonight. Here’s Christopher Daniels, who tells Jack that if he withdraws from tonight’s match, he’s out of the FD ladder match.
Owen Hart Foundation Cup
Deonna Purrazzo vs Hikaru Shida
The perfunctory early moments lead to a nice Shida dive and Purrazzo focusing on Shida’s arm after. Shida’s scrapping keeps her in the match and gives her the chance to get past the arm work, though she has to use the bad arm for clotheslines. She could not do clotheslines, perhaps, but clotheslines are a thing she does, so here we are. The wrestler’s dilemma.
Tournament format sees both angling for a finish because they have to not only win to move on, but would prefer to not move on with an injury, although the layout for this tournament allows normal wrestling recovery time, really. They do a sudden pin finish with Shida landing her kick and advancing. Good return for Shida and I think they picked the right winner. ***
Post-match, Deonna attacks Shida before Thunder Rosa runs in. The Deonna vs Thunder war of 2024 is NOT OVER.
AEW have done too good a job with this Jeff Jarrett tournament angle for him to not at least make the fun to the finals. Old time Tony Khan really loved setting up inspirational stuff and then breaking hearts with the booking, which can be good, but I really think you gotta send Jarrett to the final. You could argue that makes the tournament final too predictable, I guess, because we all know quite well that Jarrett is not doing the world title match at Wembley, but if you do it right people will lose themselves in that moment and predictability won’t matter. Most wrestling is predictable, it’s in the execution of that predictability.
After break, Toni Storm is standing on glass in her bare feet, for perverts. It’s Toni shtick, which is also mainly for perverts. The character and everything surrounding the character is about as blatantly for perverts as anything has been on TV wrestling in forever. I’m talking perverts, not “horny” people.
Jack Perry, El Phantasmo & Konosuke Takeshita vs Lio Rush, Dante Martin & Mark Briscoe
Callis on commentary says Phantasmo is “one of the great young Canadians.” The man is 37. I’m not saying that’s old in the world or in wrestling, it isn’t, but it’s not “young” in this context either. One of the things that rules about Rush’s speed and the unique way he employs it is that it helps him run full speed into something like Takeshita kicking him in the face.
The Lio/Dante/Briscoe side have fine teamwork, the other not so much. Takeshita rudely tagged Phantasmo in which gets returned later, Perry’s not interested in being here at all.
Perry does a good job being very annoying but usefully so, in terms of keeping his team from losing. Not so much helping them win, but doing a bit to help them not lose. It also keeps him largely out of the way. Takeshita pins Dante with the big knee. Fun Collision-style main event. ***¼
Post-match, Perry hits Takeshita with the TNT belt, Phantasmo lays out Perry, Rush lays out Phantasmo, Rush and Dante — look, everyone wants to hold the belt. Like, literally, physically just hold it. Briscoe hits his partners with a ladder then dives from the top of the ladder in the ring down to everyone on the floor.
Swerve vs Ospreay weigh-in
lol fuck off. no. have fun and all but I specifically am not watching this shit
Ends with Ospreay laying Swerve out to repay the kindness from last time they met up.
GRADE: B-
Solid throughout, nothing more and nothing less. Well sometimes a bit less, I suppose. Even though it did not turn out to be CM Punk & Friends for very long, Collision still has managed to find its own identity. It’s not an identity that is going to get a ton of people to watch AEW on a Saturday night, but it seems to be enough people for everyone to be happy enough with it all. A lot of the dumbs operate under the idea that anyone involved with AEW, including WBD, have the expectation that AEW can or could equal WWE viewership. They can’t and won’t, other than WWE making otherworldly errors with their own branding or hitting a level of terrible quality never before seen in professional wrestling, and neither thing is going to happen because their whole shit is reduced to science at this point. They won’t be able to fuck up badly enough.
Anyway I don’t have a point, I’m just rambling.
Three Stars of the Show
Stephanie Vaquer: It won’t actually have any impact on the “buyrate” or someone’s intention to order the show or not, but it was good to get Vaquer a competitive showcase match on AEW TV before Sunday night, and for anyone who does care, yes, she looked good enough to be a threat to Mercedes if you suspend disbelief.
Konosuke Takeshita: Debated going with him or Phantasmo. Briscoe and Lio Rush and Dante Martin all did good work, too, and so did Perry in a different way, but I’m going with Takeshita.
Mark Briscoe: We once again employ the Mark Briscoe Rule, which states that if there are not three standout performances — in some way or another! — on a show during which Mark Briscoe gets to be Mark Briscoe, then Mark Briscoe gets the third slot.