Review: AEW Collision (9-21-2024)

Collision was LIVE from Springfield, Mass.!

I’m gonna be honest, I plum forgot Collision on a busy (for me) weekend. So here we are, getting this in just ahead of Raw!

Matt Taven & Mike Bennett vs Sammy Guevara & Dustin Rhodes (c)

ROH Tag Team Championship

Guevara and Rhodes out first because this company doesn’t respect tradition and this title is pretty much fake at this point. Taven and Bennett are “from this area”! This is a bunkhouse match so it’s tornado rules and there’s shit all over the place. Rhodes and Guevara are in bunkhouse attire, Taven and Bennett are not.

Bennett gets busted open pretty early. Crowd’s fairly hot, this is a good call to open the show, weapons and blood and brawling, different sorts of fan favorites in Dustin and Sammy, the latter of whom for some reason a lot of people do like.

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Taven hits a wild dive where he tackles Guevara off Bennett’s shoulders on the floor, that one pretty much guarantees at least one rough landing, likely to get two. There’s a TASER! Bennett gets backdropped on the ramp. Dustin BULLDOGS TAVEN OFF THE RAMP through a table covered in barbed wire!

Now this is what I call a good time. More people have definitely come around to understanding how great Dustin is, now we work on getting more of those people to realize Goldust mostly fucking stunk. We can do it if we all work together.

Guevara bumps from a ladder out to the floor through a table. This is a pretty fucking insane match to open Collision for a title nobody much cares about. Dustin bloody, Bennett and Taven both bloody. HEY! This RULES! You can generally count on all these guys to deliver — I don’t like Guevara, but he gives his fans what they want to see him do, he doesn’t lack for effort — and they are delivering. Cowbell! “That’ll cut you,” Tony says as the bleeding man hits two bleeding men with it.

Dustin really getting to shine, and saying that is as much saying Bennett and Taven are fantastic in this match. They get a long 2-on-1 period that Dustin mostly dominates until he doesn’t, when Guevara emerges. He’s not bleeding because he’s a wuss. Dustin wraps some barbed wire around his boot and hits Shattered Dreams on Bennett. Guevara finishes with a swanton off the ladder on Bennett. Loved this. Wasn’t a MOTY or whatever but I really loved this. ***¾

• Backstage: Lexy is with O’Reilly, Briscoe, and their pal Hologram. The Premier Athletes interrupt. It’s the usual shtick. Oh, Rocky Romero is also a friends with the Conglomeration, and he will accompany them to counter Mark Sterling later.

• Backstage: Evil Uno and the longhair Dark Order guy are with Lexy. Evil Uno is confused why nobody is taking him seriously against Darby. Because you’re Kennesaw State and Darby’s preparing for Alabama, dog. But Allin interrupts to warn these guys that Moxley’s crew are bringing a war on all of AEW and encourages them to stop being jokes. He wants the best of Uno tonight. He sees them COLLECTING PAYCHECKS! This sort of thing becoming more common in AEW storylines, and fair enough, since, well, y’know.

Premier Athletes vs Hologram, Kyle O’Reilly & Mark Briscoe

Yes, this is a good match. Nese, like Garagano and Ciampa in WWE, has been doing really good work that even I, a Hater, must acknowledge. He’s found a great role for himself; I think he’s become a terrific Mike Jackson.

Briscoe gets a hoot of a hot tag. He pins Woods with the Jay Driller. If I were the Premier Athletes I would stop trying to beat these guys. ***

• Backstage: MxM Collection continue picking their fight with The Acclaimed. They gave Caster’s jacket a makeover. I actually prefer watching these guys wrestle to these promos, which have one note. We don’t see the jacket yet. THE JACKEEEEEEEET

Lady Frost vs Mariah May

Oh good. An “eliminator.” We have to call them that because “non-title” would be boring, I guess. The fact that it adds nothing and nobody ever wins their “eliminator” shot hasn’t dawned on anyone yet, I guess.

We get a roll-up with Mariah distracted by making Nigel horny up in commentary. Then more roll-ups. None of them work. Mariah gets some offense. Frost gets a bit more. Frost is always a crucial half-step slower than she imagines herself to be, sort of a Naomi deal with her. Anyway Mariah wins.

• Backstage: Lexy is with Willow Nightingale, her first appearance since All Out. Standard Willow promo. She’s inspired by Yuka Sakazaki. Here are Deonna Purrazzo and Taya Valkyrie. They’re a new partnership. Deonna is offering Yuka Sakazaki protection at Grand Slam. This is, I don’t know, OK. Taya offers to face Willow at Grand Slam but Willow has a better idea and one that makes more sense for Taya’s station in life: They should wrestle TONIGHT and it will air NEXT WEEK on RAMPAGE, which nobody WATCHES!

• Backstage: The Acclaimed and Billy Gunn are here. Caster starts “rapping” about MxM and I FF. I do not care, brother. Take this 2021 shit back to 2021.

Evil Uno vs Darby Allin

I’m kind of finding “fired up Evil Uno kicking Darby’s ass” a little insulting, to be honest. Dog, I know that is just Evil Uno. I’m not even saying it’s bad, it’s just an empty effort.

Alex Reynolds (that’s his name!) gets hit with a Darby dive and whacked with a belt. Lotta belt whacking on this show. Uno empty pools an attempt at a cannonball off the apron and gets hit with a Coffin Drop tackle. And then back in for the Coffin Drop splash for the finish. **½

• Backstage last Wednesday: Renee Paquette is with the Jarretts. Jeff is SICK OF IT! Renee speaks to Karen “wife-to-wife.” Jeff does not CARE what Karen has to say! He is sticking to his vow to kick Hangman Page’s ass, and he intends to do it at Grand Slam. He proposes a lumberjack strap match. That’s the LAST OUTLAW’S WAY! Eight guys outside the ring, the guys that Hangman apparently plans to take out on his time-killing path of redemption. Jarrett has HAD IT with Page’s deranged ass and ego. He’s taking it OLD TIME! Memphis style, baby!

Serena Deeb vs Queen Aminata

Deeb has too much shit in her entrance presentation. It just looks like someone without any natural charisma trying to hard to manufacture some and nobody cares. At least she doesn’t have the scarf this week, just the robe and the stupid flag.

Starting to really get a clear picture why when I got even a little busy I forgot Collision exists for two days. This is fine, as most of the show is fine. The first pre-commersh bit is so uninspired, I mean, AEW has a habit of doing this with match “structure,” where you’re just trying to get to the first break and then you’ll start having your match — WWE usually just goes to the first break so fast nobody really has to do much of anything — and this time it’s Deeb grabbing a hole for what felt like most of that portion.

Then more holds. She is a real holdsmaster. And eventually Aminata hits the comeback, which the more you see Aminata on TV, she kinda has the one match she does at the moment. I don’t think that’s all that she can do, even adjusting her for TV format, but I’m saying maybe let’s mix ‘er up a smidge here and there. But I like watching her, I think she has huge potential, and Deeb continues to be Deeb, a real technician. At least Aminata’s rally offense is good, anyway.

As this wears on I get more into it. Physical, a little ugly in a good way at moments. God, if Deeb had ANY actual charisma — anyway, she wins with Detox. Gotta give Deeb the occasional win so she can get another title program at some point. ***

• Backstage: Saraya and Harley Cameron discuss “Saraya’s Rules” which is the ruleset for her match against Jamie Hayter at Grand Slam. Cameron is good here. It’s a setup for Saraya being able to do whatever she wants in a match and the opponent cannot do anything unusual. Except hammerlocks. Nobody can do hammerlocks. Harley eats the paper she reads from.

• Backstage: Gueavara and Rhodes are with Lexy now. Sammy wants an “eliminator match” against Kazuchika Okada on Dynamite, and if he wins, he wants his shot at Okada’s belt at the five-year anniversary of Dynamite. Dustin wants me to like Sammy Guevara. I will not.

Roderick Strong, The Beast Mortos, Rush, Grizzled Young Veterans vs FTR, The Outrunners & Hook

As this is a 25-minute Collision main event super-tag, I’m going to just say a few things, because ultimately the match is just there to be a match that you hope is good action and that’s it, they’re not even really TEWWING ME A STOWWWYYYY (they haven’t spelled it out blatantly enough for me):

• After all this time, Hook still isn’t actually any good. You can like him, I’m not telling you what to do, I’m saying he isn’t any good and he’s almost stubbornly refusing to progress. Certainly not entirely his fault, but I mean, compare him to Dominik Mysterio in a similar situation for starting and learning on the job on major TV, be honest, and tell me who’s better and has the higher career projection. Even if you handicap that Dominik has a year of experience on him, the bigger thing is Dominik has worked far more matches and been able to build a skill set, which still has its own limitations but he covers nicely for them. Hook is still, mostly, doing a Taz impression, and I gotta be So For Real here: He ain’t Taz. He can’t talk like Taz, and being taller and leaner than Taz is not a positive in an attempt to be Taz. He still bumps and sells like it’s his first month in wrestling school -OR- like he’s built like the Warlord. It’s been three years. Samoa Joe’s January carry job was a master at work. Roddy Strong has the ability to do that with him, too, perhaps, but it’s worth considering that as great as Strong is, he does not have Joe’s aura.

• Outrunners are doing their absolute best to take the ball and run with it. They are the most “keeping it simple, stupid” in-ring act in major wrestling in years, but you can also see they’ve tried to get really good at that style, and they mix in just a little more “modern” offense, too.

• I could watch Dax Harwood and Beast Mortos hit each other all day. Not literally. Please don’t book a Dax vs Mortos All Day Match.

• GYV have made about the impression they can early on in this AEW run, honestly. They were brought in claiming to be a big deal and got quickly humbled a bit, basically. Which is fine. Going from there they’re going to be a Beverly Brothers-level threat, I suspect.

• Rush can be the most purely entertaining in-ring guy to watch on this entire roster when he feels like it, and it doesn’t really matter if his opponent feels like it.

• It’s a good match. I have time for matches like this, I know some people do not, and I get that. But I love the vibe of a big all-star tag like this. I love seeing all these MFs standing on the apron.

• Really gonna need FTR vs Rush and Mortos at some point. Rush and Mortos just beat the crap out of Dax at one point, it rules.

Oh! That’s the ending. Rush and Mortos beat the crap out of Dax and beat him. We WILL get FTR vs Rush and Mortos. Dax got THE HORNS, motherfucker! ***¼

• Backstage: A Serena Deeb promo. Great. Her truest strength, talking into a camera by herself, with all that screen presence of hers. She hopes that Dr. Baker is “down” to “get her ass beat” at the fifth anniversary of Dynamite in Pittsburgh.

• Main event promo: Nigel continuing his call-outs of Danielson. Tony Schiavone gets involved to interrupt Nigel’s trash talking of Danielson and stress that Danielson is not cleared to wrestle, it’s not that he’s afraid of Nigel. We’ll find out at Grand Slam! It would honestly be extremely funny if they don’t do the match. Nigel says if it were anyone else “spitting on his soul” he wound knock them out. Nigel goes back to a final call-out, and it gets much better at the end of the promo. This is a man driven by both fury and envy. He’s equally as close to breaking down crying as he is to attacking someone. A very “ROH 2008” promo in a lot of ways. Lots of sneering and Big Line attempts.

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GRADE: B-

Not a great show but we’re judging Collision as Collison here, and it was Collision-y. Borderline excellent opener and a fun main event.

Three Stars of the Show

1. Dustin Rhodes: You know, they call him the Natural, because he’s natural as can be. They call him the Natural, because it just comes naturally. And you may not know this, but he’s the son of a son and the son of a gun. So his mother was actually a gun!! But yes Dustin was excellent again tonight. I wish we had another decade of Dustin to come, but appreciate him while he’s here.

2. Matt Taven and Mike Bennett: Wrestling’s most under-appreciated great tag team of the last decade strikes again. Who would have thought! Me, I suppose.

3. Rush: He did Rush shit in the main event and Rush’d all over the FTRs. I am dying for that Collision main event to come. If they really go for it, FTR vs Rush/Mortos might be a true and genuine “banger,” and not just a “this match is as good as four other matches on TV this week” banger.