Unless you’ve been living under a rock, or you’re anti-AEW and don’t care about what they’re doing, you would know that AEW is set to debut a brand new show this coming weekend. Collision will air every Saturday night on TNT, and one of the worst-kept secrets over the last couple of months was that AEW wanted to make the debut episode big by using it to mark the return of CM Punk.
Recently, Tony Khan decided to make it official, announcing that Punk would, indeed, be making his return to the company at Collision, with the debut episode taking place at the United Center in Chicago, Illinois. Of course, the United Center was the scene of Punk’s AEW debut back in 2021, so there’s lots of connection with the venue, the man, and the company itself.
Another rumor that has long been attached to the news of Collision’s debut was that AEW would be implementing some sort of roster split. I’ve seen one version of the rumor say that some wrestlers would be on Dynamite and Rampage, while the rest of the roster would be on Collision. However, I’ve also seen one version say that some of the wrestlers would be on Dynamite, while the others would be on Rampage and Collision. The split would be partly due to the sheer size of AEW’s roster, but also because of the seemingly endless stories of backstage drama between different wrestlers… including Mr. Punk himself.
Lord knows people have all sorts of opinions about Punk’s return. I’m pretty sick and tired of the backstage nonsense and douchebaggery, but I will be the first to admit that there’s still a ton left on the table for Punk in AEW. There are so many matches and feuds for him to have, and a lot more money to be made. If he can stay out of trouble, so to speak, then it would definitely behoove the promotion to keep him around and in a prominent spot.
As far as a roster split goes, it might initially seem like a silly idea for a relatively new company, but their roster is way too bloated. Things have been oh-so-slightly better since the purchase of Ring Of Honor, with some AEW talents becoming RoH performers, but a hard split for Collision should, in theory, make things much better. It has already been reported that Miro, Andrade El Idolo, and Thunder Rosa will be wrestling on Collision. We haven’t seen Miro or Andrade wrestle since All Out, over nine months ago. Thunder Rosa has been gone for over ten months, but that was largely due to an injury that may or may not have been legit, depending on who and what you believe about some of the aforementioned backstage drama.
Is that where the positivity ends, though?
Let’s start with when Collision will be airing on television in America… Saturday nights. That isn’t exactly a strong time for television right now. If you look at all of the top shows on television right now… comedy, drama, “unscripted” and new… none of them take place on Saturday nights. That makes perfect sense. After the average American spends 40+ hours working Monday through Friday, Saturdays are usually spent doing the things they don’t have the time to do during the week. Spending time with their significant others, their kids, other family members, their friends, going out to party, and on and on and on and on. Putting any show on Saturday night is asking a lot right off the bat.
This is where some of you are automatically thinking something along the lines of “wrestling fans are nerds and don’t have social lives, so they’ll be free to watch whatever show they want on Saturday nights.” Whether you think that’s a funny joke or not, the fact of the matter is that there’s a reason we haven’t exactly seen wrestling promotions tripping all over themselves to put their television shows on Saturday nights over the last few decades. WCW Saturday Night ended 23 years ago. The WWF had Saturday Night’s Main Event airing a few times a year from 1985-1990, then once in 1991 and twice in 1992 before bringing it back in 2006 for five total episodes over a 28-month span, but then that show hasn’t aired in almost 15 years now.
If you’re an eternal optimist, you could say that this is an advantage for AEW. If Saturday nights don’t feature any of the biggest shows on television, that might leave the door open for something like pro wrestling to shine a bit, with more chances to grab viewers. That would seem to make a ton of sense, wouldn’t it? The problem with that line of thinking is that AEW isn’t exactly bringing in tons of new viewers on a month-by-month basis for Dynamite and Rampage right now. Their television numbers are doing well enough that Warner Bros. Discovery is comfortable giving them a $1 billion rights deal, but those numbers aren’t exactly going up. Dynamite’s viewership numbers have stayed in a comfortable spot throughout 2023, but they’re down from this point last year. Rampage is also down from this point last year, and that show has been an absolute mess of being booked as a third-rate program, as well as seeing its day and time slots changed left and right due to other programming pushing them around. At this point, you could argue that AEW has the television fan base that they’re going to have, and unless some sort of major marketing push (or a change in direction as far as content goes) happens, Collision is going to see a lot of the same fans who tune in on Wednesday and Friday nights, but not much else.
Interest in AEW, as a whole, is in such a weird spot right now. If you go beyond their television numbers and look at show attendance, there are concerning things that pop out at you. On the day of many of AEW’s shows, it’s a common thing to see that there are still 25% or more of the tickets for said show still available. It’s one thing to be three-quarters full when your capacity is 20,000 people, but we’re talking about being three-quarters full when the capacity is 5,000 or less. Last week’s episode of Dynamite took place in a building where the setup was for 3,998 people. Three hours before the show began, there were still 1,094 tickets available. The numbers are even worse for AEW’s house shows, where a recent event had a setup for 3,676 people, but still had 2,140 tickets available less than 90 minutes before the show started. Those are ugly numbers, no matter what way you want to spin things.
Then, you have the other end of the scale, where the upcoming Forbidden Door pay-per-view basically sold out (less than 20 tickets remained as of about a week ago) with a setup of just under 13,000 people.
Finally, if the topic of AEW ticket sales comes up, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention All In(nit). About two weeks ago, it was revealed that the show had sold “roughly” 65,000 tickets for the show, which is so much higher than many had expected even the final numbers to be. The sales seemed to have hit a wall since then, though. In the last update I saw, the numbers went from 65,000 on May 28th to 65,563 on June 4th. 563 tickets sold in a week isn’t exactly a ton, but the show is also two-and-a-half months away, and there still aren’t any matches announced for the show. The current setup will allow for 75,000 fans. Just for fun, if 563 tickets continue to be sold every week, that would put things at about 72,300 tickets sold on the day of the show.
Take from that information whatever you want, but the numbers seem to show that big AEW events are having no problems selling tickets, but the attendance for their television shows and house shows are currently struggling. I know that I went off on a bit of a tangent there, but I’m bringing things back here. We’ve only discussed the television numbers for Saturday nights. Will having the show on Saturdays affect the ticket sales? How important will Collision be when it comes to people possibly using their one real free night of the week to attend an AEW show? The last update I’ve seen for the debut episode of Collision have about 8,200 tickets sold, with about 2,000 tickets still available. Of those 8,200 tickets, about 1,200 of them were sold after CM Punk was officially announced for the show. However, the next four episodes of Collision will all take place in different Canadian cities, and all four of those shows are seeing very slow ticket sales, even in smaller venues than the United Center. Apparently, Canadians are generally busier on Saturday nights and can’t be bothered to attend wrestling shows. I’ve seen an excuse for that being that AEW programming still doesn’t air in large portions of Canada, but then that brings up the logical question… why even go there in the first place? It doesn’t seem like the smartest of business decisions to do something like running shows in places where people literally can’t watch you on television. What happens if a small television audience is tuning in to watch Collision take place in front of half-empty arenas?
For now, though, I want you to forget about television viewership and ticket sales. Just for a brief period of time, at least. My biggest concern with Collision is that Tony Khan and his crew have yet to prove they can handle a bigger workload, and yet, they continue making said workload bigger and bigger and more complicated. When Rampage was first announced, we were given all sorts of promises and claims about how it would be just as big a show as Dynamite has been. It started off just fine. CM Punk’s return to the sport was one of pro wrestling’s biggest stories of the last decade, and it happened on the second-ever episode of Rampage. Things were going decently for a while, but then it just seemed like TK realized how much work it was to get an extra hour of television put together, so he stopped caring. Now, almost without exception, Rampage consists of matches that feature second-tier, and sometimes third-tier, wrestlers. The main events tend to be ones that would be lucky to make air on Dynamite at all. Chuck Taylor & Trent Beretta vs Big Bill & Lee Moriarty? Keith Lee vs Bishop Kaun? Alex Reynolds & John Silver vs Swerve Strickland & Brian Cage? Jungle Boy vs Shawn Spears? Anna Jay vs Julia Hart? Action Andretti vs Juice Robinson? All of those matches have taken place in the last few months. That’s an awful lineup of television main events. You’ll see title matches on Rampage, but they usually end up being the champions against people who have no shot of winning whatever title they’re going after. Next week’s episode will be the 100th in the history of Rampage, and in that time, we’ve seen exactly one title change on the show… Cody Rhodes defeating Sammy Guevara to win the TNT Championship on the Holiday Bash episode that aired on Christmas night in 2021. That’s it. For the sake of comparison, we’ve seen a whopping 22 title changes on Dynamite since December 25th, 2021. The AEW World Title alone has been won twice on Dynamite in that span. One thing that AEW does REALLY well is make Dynamite seem important on a weekly basis. So much happens on the show and you end up missing out on a lot if you miss it. You haven’t been able to say that about Rampage in a long time now.
If that’s what has happened to Rampage, why would anyone feel Collision will be any different? We’re even getting the “CM Punk returning in Chicago” boost in the early days of the show. Given his track record, I don’t have a ton of faith in Tony Khan keeping Collision interesting for more than a few months. Could a hard brand split fix that? A little. Even then, it has to be done right. It can’t be like WWE having their Drafts and loading one show up while making the other show look like the clear “B-show” for a while. Collision can’t just be CM Punk and a bunch of his buddies. There needs to be just as many “top names” on Collision as there is on Dynamite. TK and crew can figure out what to do with the eight different championships eventually, but the main focus should simply be spreading the talent around evenly.
I would love to see Collision succeed. The ideal situation for me, as a wrestling fan, is to have as many shows and promotions doing well as physically possible. A rising tide lifts all boats. Everybody should be able to find their place and be able to shine. There are definitely some major hurdles that stand in the way of that success, though. Like I said, I don’t have a lot of faith that Collision will do well in the long-term, simply based on Tony Khan’s track record. I would love for him to prove me wrong here, because I don’t want to see the December 9th episode of Collision to have Griff Garrison vs Santana in the main event spot in front of 700 people at the Fort William Gardens in Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada. Ideally, we wouldn’t even have this conversation, because there wouldn’t be a Collision show coming up, and AEW would be able to put a lot more focus into making Rampage must-see television every week, but… well… here we are.
What are your thoughts on AEW Collision? Are you excited for another two hours of televised wrestling to watch? On the other hand, are you worried about the prospects of the show, either because of the reasons I mentioned here or something else? As always, you can hit me up in the comments section below, or on Twitter (@HustleTheSavage), and let me know what’s on your mind.
Weekly Power Rankings
Kevin Owens vs Gunther: What a match. We already know that Kevin Owens isn’t quite right in the head and is more than willing to put his body through an insane amount of punishment in a match. That’s what we got here. What we also know about Kevin Owens is that he’s one of the toughest men in all of pro wrestling, capable of dishing out just as much pain and punishment as he takes. That’s what we got here. Gunther continues to look like someone who is going to be a major, major player for WWE moving forward, and he is reaching rarified air with his Intercontinental Title reign. More on that in a bit.
Seth Rollins vs Damian Priest: A really good match that allowed Priest to look like someone who could be a legit main event guy moving forward. There wasn’t exactly a lot of mystery about who would win here, but it was still a good platform for Priest. My biggest problem here had nothing to do with Rollins or Priest themselves. If WWE knew this was the match they were going with for Seth’s first World Heavyweight Title defense, why in the world would they have Rollins pin Priest in a tag match the week before? Through the years, WWE has fallen in love with the “champion gets pinned when their title isn’t on the line” trope, so that was an option in the tag match, whether we would’ve liked it or not. Or, they could’ve just had Rollins pin Finn Balor in the tag match instead. Perhaps even have Priest pin AJ Styles, giving him a major win over a multi-time World Champion.
Orange Cassidy vs Swerve Strickland: Opening match of Dynamite? Check. Another good match? Check. Another successful title defense for Orange Cassidy? Check. The AEW International Title still not meaning much because everything involving it is just randomly thrown together matches with no story or reason to truly care? Check.
Bron Breakker: He surprised the hell out of people by challenging Seth Rollins to a World Heavyweight Title match at some point soon. Sign me up for that. Barring a shocking title win for Bron, though, you have to think the match will end in some sort of shenaniganery. I’m not sure it would be the best of moves to have Bron pinned clean again, especially if he’s rumored to be heading to the main roster soon.
Alex Shelley: I still have to find some time to sit down and watch Impact’s Against All Odds event, but congratulations to Shelley on winning the Impact World Title in the show’s main event. That’s pretty cool. Shelley has been one of my favorite wrestlers of the last 20 years, so I’m happy to see him win the biggest title of his career after years spent as one-half of the Motor/Murder City Machine Guns with Chris Sabin.
Forbidden Door 2: Kenny Omega vs Will Ospreay is a Match Of The Year contender before it has even happened. Kazuchika Okada vs Bryan Danielson is a Match Of The Year contender before it has even happened. Now, we’re seeing rumors that the “feud” between CM Punk and KENTA could FINALLY be coming to the ring at Forbidden Door? That’s as solid a one-two-three punch as you’re ever going to see at a wrestling show, as far as potential match quality, if we get it. Just an incredible set of matches.
Santos Escobar vs Mustafa Ali: Here I thought Bad Bunny was the only member of the LWO that could win a match. In all seriousness, though, it’s almost weird to see Escobar winning a match of any type, let alone one that qualifies him for a major pay-per-view match. This was the first time he won a televised singles match since the first episode of Smackdown in 2023. That was five months ago! He has now been involved in two straight wins on television. He hasn’t done that since November 2022.
Chuck Taylor, Trent Beretta & Rocky Romero vs Jon Moxley, Claudio Castagnoli & Wheeler Yuta: Another match with absolutely no drama surrounding who would emerge victorious, but it was still fun, and the crowd enjoyed it. Sometimes, that’s all that matters in this wacky world of pro wrestling.
Gunther: He has officially reached the one-year mark as the Intercontinental Champion. When I post this column, he will be celebrating his 367th day as champion, making this the fifth-longest Intercontinental Title reign of all-time. If he makes it to June 30th, he will pass Don Muraco for fourth-place. July 30th will see him pass Randy Savage on the list. August 9th will see him pass Pedro Morales. September 8th will see him pass The Honky Tonk Man for the longest reign ever. As Fightful’s Sean Ross Sapp pointed out on Twitter, Monday Night Raw takes place in Memphis, Tennessee on August 28th this year. Memphis, of course, is the kayfabe home of The Honky Tonk Man. It could be fun to see HTM make an appearance on Raw for an interaction with Gunther, only to see Gunther cave Honky’s chest in with a chop. Plot twist… HTM shows up on Raw that week and defeats Gunther to win the title, keeping his all-time reign at the top of the list.
Shinsuke Nakamura vs Ricochet: It was a fun match, as expected, but it was more of a vehicle to allow Bronson Reed to get some of his heat back after losing to Nakamura the week before. That’s fine with me in this instance. I was surprised to see Reed lose so early in what seemed like a push for him, so I’m down to see a rematch with Nakamura, a match with Ricochet, a Triple Threat, or whatever else they can come up with.
Chris Sabin: Unlike Alex Shelley, Sabin has had plenty of singles success, especially in Impact. In 2013, he won the TNA World Title, and with his win at Against All Odds, he is now a nine-time X-Division Champion. Nobody else in the history of the title has more than seven reigns as champion. It has been a while since his last reign, though. His eighth reign ended in January 2014, but he’s still proving that he has a lot left in the tank. When you add his three Tag Team Title reigns (all with Shelley), a Super X Cup win, two World X Cup wins (one with Christopher Daniels, Jerry Lynn and Elix Skipper, and one with Shelley, Jay Lethal and Sonjay Dutt), and a Gauntlet For The Gold win (with Shelley), and Sabin has somewhat quietly put together one of the best and most decorated careers in company history.
Penta El Zero Miedo, Rey Fenix & Bandido vs Ethan Page, Big Bill & Lee Moriarty: I’ve been tough on Big Bill in my columns through the years, but I will gladly admit that it’s cool to see him in the best shape of his career these days. He’s putting in some really good work, too, and just seems like he’s in a much better place mentally. Those demons were really beating him down for a while, to the point where there was some major concern about him becoming another sad statistic in wrestling history. I’m glad that he has worked hard to try and distance himself from those demons as much as possible.
Trick Williams vs Baron Corbin: NXT’s plan to build Trick Williams up continues on, and continues on in a strong fashion. Whether he wins his matches or not, he looks better and better all the time, and he keeps getting chances to cut strong promos, which were already his specialty. He is looking like a lot more than just “Carmelo Hayes’ sidekick” these days, and his future appears to be super bright.
Katana Chance & Kayden Carter vs Ronda Rousey & Shayna Baszler: Chance and Carter continue their hot streak, putting in another good performance. Their in-ring chemistry is so strong after what seemed like a bit of a slow start when they first started teaming up. I don’t think they’re going to have a difficult time getting over on the main roster.
Amanda Nunes: She is the greatest female mixed martial artist of all-time, and has a strong claim to being the greatest of all-time, regardless of gender. On July 9th, 2016, she won the UFC Women’s Bantamweight Title, and she held it until December 11th, 2021, giving her a 1,981-day reign, which is the fourth-longest reign of any championship in UFC history. She would win the Bantamweight Title back on July 30th, 2022 and held it until this past weekend, when she retired after a successful title defense. Oh, and by the way, she was also the UFC Women’s Featherweight Champion, winning that title on December 29th, 2018 and holding it until her retirement. That was a 1,626-day reign, which is good for sixth-longest of any championship in UFC history. Shortly before retiring from MMA, she was doing an interview with the New York Post where she mentioned being interested in a WWE run one day if the money was right. Should we view it as oddly convenient that she retired from MMA almost immediately after throwing that out there into the world? WWE would make a ton of noise if they brought her in, even for one match. Just for fun, here’s something worth mentioning, as WWE could easily make mention of this for an on-screen match/feud… Amanda Nunes had 16 wins as a fighter in the UFC. Of those 16, one came against… Shayna Baszler… while another one came against… Ronda Rousey. I’m just saying.
Hook & “Jungle Boy” Jack Perry vs Preston Vance & Dralistico: Hook has now wrestled in 33 matches for AEW, with 25 of them coming on television or pay-per-view. He has been the FTW World Champion since July 27th, 2022. It’s pretty amazing that he still hasn’t wrestled a long match. I’m not saying he should be putting on 45-minute performances regularly, but he’s still being protected a ton, 18 months after making his in-ring debut. He has been participating in tag matches that are going longer, which is a good start, but I’m thinking we should be getting close to the time where he is truly unleashed if he’s even remotely close to being ready.
The Creed Brothers & Ivy Nile vs The Dyad & Ava: Okay, so perhaps this match is only on the list for the stuff involving the men. I like Ivy Nile’s potential for the future, but Ava simply isn’t ready to be on television right now, no matter who her father is. I’m not saying Rock pushed to get her on-screen before she was ready, but I wouldn’t be surprised if NXT put her on-screen before she was ready because she’s The Rock’s daughter. If you remember, it was reported that WWE was looking to trim the fat, so to speak, in NXT, saying that talent at the Performance Center were going to have about two years to be ready for television or they would be released. A little over two-and-a-half years after reporting to the Performance Center, Ava made her on-screen debut. We’re coming up on eight months since that debut, and she has wrestled once on television (this match), once on pay-per-view (Stand & Deliver), and once at an NXT house show. From what we’ve seen, it sure seems like she’s got a long way to go, but perhaps they can get something out of the charisma in her DNA and make her more of a permanent fixture as a manager or whatever you call her role in The Schism right now.
Becky Lynch vs Sonya Deville: On one hand, I’m happy to see Sonya Deville work a longer match and look strong in it, because she has been underutilized for a while now. However, on the other hand, it took Becky Lynch… one of the best women to ever step foot in a wrestling ring… over 11 minutes to defeat someone who hasn’t won a singles match in over three years. That’s not hyperbole. The last time she won a singles match was during her feud with Mandy Rose, when she would eventually go on to lose a “Loser Leaves WWE” match so that she could take a hiatus to handle her real-life legal situation after she was nearly kidnapped by a stalker. It’s strange to go from not winning a singles match in over three years to pushing Becky Lynch to the limit seemingly overnight. We’ll see how the follow up goes, I guess.
WWE Unifying Their Women’s Tag Team Titles: It really has been all downhill since Sasha Banks and Bayley dropped the WWE Women’s Tag Team Titles to Nia Jax and Shayna Baszler at Payback 2020. Just a bunch of poorly booked and poorly performed title reigns featuring randomly thrown together teams of singles wrestlers. The NXT Women’s Tag Team Titles shouldn’t have been created in the first place, as fans wanted to see Dakota Kai and Raquel Gonzalez win the main roster belts in early-2021, and the reigns for that title have largely been forgettable, as well. Go ahead and combine them. It’s time. Whatever.
Gable Steveson: He says that his “time” to debut as a pro wrestler is “coming sooner than a lot of people think.” We’re coming up on two years since he signed with WWE in the first place, so… the clock is ticking, apparently. I’m anxious to see what he can do in the ring.
This Week’s Playlist: “Life Is Beautiful” by Thirty Seconds To Mars… “THE MASK” by Extreme… “THICKER THAN BLOOD” by Extreme… “SAVE ME” by Extreme… “Lost Without You” by Throw The Fight… “Forgive & Forget” by The Raven Age… “DOOMED TO DISAPPEAR” by Elyne… “The Art Of Dispute” by The Silenced… “Looking Through Patient Eyes” by P.M. Dawn… “I’d Die Without You” by P.M. Dawn… “Set Adrift On Memory Bliss” by P.M. Dawn… “I Can’t Wait” by Sleepy Brown & Outkast… “I Wanna Be Down (Remix)” by Brandy, Queen Latifah, MC Lyte & Yo-Yo… “Tonite” by DJ Quik… “Hand In Hand” by DJ Quik, 2nd II None & El DeBarge… “You’z A Ganxta” by DJ Quik… “Eyes Of A Panther” by Steel Panther… “This Time” by Rebel Souljahz… “Prince Charming” by Rebel Souljahz… “One Way” by Rebel Souljahz