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Minoru Suzuki vs Edge next week is like something out of a fever dream.

IMHO, the laddermatch jumped the shark when it became a McGuffin for crazy dives and stunts, rather than two guys beating the shit out of each other with a ladder. I think cage matches have generally jumped the shark too. The purpose of a cage is to keep interference out, and keep the wrestlers in. Now, the sole purpose of the cage is for them to get out of it so there can be a brawl on the outside (or a crazy dive off the cage). I want cage matches where they beat each other bloody inside the cage. Sammartino-style escape-the-cage matches I don't like to begin with, as it makes no sense from a psychology standpoint; "I want to get this guy 1-on-1 in a cage, so I can then run away from him!!!"

Rankings are coming back, starting this month. let’s fuckin go.

I'll say this, I'm far more likely to set aside time to watch live than I would have otherwise because I know it's happening because of the sheer novelty of the match. Advertising novelties is a bigger thing than trying to do a shock factor of surprises every show because - as ECW found out - eventually if the fans expect a surprise every show, it's not a surprise, and they'll be disappointed if they don't get a surprise.

I think they are realizing that having 50% or more of your card unannounced until the afternoon of the show may be hurting ticket sales.

This is how I know I go to a "serious man's gym" I haven't seen any kids trying to lift with Crocs on. That's insane to me. Tony Atlas' photographer? Also, I am disappointed they didn't have Juice's pic on a cardboard box for the obvious Juice Box joke.

When WWF was part of the NWA and therefore Flair was above Backlund

How have we not had a Bunkhouse Stampede featuring all the hosses on the AEW roster only for it to be won by Orange Cassidy dressed as Woody from Toy Story?

Not sure when the ladder match jumped the shark but it absolutely has. Easily the worst thing of AEW is it's penchant for throwing guys out there in a multi man ladder match with the lowest stakes imaginable and telling them to go kill themselves despite almost all of them resulting in some form of serious injury. No rhyme or reason for these matches, just one spot lined up after another, just competing for a Sonic ring or a non descript shot at a mid card title at some point in the future, that they mostly go on to lose. Don't like that in WWE they became so entrenched in the main event scene because it was easy to move titles around with guys not having to take a clean pin on PPV, and subsequently most of the finished were tainted. Jeff/Taker was a favourite of mine. The first Shawn/Razor holds up against most of them thirty years later. Triple H/Rock was pretty good too. A recent one that was enjoyable was AOP vs DIY on an NXT PPV that gave the underdogs a decent shot in theory against the monster challengers who just wore everything they could throw at them and ran over the top. By contrast, I really love the Pure Title stipulations and wish that was used as a regular stipulation on TV, where guys can absolutely benefit from taking losses with an asterisk when their rope breaks run out.

My only complaint about tonight's Collision is The Righteous being apart of the FTGarcia-HOB pull apart. Why would they care about order? Splendid show otherwise.

I think the draw isn't even Suzuki himself so much as the insane once-in-a-lifetime notion of watching Adam Copeland against an entirely alien opponent to him. You can sort of imagine what Copeland vs Hobbs or Copeland vs Jay White or Copeland vs Max Caster looks like. What the hell is Copeland vs Suzuki going to be? In general, I respect the Dynamite Card Copeland vs Suzuki Jeff Hardy vs Swerve Adam Page vs PENTA Mogul Embassy vs Acclaimed/Gunn Wardlow vs Trent But these are not the opponents to get me to like Penta, Page, Swerve, or Trent matches so it's very much not for me. I am glad that it is very much for some others though.

That is going to give me a lot of (good) trouble for the next few years at the rate of 3 matches a month.

Pr…pretending…?

Not much to add, another solid night of wrestling action and FIGHTS~!! Not that he has many singles matches, but apparently I had totally missed that Matthews had been coming out to "Eyes Adjust" by Twitching Tongues. Cool cool cool. For the uninitiated, TT's singer is Colin Young, who's also the drummer/main songwriter for God's Hate. Colin has also helped put together themes for Julia Hart and Kings of The Black Throne, and was a part of that wonderful Ass Boys theme a lil while back. Dynamite looks stacked, this has been a damn fine run for AEW since we got past the MJF/Devil nonsense.

My favorite gimmick match to announce is an Iron Man match because it has a scoreboard and clock like other sports, leading to lots of great psychology and strategy. I announced Punk vs. Daniels for IWC, but the audio got messed up. I was happy when I was asked to announce the whole thing again! Best one I ever called was Danielson vs. Doug Williams in the main event of Scramble Madness.

I suppose I didn't mean in the classic sports sense (see Win-Loss record). She feels like she's being positioned thru hard knocks. Getting time and offense in, building to the wins. It's the house style with new or younger talent (see Darby, Sammy, etc.)

He exposed the business by revealing that he was a man and not a shark on a 1996 episode of Nitro.

Holy hell, what a week of wrestling on AEW! Collision was pretty insane! Looks like next week won't be any different! Copeland complained that veterans don't take him up on the challenge and next week he gets Suzuki! Good progression there! Main event and Garcia vs Matthews were the highlights for me, but Sydal being awesome, opener and Copen Challenge were all good stuff! Amanata is really getting some exposure here, too. Match against Rosa was decent enough for sure!

Yep! Tony is still reading! We see you lurkin', Coach! - Mox/Taylor was pretty mean. It could have been a wash but Shane refused to stay down and kept turning the tables, very literally when he tried the lariat and had to spin and nail Moxley with a southpaw version, which was vicious. He definitely stood his ground and looked like a threat. Mox says "I am very very mad", I says "When aren't you?" Unfortunately nobody came out to challenge him. - Didn't watch a lot of Edge/Dante but what I did was alright (predicted this one too!). The spear out of the air was cool. Edge calling the crossface "the Grindhouse" is silly to me, very WWE, but not even they made anybody not say "crossface". Edge vs. Minoru Suzuki is something I don't think anyone ever thought about, asked for, wanted, imagined. But it's here, and I'm sure it is gonna be wild. - Rosa and Aminata was... well, it started pretty clunky. They were okay when they stopped trying to be all fast and elaborate and just laid into each other. After the strikes started coming it picked up. Rosa doesn't need to front-roll away from her opponents before turning around either, it's just unnecessary and doesn't look good. Basically: If you can only do it at half-speed, cut it out of the match. That goes for everything. - I am not interested in BCG without Juice but they had CARDBOARD JUICEY BOY!!! I am not interested in Acclaimed with or without anything so that segment was muted over here. Also ditched out on Roddy vs. Sydal, sorry guys. Did catch Sydal busting out a nice and impactful Meteora off the top. - Toni has rampant sexuality. Look out! - Buddy is in the top ten of "Most Obscenely Jacked Wrestlers" currently. Has to be. Who else is on there? Cage is probably #1 and we can go from there. Anyway, good good match with Garcia with Danny mostly getting eaten for lunch only to come back to the injured knee again and again as an exit strategy. As always, great selling from him. The end having a full-bore WWF locker-room-clearing brawl (which you never see anymore) was pretty old school and was a great way to hype up the Elimination Cage match. So, it's no tags? And just pinfalls or submissions? That sounds like it's gonna be hard to work actually. So many attempts are gonna be broken up in this match. - Poor, poor Ortiz. The super-hot St. Louis crowd was just ice cold for the man. He had all the heat in the world once upon a time but after the breakup, everything has been a distant memory. It doesn't help that he's only showed up like, once for a match since then, of course, but still. They need to do some vignettes with him and Eddie or something, try and get some love back. Danielson played the prick again by basking in his glory (apologies to Bobby) just to irritate Kingston and Claudio turning his back and sitting on the apron when King got on the buckles to do the same was priceless. Revving up the machine gun chop to Full Kobashi was nice but next time I want that spinning reverse chop. Torturing Eddie by holding him there while Ortiz was trapped and then SPITTING IN HIS FACE means this ain't over. Eddie is like the last guy you'd ever want to spit at. I'm surprised he even went for that.

I ran into my first "Eddie Kingston isn't fast so therefor he sucks and is being carried" fans today in some discussions. It's amazing how poisoned some fans minds are by the "If the match isn't going 100 miles per hour it sucks" mindset. Really enjoyed the opener and Murphy/Garcia. Murphy has been arguably the most under appreciated great wrestler of the last decade for me.

You know, I forgot to list my favorite rivalry. Anywhere it went, and with any permutations of the teams that were involved, it was great: Midnights vs. Fantastics. For my money, I've never seen a better series of tag matches across multiple years or promotions than between those teams.

I assumed Flair taking the majority of the match, Bruno comes back, gets the bear hug on and the lights go out to signal NYC curfew time, with only a few resulting deaths from the ensuing riot.

just imagining the alternating blood stoppage screwjob endings for a series of Bruno/Flair matchups

YES YES YES YES YES YES YES HEADING TO SAN FRAN YES

Taylor/Moriarty v Infantry 2/3 falls was pretty terrific. The Infantry have really come a long way. Taylor and Moriarty are a well oiled machine. I'd love to see them add 'Daddy Magic' Matt Menard to the commentary. He really deserves to have his own weekly show.

Damnit I really think Mayfield was down before he released that pass. Wish they would've challenged it.

Should've been eliminated 30 years ago.

Ladder matches without anything exceedingly important at the top of the latter are a bit superfluous Ladder matches pretty much replaced "Object on a pole" matches, partly because the logic/logistics of putting something on a pole that couldn't easily be captured, and maybe a little because Russo's 2000 made pole matches a bit of a joke

Big Time Wrestling name drop by Collinsworth. e: makes sense, he's from Dayton, which was part of the Sheik's territory

please God let Timeless Toni Storm see this

When the ladder became the end and not the means, so pretty early into the history of ladder matches.

I was expecting FTR to do just that! But with Bossier City apparently selling poorly they needed to add something big. Aminata is basically doing the same story as her bestie Skye Blue did: wrestle every show, get better and better and closer to victory until finally pulling a big upset. Good match after a bit of a rough start. Lots of stiff forearms, and I love Rosa’s dropkick based offense. On one hand I don’t like Dante being fed to Copeland given that he was working his way up the card and getting some singles wins before he got hurt. On the other hand, the experience benefits him and Cope made him look really good and put him over after. What we don’t need is this Top Action-Private Party feud. Mox-Taylor was violent, thought the left arm lariat might have legit concussed Mox. The post-match promo is going to cause a lot of discussion but BCC has lasted for quite a long time. Sorry Max, we really don’t want a Billy Gunn singles title run. But otherwise the Bang Bang Scissor Gang is good as a vehicle to unite the trios titles (and ideally retire them) and unite the Gunn family (and retire Billy or at least his teaming with The Acclaimed). That’s what they’re going to do, right? Garcia looking good, missed how he broke Buddy’s nose. The aftermath was awesome, haven’t seen anything like that for a while. The backstory with Strong and Sydal was more interesting than the match itself, which was perfectly cromulent. Main highlighted an interesting problem for AEW: Fans love Eddie but even with Bryan being a total prick to him he still gets cheered and the “Yes” chants. The AEW crowd really has a hard time letting stars be heels, other than Callis (whose heat doesn’t extend to his charges). Anyway, the match was good but was clearly just the start of something bigger. Murder Grandpa versus Adam Copeland is going to be wild.

Bit of both. Men are apparently leaving AJPW for reasons related to the AJPW President, others because of money elsewhere. The young wrestlers are staying with AJPW. It's the older people (excluding Suwama) who left and are leaving.

Then we can all go back to enjoying people pretending to beat the crap out of each other.:)

Get two more folks in the FTR/House of Black feud and put it in BLOOD. AND. GUTS.

Re: Ladder matches, Shawn/Razor II is the best ladder match I've seen because of the targeted limb work being so good. I've probably written this before a couple times, but that match and Lynch/Banks at one of those Takeovers in 2015 have far and away the best targeted limb work done in a WWF/E ring.

Did seem like that, didn't it? Hmmm. As for the Righteous, I can easily accept that they are too stupid to know any better.

Flair worked MSG in 1976 before he was NWA champion, the standard upcoming star from another territory working a preliminary match to get in the magazines, that was it until 1991. Backlund talks about the Omni match with Flair in his book, if I remember right he felt Flair and Jim Crockett Jr were acting kind of shady before the match, a so maybe that killed any chance of a MSG match like Backlund had with Harley.

Not really, the NWA champion was never mentioned on WWF tv expect when Harley showed up for the MSG match against Backlund. On WWF tv they would call Backlund either the WWF champion or World Champion, it was never really consistent, at house shows in Pittsburgh he’d always be billed as “World Cham-peen”.

Shout out to Rosa's hair stylist. I want to know what type of conditioner she uses. Felt like something was off with the finish to the main event with how long Eddie was lying on the apron

The Pac vs Kenny Omega 30 minute Iron Man match was really good.

Tonight was a really good episode of Collision. The opener with Mox vs. Taylor was damn good. Just them beating on each other. I liked how Taylor didn't tap out though. Made him look strong in defeat. Mox's post match promo was a little confusing since it seemed like he was calling out his own BCC teammates. I wish someone did come out to challenge him though. Copeland vs. Dante was a fun match. I didn't expect Copeland to give so much (taking all those arm drags, a frankensteiner on the floor). Dante looked really good in defeat. Yeah the crossface being named The Grindhouse is a bit lame. I mean shorten it to The Grinder (I'm sure Adam is an old school Judas Priest fan) and it works. Rosa vs. Aminata was good. Three straight good matches to open the show. I hope Aminata starts picking up wins in ROH or something. Kinda sucks she's losing in these matches on tv. I thought for sure Bullet Club Gold would sneak attack The Acclaimed after they joined forces, but I was surprised that the faction held. I guess we'll see what happens soon enough. Timeless Toni Storm continues to be amazing. Luther also has been great in his role. I get that he does not like Mariah May judging by the look he gave her at the end of the promo. Buddy vs. Garcia was real fun to watch. Loved the back and forth and it leading to a huge brawl. Before it even got mentioned on tv, in my head I was like "this is leading to a cage match". I didn't figure next week or the elimination stip. There is a Macho Man" Randy Savage and Strike Force vs. Hart Foundation and Honkytonk Man six man elimination cage match that should be required viewing for this match up. Bryan/Claudio vs. Eddie/Ortiz was good. I just didn't like the ending with Eddie being held back by Claudio. It made him look like a chump. But everything else was good. Bryan coming for the triple crown should be fun stuff.

From what I was able to watch tonight: Edge is not my guy. I am not interested in The Cope Open. But it serves something more important — a really good veteran gets to have matches with guys like Dante Martin and Lee Moriarity and that’s pretty invaluable. I wish they had some kind of circuit or house show because there is so much talent with the real young bulls of AEW but development is tough. But having an 8 minute match with Edge is going to be a well-organized match. I am sure before the match Copeland is sitting down with whoever he is facing, putting the match together, and explaining why the match is being put together that way. And after they go over like a few dozen times how it was executed. The Thunder Rosa match was fine. It was exactly what a returning match should be. Her opponent looks cool. I am so ridiculous invested in The Bang Bang Scissor Gang. I don’t remember when we have seen a really big group like that? Especially as faces? I was expecting it not to happen. I hope they stick with it because all of those guys have a lot of charisma and are fun acts. Toni Storm is the best. Best character in wrestling right now. Danny vs Buddy was expectedly good. A very smart match that had excellent usage of their seconds, leading to a great brawl and set up for a match. I am now watching Roddy Strong and Matt Sydall and calling it a night even though I really want to see Eddie/Ortiz vs. BCC

I demand Tony Schiavone reading them aloud in a video like the old WCW Top Tens. Demand, I say.

Aminata is on fire, loved her matches on ROH, Rampage, and Collision this week. She's hit the cycle in 2024 with all 3 shows plus Dynamite first. Wish she won on Rampage to build up a little to this. Thought Thunder looked good in her first singles match back. Mox/Taylor was good stuff. The Cope Open rules and Copeland/Suzuki will be awesome. FTR/Garcia vs House of Black in mini-war games sounds epic! Bang Bang Scissor Gang! Fun main event, sounds like Bryan coming after the Continental Championship, more Bryan/Kingston is always good.

Great match. Gave it *****. Ricky Steamboat vs. Rick Rude at WCW Beach Blast 1992 is still the best Iron Man match in wrestling history followed by Bayley vs. Sasha Banks, NXT TakeOver: Respect 2005 *****. Thank y'all for your best chemistry suggestions, knew I forgot some.

Backlund and Patterson had so much chemistry they did FOUR at the Garden. edit: And Backlund / Valentine were amazing together.

Still proud of my Texans. Baltimore made adjustments, Texans didn’t and Stroud never had any time to do anything (some terrible play calling didn’t help). Defense I thought did well first half, but was clearly gassed in the 2nd half. Lamar is a beast. I hate him.

Correction: Quake hunted an animal for food. What was he going to do, make his Quakeburgers out of ground beef that was easily bought at a supermarket? The man was hungry! Starving, even!

We are in such a great place on the wrestling time continuum. On the Fight Network, they had TNA Wrestling featuring Ospreay vs Alexander followed by NJPW featuring Danielson vs Okada last night. So awesome.