Go2Sleep

So is there just straight up no Collision this week, or is it getting taped and aired on a different day/time?

So can I just say how much I love that AEW takes managerial pairings that look like their going to lead to all the same old heel turn tropes, then turn them into charming and logical babyface pairings instead? Menard/Garcia and now Stokely with Willow and Stat. I'd like to see Menard, Parker, and Garcia fill a "Best Friends" role where Menard and Parker are mostly lovable jobbers, but every once in a while they bring in their big gun who gives them a chance against higher ranked guys. They did this with Hangman in the Dark Order too and it works really well for the way AEW likes to book their weekly shows. You can also bring Ruby into the fold and she can finally win the Owen with the power of love and friendship.

The first one that came to my mind was Joe throwing him into the buckles then he does a complete 360 ragdoll to the floor landing on his shoulder. The Christian stairs bump took forever to set up, but it was gross. The barrel roll on the Hobbs/Takeshita toss was the best combo of ridiculously hilarious, then cringe-inducing when his head caught the rope. His recent black hole slam with Bill was beautiful with the dip on the catch and spin into the extra elevation like some olympic level figure skating, except it ended with a suitable splat. I could watch a .gif of that for 5 minutes straight. I'm sure his most damaging are the simple missed coffin drops on the apron/steps/etc, though.

Toro Negro would have killer Collision-only feud with Rush.

Oh yeah, that was the best looking Black Hole Slam ever. It wasn't Darby's most dangerous looking bump, but it might have been his prettiest.

Is it cynical or logical for Rocky to just cost Cody the match now? If you could actually guarantee Rocky being around enough to be the godfather of the Bloodline (and no not that Godfather), that would freshen the group up quite a bit. I couldn't see dragging Cody's story out for another year, but if the goal is to get Roman in shouting distance of Bruno, they could do worse. The real best move is Cody finishing his story by pinning Roman clean, then losing in his first defense to Gunther in the same manner he lost to Brodie Lee.

Hangman/Swerve is a great example of going with what the fans give you and making it work. Hangman has every right to be pissed that he's always taken the high road, only for the fans to ditch him for the guy who broke into his house. Nevertheless, the guy who broke in is cool as hell and always delivers a great match even by AEW standards, so he's picking up a lot of organic support. It's the little things that put it over the top, though, like Nana being much more of a babyface manager, and Hanger growing that heel stache. Bo$$ton wasn't very subtle, but that's ok. That show should really be First Dance but for Mercedes. Okada and Ospreay can debut at the ppv. The women's division is starting to look really crowded now, but in a good way. They finally have a roster that's comparable to WWE talent wise, so hopefully the next step is actually giving them big featured matches.

No, but he (probably correctly) thinks it's the only way he can stay out of federal prison.

This could very well be true, but if that was the goal, they could've done so much better with that promo. Have The Rock say he wants to challenge Roman at Mania, then have Pierce/Aldis (or HHH himself if you really wanna lean into it) say "This is the toughest decision I've ever had to make, but The Rock being on a tight Hollywood schedule has limited availability and as a businessman, I can't pass up the once in a lifetime match of The Rock vs. Roman Reigns at the 40TH ANNIVERSARY OF WRESTLEMANIA. Again this is a very tough decision, and Cody is very deserving and will get the championship opportunity he earned at the Royal Rumble, just at another time."

Bayley/Iyo is an actual good example of long term story telling and 10 years of character development. HHH playing the long game to get back at Cody for the throne-smashing thing is funny, though.

Given what we know about Vince and Johnny Ace now, I'm going to guess the diva search concept was one of their most audacious and egregious displays of deviancy. Even at the time, the whole thing was so blatantly "how much will these young, attractive women degrade themselves to be on TV" that you kinda got the sense there was much more going on behind the scenes. There was also the infamous unscripted insult contest where Christy Hemme very explicitly said Carmella DeCesare was only there because she was doing sexual favors.

This is a card where none of the matches (save for maybe Deonna/Taya) should go over 5 minutes, but they'll all be 12+ with the obvious losers getting way too much offense. There's a good opportunity here for Fletcher to get a cheap win over Jericho, and for Toa to establish himself as a Meng/Norton level midcard killer by taking one off Hangman to mix things up, but I doubt we'll get anything that cool. Swerve gloating about Hangman losing this week only to drop one to someone like Dante Martin in a couple weeks to even things back up for a triple threat would be good TV.

Savanah was Dynamite. Show some respect to Bossier City, Idaho! Seriously, though, this was more enjoyable than the Rumble. May/Frost was the surprise of the night, although I usually come away from Lady Frost matches thinking she should be doing more. The stuff that was supposed to deliver delivered, and I appreciate that Collision ran an AJ/NOAH midcard tag as a main last week, followed by a ridiculous(ly fun) attitude style clusterfuck this week. Variety is the spice of life.

I took the Ricky comment as he doesn't have any close personal friends in AEW and the advice he's seeking isn't about what he can do in his matches, but more general career/life stuff.

It might be technically true in that he hasn't read the full legal document. No way someone hasn't filled him in on all the most heinous parts, though, and well before the WSJ article dropped. He also likely has a personal lawyer giving him more in depth analysis if he's one of the numbered corporate officials. Edit: Also, I'm not enough of a sicko to watch the press conference, but did anyone ask about Lesnar?

So did Dwayne get cold feet with the Vince situation or did he realize there was no way he could work anything close to a real match for them to go back to Cody/Roman?

Unfortunately, the algorithm decided I need to see this as well. The picture was Baron Corbin covered in dog food from the super wrestle-crappy feud between him and Roman in 2019. This doesn't change the assessment that the meme and whoever made it are both repulsive.

If you wanna make a low-effort protest against WWE, watch an illegal stream of the Rumble instead of peacock.

People can be victims in some circumstances and predators/enablers in others. Vince himself was a victim of physical and sexual abuse as a child. In no way does it excuse his actions as an adult. It's possible to have sympathy for Stephanie for what she went through as a child (and given some of the long standing rumors out there...), but she isn't immune from consequences if she enabled Vince as an adult by doing clean-up work for him to stay in power.

This whole thing is beyond disgusting, but the one thing that jumps out to me is the deal with using his victims as bargaining chips to get people to sign. I highly doubt Brock was the first or only. I actually hope Vince doesn't die any time soon, so he can spill the dirt on any younger and still-benefiting enablers who have something to lose.

I remember in WWE after the first brand split dissolved, it was common practice for a person who lost an IC title feud to immediately jump into a feud for the US title and vice versa. Doing it with trios titles somehow seems worse, though. I appreciate the attempts by the wrestlers to make it make sense, but you know what would make more sense? Not having two sets of trios titles on one show.

As weird as it this is to say, the pre-playoff NCAA football ranking system might actually be perfect for AEW. You might not get in the national championship game, but you could end up in the Rose Bowl (TNT title), Sugar Bowl (CC), or even the Papajohns.com Bowl (ROH 6-man).

My idea to improve the "rankings" idea is that they need to be viewed more like NFL standings than MMA rankings. The idea that you can only get a title shot on a 4+ win streak and one loss to anyone decent derails your title shot hopes shouldn't be applied to wrestling. That just leads to shows full of foregone conclusion matches like last night to get a desired booking outcome. Functionally, last night's show was no different than Worldwide or Velocity. Good matches, sure, but no real excitement tied to the major angles. If they replaced the idea of "rankings" with "standings," there's a lot more creative freedom. The 49ers lost to the Vikings this year and the Ravens lost to the Colts. No one right now thinks the Vikings or Colts have a legitimate claim to playing in the Super Bowl in 2 weeks. If Hangman goes 8-2 en route to Revolution, why couldn't one of those 2 losses be to someone like Penta who goes 5-5 in the same stretch? Rebuilding the perception that there's even 20% chance any of these move for move TV epics could actually go either way would go a long way to generate interest in the AEW format. When the result is a lock, AEW's style becomes kinda what all the old-timers complain about with modern wrestling: Big stunts with no heart.

The split screen segment with Toni and Deonna was great. I'm glad they're having someone finally point out that Toni is delusional and has a real past. As much as I love Timeless Toni, the gimmick can't last forever and eventually someone's going to have to hit her in the head and set her straight again. It shouldn't be Deonna because we're not near the expiration date yet, but it's good to lay the groundwork for that eventuality. Another possibility to extend the gimmick, though, would be to fully rip off Wandavision and have her go through a new decade of Hollywood each time she gets cracked. The rest of the show was there. Cope/Minoru was a fun old guy slugfest and everything else was basically a 2024-inflated version of Worldwide. The "competitiveness" of each match was greater, but the results were never in question.

I'd still trade 4 down months for getting off of Saturdays year-round. They still have to deal with college prime time games and a handful of WWE PLEs that eat their lunch there anyway. Let's be real, this week they might not even crack 300k against the Rumble. There's no way they do worse than that against weekly MNF, especially that at least leaves the door open for split viewership.