Written By Gino Lewis
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Greetings Colliders! It’s been an incredibly long night of wrasslin for me after watching the Royal Rumble. We’re on episode 32 of AEW Collision. The location for the show is Brookshire Grocery Arena in Bossier, Louisiana. AEW has struggled badly with ticket sales this week. Even “Uncle” Dave Meltzer compared it to WCW in 2000. Let’s just say that wasn’t a good year for a major wrestling promotion. I thought the small crowd hurt the presentation of Dynamite. Hopefully it’s not the same story for Collision. That’s said, we should be getting an incredible main event with the Six-Man Escape the Steel Cage Elimination match. I’m not sure if I’ve seen a match with that stipulation before. Let’s get to the action!
Jon Moxley & Claudio Castagnoli def Shane Taylor & Lee Moriarty – We went straight to the match with Shane and Lee already in the ring. No Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting intro. Tremendous brawling early with the teams evenly matched. The crowd is most likely small but they are on fire. It’s very loud in the building. Claudio had an impressive dead lift suplex on Taylor. Giant swing from Claudio on Moriarty. Outstanding mat wrestling exchange form Lee and Jon with Moxley nailing a cutter at the end. Hart Attack from Blackpool. Moxley made Taylor pass out in the Bulldog Choke. Rating *** ½
Gino’s take – I enjoyed this match as much as anything I’ve seen so far tonight. There was a bit of a story between Moxley and Taylor that was advanced on Rampage. I’ve been critical of the way AEW has booked Shane Taylor. He’s been put in high profile matches without being built up. I think his rivalry with Moxley the last few weeks has helped make he and Moriarty feel relevant. I hope to see more of them now.
Lexy Nair is backstage with Undisputed Kingdom members Rodrick Strong, Matt Taven, Mike Bennett along with Komander who won a match on Rampage to face Orange Cassidy for the International Championship. That match is up now.
International Championship: (C) Orange Cassidy def Komander – The focus at the start of the match was on Orange trying to put his hands in his pockets which he eventually did. It worked. Entertaining start. The crowd is digging it again. If there are 2,000 fans in attendance, they sound like five times that amount. Maybe TK figured out how to pipe in crowd noise. I kid. It doesn’t fake at all. Undisputed Kingdom has come to sit at ringside. Destroyer followed by a gut-buster to give Komander a near fall. Frog Slash and another two count for Komander. Beach Break from Orange to get a near fall. Incredible springboard huricanrana from Komander. Komander did his rope walking dive on Taven and Bennett to the outside. That distracted him allowing Cassidy to hit the Orange Punch and get the win. Rating *** ½
Gino’s take – Komander isn’t booked well in AEW but he and Cassidy worked very well together. This was the second exciting match on a fast-moving action-packed show so far. This is the kind of wrestling AEW fans like myself love even if the matches have obvious outcomes.
Daniel Garcia has been taken out backstage. He’s down in a bloody heap being attended to by Matt Menard. It seems obvious his opponents tonight House of Black orchestrated the attack.
Toni Storm has a vignette that was taped at Dynamite. She talked about her face-to-face interview with Deonna Purrazzo. Mariah May asks Toni if she can watch her match. Toni can’t because he had to have two race horses put down in Bossier City. Another creative and funny line from Toni.
Mariah May def Lady Frost – The match got off to fast paced start like the first two. Like AEW often does to the women, they went to an early commercial to break up the momentum. Nice looking German Suplex from Frost after the break. Beautiful handspring cannonball splash from Lady. Loud “Lady Frost” chant. May finished Frost with her finisher May Day. She didn’t do anything to set it up. Rating ***
Gino’s take – Good match with a hot crowd. I have to give this crowd credit. Even if they are small, it has the energy AEW crowds had when the product was new and fresh. I didn’t love the finish. May should have gotten more offense instead of just hitting her finisher. It was still a good performance from both women.
Vignette from Swerve Strickland to hype up the “Dealers Choice” stipulations where he and Hangman Page get to pick each other’s opponents for Dynamite Wednesday. He picks Toa Liona who hasn’t been pinned in AEW. That’s on OK choice but it definitely could have been someone with a much higher profile.
Hangman Adam Page is backstage to answer Swerve. Hangman says he has to wait the “whole Fn show” to find out who his opponent is. That means it will be RVD. Sounds good to me.
Proving Ground Match – (C) Eddie Kingston def Willie Mack – If Willie wins he gets a shot at Eddie’s Continental Crown Championship. High angle brain buster and early near fall for Mack. Huge cannonball splash, standing moonsault and near fall from Willie. Mack botched a second standing moonsault and landed on his own head. The announcers explained that his knee was hurt. Good cover up but clearly not what Willie meant to do. Northen Lights Bomb from Eddie for a two count. Sit-down powerbomb and two count for Mack. Willie attempted a frog splash. Eddie got the knees up and finished him off with his spinning back-fist.
Rating ***
Gino’s take – I’m one of Willie Mack’s biggest fans but he’s not a credible challenger for a championship. He is excelling in these short matches on Collision none the less. He had a match of similar quality against Dustin Rhodes a couple weeks ago.
Bryan Danielson came out after the match to steal Eddie’s thunder. He didn’t even look at Kingston. Another match between these two is coming soon. Probably at Revolution. Eddie is mad and has joined the commentary team. AEW has done an excellent job building to the match if that’s what they are doing.
Bryan Danielson def Yuji Nagata – I remember Yuji wrestling in WCW in the 90’s. AEW is presenting him as a legend. While that is true, this isn’t exactly an enticing matchup. The crowd disagrees with me. They are on fire yet again. Another early PIP commercial break before the match could really get going. Eddie is doing a great job on commentary building the match and his rivalry with Bryan. Bryan is working over Yuji’s knee. The commentary team with Nigel McGuinness and Kingston are excellent for this. “Let’s go Bryan, Let’s go Yuji” followed by a “this is awesome” chant. Fujiwara armbar from Nagata. He rolled his eyes back into his head like The Undertaker which is part of his gimmick showing he can be crazy when he needs to be. The combatants exchanged hard kicks. Danielson fired up the crowd with “YES” chants. He finished off Nagata with the Busaiku Knee. Rating ****
Gino’s take – As someone that has watched a lot of New Japan Pro Westling, I’ve seen Nagata lose a lot. My wife Amber and I went to a New Japan show called Resurgence right after things were opening up from Covid. The Good Brothers were facing Jon Moxley and a mystery opponent. I was very excited for that match. There were so many possibilities. Mox’s partner ended up being Nagata who was obviously there to take the pin. It was disappointing. Moxley barely even got into the match and seemed completely uninterested. All that said. This was amazing. I loved the match. The crowd did as well. Kingston was money on commentary.
FTR is back stage with Lexy. They are worried about Daniel Garcia’s health after being beat up earlier. Mark Briscoe comes up and offers his services. If they need someone Mark is their man. It would be cool to see Briscoe in the match since we’re close to the tragic anniversary of his brother Jay passing away in a car accident.
Renee Paquette is looking lovely as usual now interviewing Brian Cage. He talks down on Hook. Hook comes in and says he’ll face him anytime. We’ll see that match soon. It might be announced before the show is over.
Serena Deeb def Robyn Renegade – Loud “Welcome back” chant before the match started. Kevin Kelly mentions how Serena Deeb wrestled in OVW. That’s cool and the not the first OVW reference I’ve heard tonight. Deeb hit a Styles Clash type move called Detox before tapping out Robyn in a painful looking submission. Rating SQUASH.
After the match Serena asked the crowd if they missed her. They did. They were loud chanting “Deeb” and “Welcome Back”. She’s back to become Champion.
Gino’s take – Deeb’s first match since 2022. A squash was the right call. Her post-match promo was terrific. I hope AEW books her like the star she looked like tonight. I can’t say I have high hopes for that though. I will say I like that there were two women’s matches tonight along with a segment from Toni Storm. The women delivered entertaining content. More of that please!
We’re shown a video package of four CMLL wrestlers that are going to be on Rampage next week. I’m familiar with a couple of them. I am looking forward to seeing the match.
FTR (Dax Harwood & Cash Wheeler) & Daniel Garcia def House of Black (Malakai Black, Brody King & Buddy Matthews) – Mark Briscoe came out to partner with FTR. He was thrown off the stage through two tables taking him out of the match. Daniel Garcia came out with bandages on his head. He will partner with FTR after all. After a brawl of about five minutes all participants are now in the cage so the match could begin. The last to enter was Cash Wheeler who jumped off the top of the cage onto his opponents. Holy Shit. That was around a 20-foot drop. FTR hit Shatter Machine on Black. Dax and Brody took a spill from the top rope. Brody speared Dax though the cage door. They both “escaped” from the cage and are now eliminated. The stipulation certainly makes an interesting dynamic.
Buddy and Cash brawled outside the cage. Matthews knocked Wheeler off the cage through a table to eliminate him. FTR is technically ahead but have the disadvantage. Buddy tried to climb back in the ring but Garcia threw Malakai into the cage knocking Buddy off through another table. It’s now Garcia and Black one on one. The other competitors are still ringside. They will likely get back involved. Julia Hart showed up and misted Garcia as he was trying to escape. Malakai almost escaped. Daniel made him come back by telling him “finish me bitch”. Garcia nailed Black with a piledriver on a chair. Daniel climbed out of the cage while Malaki tried to escape through the door. Mark Briscoe got his revenge by slamming the cage door on Black allowing Daniel to drop to the floor and win the match. Rating **** ¼
Gino’s take – Outstanding main event that had a unique stipulation that helped the quality of the match. This could and probably should be the end of the rivalry between House of Black and FTR/Garcia. I think the feud helped everyone involved. It was a great showing for Garcia. Having him as the last one to escape the cage was the right call and puts him over in a big way. Will AEW follow up on his push this time? We’ll see. With the stacked roster AEW has I can see him getting lost in shuffle again as we’ve seen happen with so many wrestlers. Either way he got plenty of time to shine in this rivalry and got his most significant win in at least a year tonight. Mark Briscoe getting involved in the finish was a nice touch. Perhaps he will now start a rivalry against House of Black.
Overall Rating for Collision 8.5/10
Final Thoughts – Fresh is the word I would use to describe this episode of AEW Collision. The show had a torrid pace flowing seamlessly from match to match. While there weren’t strong storylines behind every match, the show didn’t feel as thrown together as a lot of AEW shows do. Jon Moxley had a short rivalry with Shane Taylor that I thought was very good. Taylor and Moriarty joining Blackpool Combat Club would be a good move. Orange Cassidy and Komander had great chemistry together. Even the Women’s division felt fresh and important with Serena’s Deeb return, Mariah May getting her second win in a competitive match and of course Toni Storm doing her thing. Eddie Kingston got a nice win over Willie Mack while continuing the build for another match with his rival Bryan Danielson.
Speaking of Danielson, his match against Yuji Nagata was way better than I thought it would be. I can easily say that’s the best I’ve seen Yuji look in the ring. Bryan has a tendency to bring the best out of his opponents. That happened again on Collision. The main event cage match was awesome. I really liked the escape the cage stipulation. The match was booked very well with members of each team escaping around the same time. Just when one team would try to get the numbers advantage the other team would knock someone out of the cage. It was almost a hybrid escape/elimination match. My favorite thing about the show was the crowd. They were loud all night. It seemed like a small crowd based on what I saw online. It didn’t come across that way on TV at all.
Please follow me on X/Twitter @GeenoEvel86. Thanks for reading!
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