My prediction is that MJF has some sort of retort to Punk’s promo (oh yeah, forgot to mention how Punk’s promo very slyly set that up). My guess is that he says he’ll be at Dynamite to confront 1 Bill Phil. That’s a smokescreen for setting up the Punk/Joe stuff. MJF will set Punk up, Joe will hurt him. If Punk has a match advertised, a re-aggravated injury will come into play to milk drama. Then Joe will come out and officially challenge the injured Punk or whatever.

We’ll also see Christian Cage and Luchasaurus interviewed by Tony Shiavone. Likely interrupted by the next challenger for the TNT Title.

I think Wardlow might turn heel and fire Arn Anderson, but that could be on Dynamite.

Andrade and La Faccion will win the Trios Titles next week.

Ruby Soho is likely to beat Skye Blue. This sets up a heel beat down with Willow not being enough to make the save, enter Thunder Rosa.

It’s all lined up.

Best work I’ve seen out of Buddy, easily. Smart to sell the leg. It played into the finish and began to tease that there’s a babyface in the guy so he can turn and feud with Malakai Black and have that string of matches in AEW.

The finish with the Figure Eight was clever to pop the crowd. Felt a bit like Kurt Angle grapevining the leg in the Ankle Lock. And again, it played off the actual story injury.

Strong thumbs up. :y:

Miro looked fantastic in his match with Nese. Nigel was great on the call in that too. Popped me with the “Plan B…Plan C” line. Did everything it was supposed to do for Miro, who looked like he was having a blast out there (and not in a bad way, felt “emotional”).

:eek:

The women’s match seemed a little goofy, but AEW women’s division sucks. I can appreciate they tried to get their female “stars” on the show and the choice to put over Willow & Skye was good. Liked the matching aesthetic of the teams. Skye Blue has a good ass and Willow has got something. Not a home run, but fine, especially for what I’ve seen from them.

Punk criticism: I don’t like the long tights on him still. It not only seems mid-card, but the design just never looks filled out enough. I liked the colors this week, but I dunno. Feels like what a guy would wear when they know they’re not in ring shape.

Adam Cole needs to go to long tights. Punk needs to find the thing that works for the guy he is. If he’s not comfortable in trunks, maybe short-legged trunks, like bike shorts, or even shorts with a tank top (like an updated ROH look).

Claudio Castagnoli is another guy that just doesn’t look right in long tights.

The Acclaimed and Billy Gunn are a good act. A lot of energy for their stuff. Seems weird they’re still building to a Trios Title shot when there already seems to be a plan for those belts.

Hate those belts, by the way. They shouldn’t exist. Nothing wrong with doing six-man tags that can fuel the established tag and singles divisions. But it would still be weird with The Acclaimed because it’s hard to think of many decent heel teams in AEW.

No joke, noid's best page of thoughts. V spot on. I hope they continue the momentum.

During the post show promo, Dax was talking about how it wasn't Collision vs. Dynamite but it totally is. Will be interesting to see what Dynamite does because the initial card looks like dog shit compared to what Collision was.

They didn't even get to use Starks, Hobbs or Rosa live yet. Don't blow this, Tony.

Finally we are back to the old days of debating matches instead of flaming each other for a cheap pop. Might come back now instead of ghosting.

When there’s good wrestling to discuss, it helps.

Lol, hearing Meltzer and Alvarez dance around this show is amazing.

lol how are they dancing around it? (I'm legit curious because I don't listen to them much).

I havent listened, nor would I, but I am guessing they are downplaying anything that doesn't involve The Elite.

Meltzer is the ultimate idiot. He NEVER rated a single Kurt Angle match 5 stars. He didn't even give 5 stars to Taker vs HBK at Mania 25.

He has given Jon Moxley, the guy who cant throw knees strikes and blatantly cuts his own head on camera FIVE 5 star matches.

Jon Moxley.

Seriously. Jon Moxley has five matches rated better by this idiot than ANY match Kurt Angle EVER had.

How is he given any credence in the Wrestling industry?

His ratings mean less now than when Kurt had his run. Doesn’t he go past 5 stars now?

Damn inflation

As high as 7 stars. But only if the match is in the Tokyo Dome.

And Kenny Omega has to approve for it to get 6 stars.

Does he go 7/5 to show just how good it is, or is it just a 7 star scale now?

I’ll try to be as accurate as possible. And I don’t listen to them much either, but I just had to see how Dave would respond. “Danced around” might have been the wrong phrasing from me. But you can tell they don’t really have anything to say, but have their marching orders to say something.

So they didn’t completely trash the show, but their primary focus was on it being “okay, but…” because nothing was announced for the next week. They would eventually half-way plug Dynamite as the place you’ll have to go to find out what’s happening, and poor Excalibur has to hype everything.

Dave um’d and ah’d over the Punk promo. You could tell he didn’t like it, but he had nothing to say about it. When Bryan was recapping it and he got to the magntitude line, Dave actually made a noise that sounded like verbal disagreement. Dave then went into how it’s funny Punk is talking about business, because if the line Punk said about The Bucks doesn’t lead to a match and if The Bucks and Omega leave, it’s not good for business, but Punk gets what he wants. And he might say he wants to work with them, and he does, but ultimately what he wants is for them to leave and AEW to be hurt.

Bryan did try to get away without saying anything about the promo. Dave stopped him and said he has to say something and Bryan was like “It was a promo!” Bryan tried to muster up fake confusion as to why Punk would bring up MJF if they’re not going to be IMMEDIATELY working together. Dave said that he doesn’t think they should work immediately together. Dave wouldn’t say that should be the Wembley match and specifically mentioned Chicago as a place for it, but said it should happen later. Bryan could not get past why Punk would bring up the unfinished business with MJF. But hey, you do a promo for your audience, and that worked for this audience. So they still want to do the “Punk is the bad guy” thing, but can’t articulate why.

They tried to bury the obvious booking of the women’s tag. Dave tried to pick it apart by saying Skye Blue was the odd choice to win, even though it was in Chicago. He says that Willow should have won the match because Toni just beat Skye Blue.

They did praise the Andrade/Matthews match.

Dave made funny noises around the booking of Wardlow after Bryan said they’ve seen him lose a lot. “Umm, mmm, hmm, well…maybe…we’ll see.” I’m not making fun of his verbal tick, he just refused to say something he knew.

The Acclaimed segment was recapped as pointless, but the crowd liked it, so whatever.

Bryan called the main event “LOOOOOONG” (same with the promo). They do say it was good. Bryan tries to trash Punk not being in there long, Dave actually does say that’s how it should have gone. Bryan kind of pouts and it feels like he hit the mild criticism of how nothing was explicitly announced for week 2 like it was the most egregious booking decision of the past year.

No mention of how talent seemed to be working with more of a focus on selling or anything.

It’s just funny to me how a show that basically got universal acclaim seemed to get torn apart by the Elite’s guys, without them really being able to articulate why, or making themselves sound like idiots in the process.

Oh, and Dave brought up the Tupelo Concession Stand Brawls and pretended he didn’t know who was in the second, “better” one (kept trying to downplay the first) and called them tame by today, which you just know was done to put his name into Cornette’s mouth.

To be fair, it does seem to be an ever-changing scale. It’s just self-parodying and Dave has bad taste.

I don’t know why I expected from the Observer guys. I knew it could have been something like “it was okay, I guess…” but I was half-way expecting a “yeah, great job Tony Khan and team!”

But it’s just weird, because the show seems to have gotten a pretty universe thumbs up, and now they’re the ones being “old men yelling at clouds” as the tired ciriticism of Cornette used to be. I’m sure he’ll be explain to what worked and what didn’t, but where Meltzer and Alvarez are out of their depth is that they really can’t.

Now I’m really pulling for Collision to do alright in the ratings. Because if it’s numbers are anything close to Dynamite’s, it’s going to make the schadenfreude of those two trying to excuse it away pretty funny.

Sorry if I sound mean to those guys, but I just loathe the inaccurate coverage AEW has gotten since it’s inception. It really strikes me as unethical from people who do have influence over and audience and are going to believe the manipulations. Even if you want AEW to succeed more than anything else in life, don’t shelter them from the truth for their own sakes.

It's 5/5 still. However 1 point is added to any score Kenny Omega agrees with, making 6/5 possible. And if that match took place in the Tokyo Dome then another point is added making 7/5 possible.

Look I don't make the rules, I'm just telling you how it works.

Carny "journalists" of a carny business manipulating their audience to get their money?! :eek:

How do you think CM Punk became popular in the first place?

OHHHH I KNOW I KNOW!!!

All the people who are delusional enough to believe they are world class badass fighters believe in Punk, because in spite of all the evidence of him losing fights while getting pinched and tickled, he powers on in the belief that he is a world class badass, and not a 170 pound 44 year old who trained for 3 and a half years in MMA to place 3rd in a 3 person MMA Senior Tournament!

I’m not shocked, I’m just increasingly annoyed. Especially as a smaller and smaller audience seems to be the target for an increasing amount of bullshit.

I do believe Meltzer once had more reliable sources and insight. I think social media and his strategies have closed off some areas to him now though — so he just bullshits (even more than he used to).

I was initially coming here to bitch about how nobody seemed to be giving love to this match, but it picked up near the end.

However, I'm actually surprised about the comments about Andrade's Figure Eight, but lack of comments about Buddy's Gorilla Clutch. They BOTH paid homage to thier significant others.


It has come to my attention from this particular collection of posts that Dave Meltzer - whether intentionally or unintentionally - has co-opted the old "Perfect 5/7" meme and is using it unironically.

Also, as far as the CM Punk promo: it wasn't the best, but it didn't have to be.

For all that it was and wasn't, for any of the "cheap pop" criticisms, one thing he does - that he has always done - is choose his words very carefully.

The best part about it, to me, wasn't neccessarily the substance. As noted, he didn't really say shit "totally scorched earth" or "ground shattering" like a lot of folks were expecting. No, the one thing about this promo, though, is that it seemed like a quick re-introduction mixed with a potental teased heel turn sooner than later after this initial "we missed you" effect wears down some. Maybe I read too much into that, but more likely than not, the door is open. Especially with the "magnitude of me" portion. It was a very true statement pretty well exhibited by lots of cursory clickbaity social media "outlet" and every mook with a mic trying to get juice off of "wrestling newz" with at least a thumbnail or a mention of CM Punk even if he has little to do with the content. Not many people illicit that kind of response, but with him, it's a guarantee. At the same time, admitting it makes it sound less matter-of-fact and more arrogant. Pretty sure he's aware of that, and if it makes sense to use that arrogance for actual heat, he isn't above it. He's the same guy who said that one of his proudest moments was when he was doing the SES messiah stuff, he got an angry old lady in the crowd to slap him and tell him that he "was going to hell" because she was invested enough to actually believe it.

Overall point was, it served it's purpose. It wasn't "another pipebomb", and it wasn't supposed to be. His every word isn't going to be the greatest promo to ever promo. Nobody's is.

it was the right promo at the right time. These guys aren't wrestling each other any time soon so going scorched earth would be entirely pointless.

It doesn’t mean anything to most fans either. The drama that should matter is the drama in front of the cameras. Punk is possibly the best ever at bringing the backstage into kayfabe, but it makes more sense for Punk to take digs at MJF than it does Omega and The Bucks.

Andrade/Brody King doesn’t have me excited. King doesn’t do it for me. There are rumors that LIJ will get involved and help out Andrade. Okay? There are already too many tags on Forbidden Door. Whatever.

Nyla Rose vs. Willow will hopefully get painless. Willow should go over.

Swerve Strickland vs. Tanahashi should be a good showcase for Tanahashi. I wonder if MJF is there?

The main event should be good. Another strong win for the babyfaces. I can see Punk wishing Tanahashi good luck for his match against Swerve.

My guess is we’ll see either Joe/Strong or Hobbs/Dustin in the Owen tournament. I’d probably go with Hobbs/Dustin for this show and announce Joe/Strong and Starks/Juice for the following week.

I hope Miro is announced as Darby & Sting’s partner.

Let's see if Kahn can catch lightning in a bottle twice.

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the one the only!!!!!!!!!! oh damnit.

THE OCHO IS HERE

Jericho's hair looks like a homeless person's hair.

Fuck yes

Naito is the correct choice

Oh are we getting Tanahashi and Swerve on free tv? Let’s go

Hate to say it, but Tanahashi looks like Nagata in 2017. Mobile, but not very.

I don't want to say he was the wrong choice, because he and MJF are both great storytellers, and may be able to work past Tana's limitations.

However that swerve match did not inspire confidence.

Yeah, I'm okay with naito not teaming with andrade against HoB now.

Although that makes me more angry about Jungle Boy vs Sanada. Malakai vs Sanada could have stole match of the night.

Omg nigel's analysis of a simple pin is so good.

Just give dynamite to kelly and mcguiness.

And Raw.

And Smackdown

Jesus fuck @ those cannonballs

First hour was good. Tanahashi may be a little sluggish these days, but hes still a veteran, so it wasn't terrible. Everything else was really entertaining.

cage working for heel heat

Jungle Boy makes me mad regardless. I know whoever the opponent is has to job, but give me Samoa Joe, give me Swerve, give me Rush, give me Bandido, give me Lethal, give me Jarrett, give me anyone else

lol for a few seconds there I legitimately forgot that luchasaurus is champion and not Christian.

Sanada vs Jarrett would be an absolute banger

Lady hoss match

lol "moose licker"

Well played, nyla.

Willow rules.

Couple rough spots in the beginning but god damn what a strong finish. Willow vs Nyla was pretty good overall.

Second week in a row I thought the women were going to drop the ball and I was proved wrong.

She's still pretty green, but there's massive potential there. She's already fun to watch despite her inexperience.

I want a buddy cop movie starring Powerhouse Hobbs and Danhausen

Squash match for hobbs is the right move.

He should sqush dustin too

And I say that as someone who likes dustin.

Am I the only one who likes Gunn Club's entrance music?

CM Trunks returns this week

Toronto letting Punk have it. Love it. Makes his match with Kojima more fun.

lol toronto HATES cm punk

Remember when Tiny paid $1 million of his dad's money so they could come out to 50 Cent's song one time, in the match where they lost their titles? :rofl:

I wonder if Rhi is at the show

The energy of this crowd is amazing right now

Pepsi Phil getting the biggest reactions of anyone in A E Dub

The man in this commercial is way too excited about La Quinta Inn

Bullet club and the gunns are putting on some of the best tag heel work i've seen in a long time and they're getting cheered relentlessly because it's against cm punk lol

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">It’s time for an absolute clobberin’ time!<br>Watch <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/AEWCollision?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#AEWCollision</a> LIVE on TNT!<a href="https://twitter.com/coltengunn?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@coltengunn</a> | <a href="https://twitter.com/theaustingunn?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@theaustingunn</a> | <a href="https://twitter.com/JayWhiteNZ?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@JayWhiteNZ</a> | <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/JuiceRobinson?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#JuiceRobinson</a> | <a href="https://twitter.com/starkmanjones?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@starkmanjones</a> | <a href="https://twitter.com/DaxFTR?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@DaxFTR</a> | <a href="https://twitter.com/CashWheelerFTR?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@CashWheelerFTR</a> | <a href="https://twitter.com/CMPunk?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@CMPunk</a> <a href="https://t.co/yUqjjYv1c2">pic.twitter.com/yUqjjYv1c2</a></p>&mdash; All Elite Wrestling (@AEW) <a href="https://twitter.com/AEW/status/1672780545724432384?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 25, 2023</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

Great main-event, good ending & makes you want to tune in next week because the story isn't over

Another great show.

Whoever tony has helping him writevand produce these collision shows needs to get signed to a 10 year deal.

CM Punk, FTR, Jericho, Danielson, and probably more.

Christian Cage acting as champion is my favorite thing

Stu Grayson vs El Phantasmo on the Forbidden Door pre-show seems like it could be a belter

Wish he would dye it super blonde.

Yeah will be interesting. He looked out of sorts.

AEW is so good.

MOOSELICKER!!! I like it.

Love the Gunns.

I love Juice.

That main was super fun. Glad they gave Switchblade the win. So many possibilities. No idea where they are going to go.

10 man tag next week?

I thought Toronto was supposed to be a smart crowd? The show is being produced by him and his team, fools. When you like it, you’re liking his work.

Those words made me think of this promo, and I'm sorry in advance.

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Fucking Bravo lol

ethan page now a face

good mjf match

i love this bullet club ftr punk fued

Collision thread is POPPING 2nite boys.

that was a good show so much better then the wed show.

I’m rooting for Collision.

I think it might be futile though lol.

They will be in Regina, Saskatchewan next week. Nothing says big time more than that.

Card looks pretty great though.

Hey! Remember "The Shocker In Saskatoon"?!?

AEW might pull one of those, and have an unexpected World title change in Saskatchewan!

This is Ethan Page’s time to shine!