[Evil Vito]

Originally Posted by M-A-G I do occasionally like doing TV shows where I put a good chunk of, if not all, the titles on the line. In the game, there's really no consequence for it so why not? Plus, in real life, it'd make for a great special episode. Like to commemorate an anniversary or something. Of course, it makes something like Night of Champions redundant, but fuck it. It's my promotion and I will use any excuse to use more of my women on my show.

Honestly it's an easy way to boost title image. I can't recall ever seeing a note that a title lost image from being defended, even if it was in a battle royal or a horrendous match. In-game I only have the official AEW titles but through working partnerships with NJPW, CMLL, Impact, along with owning ROH there's always the chance to throw random title matches on the card.

Maybe this is too simplistic but I always felt that, at minimum, if a champion was in a standard 1 vs. 1 match. If the tag champs were in a standard 2 vs. 2 match etc. The titles should be on the line. I mean why not? "Non-Title Matches" were always just WWE's way of letting the champ lose endlessly in the build up to the PPV match where they'd win.

I feel kind of bad that Joe has essentially ended up right back where he started after all these years. This motherfucker should be at the Performance Center stretching out new hires and weeding out all the pussies. He should be smashing all the pussies, too.

I love Joe. He's been battling some injuries over the last few months but watching him just obliterate folks is always a joy. Lately he's been working more on the ROH side of things just to keep him busy before he gets his next major AEW storyline, which is rumored to be happening on Collision.

Still waiting for you to do that Pillman, Jr./Dustin angle I suggested a while back. The loss of Cody takes out some of what you could do but I think it still has legs, Twitter sheep be damned.

It's possible I'll go with something of that ilk before long. Pillman's a bit of a nothing job guy at the moment, but Dustin's gonna need to be kept busy until until next May when the game will presumably force him to retire. Gotta love how in my last game Dustin retired and now, because he has a May birthday, he's likely gonna be usable for me for a year.

Truth be told, I don't know what they're expecting to get from another show. This would be their third one, right?

Yeah, it's their third show but the more apt comparison is that Collision is their SmackDown to Dynamite's Raw. Rampage is an hour-long show that airs at 10 PM on Friday nights. Aside from being the place where Punk made his AEW debut, it's largely been treated as a B-show and sometimes even a C-show without there being a B-show. It's basically Sunday Night Heat.

Contractually, what they're getting out of it is a metric fuckload of money from WarnerMedia to the tune of a $1.2 billion contract that included the creation of Collision and rumors of an HBO Max streaming deal that might see the entire AEW library end up there as well as future PPVs. Networks want content, promotions want money and exposure, and so it goes.

Creatively I do see some benefits to it. One look at the AEW roster and you'll see how enormous it is. There's just way too many people to feature with only one main 2-hour show without some guys being taken off the road, lost in the shuffle etc. Collision is going to be the platform a bunch of guys return to who haven't been seen in a while due to injury, suspension, creative disputes etc. CM Punk, Thunder Rosa, Miro, Andrade El Idolo, and Samoa Joe are among the names confirmed to be on the new show.

I think any "brand split" between Dynamite and Collision will be loose in reality, but in my game I'm probably going with a relatively hard split just to make it easier for me creatively. I always did well treating Raw and SmackDown as near exclusive entities, aside from maybe the main champions.

As a fan, I'm glad AEW is growing and raking in the big bucks, becoming a viable alternative etc. But I don't really see myself sitting down for 4 hours of wrestling a week like I used to. More likely for me is that I'll DVR both shows and parse through them to watch my favorites.