BRM Reviews the 6/17/2023 Collision

[Big Red Machine]

We start off with VERY loud CM Punk chants, and a big pop for him when he comes out.

CM PUNK PROMO- AWESOME!
He was quite unapologetic. In terms of storylines, the important note was that he had a bag with him and talked about how important the thing in it was. It seems clear that it’s the old title belt which he never lost… but if that’s the case, why didn’t he just reveal that?

AEW TNT TITLE MATCH: Wardlow(c) vs. Luchasaurus (w/Christian Cage)- 6.75/10
This was an okay big-man match. Luchasaurus won after a lot of interference from Christian. That’s the sixth change for this title so far this year. I’m also not crazy about Luchasaurus as a champion. He’s fine as someone’s heavy, either as a babyface or a heel, but I think Christian will always be the real focus of this act, so I worry about putting the title on the guy who isn’t currently the focus and never will be.

LEXI NAIR INTERVIEWS WILL HOBBS & Q.T. MARSHALL- snore
He says it’s time for (yet another) new chapter in the Books of Hobbs. Said chapter will be about redemption and him being back on top. In this case, he will redeem himself by winning the TNT Title that he lost earlier this year. Just kidding! That would actually make sense. Instead, he’s going to redeem himself by winning this year’s edition of the Owen Hart Tournament. As you’ll remember last year’s winners received… nothing.

ANDRADE EL IDOLO vs. BUDDY MATTHEWS (w/Julia Hart)- 7.75/10
Apparently Buddy Matthews recently returned from some kind of injury. Has this even been mentioned before?
The story of this match was both men having the injuries that they are retuning from worked over. In Matthews’ case, this was his knee, so Andrade won with a Figure Eight, and thus Charlotte Flair sent a message to Rhea Ripley.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- meh
Andrade is a total babyface now. I had a feeling that was coming when his heel manager was mysteriously absent from ringside (and the announcers made no mention of it). After the match, he tried to help Matthews up, but Matthews pushed him off. Andrade offered a handshake, but the lights went out and the House of Black magically teleported into the ring. Brody King beat up Andrade. Then they lights went out again, and… we don’t know what happened, because the director decided to cut to a video package instead of stay on the ring. How did the director know that this was the House of Black leaving as opposed to, say, Sting teleporting in to make the save?

SCORPIO SKY VIDEO PACKAGE- meh
I had completely forgotten that he existed.

TONY NESE PROMO- snore
These was just some cheap heat to make sure the fans in the building cheered Miro. If you must do this, do it during a commercial, not on the air.

MIRO vs. TONY NESE (w/Mark Sterling)- long squash

SKYE BLUE & WILLOW NIGHTENGALE vs. THE OUTCASTS (Toni Storm & Ruby Riott)- 5.75/10
The heels jumped the bell on the babyfaces. The heels got in the face of a fan at ringside, who slapped both of them. Oh. It’s Skye Blue’s mom… which means they did the same thing in this match that they did on Wednesday.
This was standard babyface in peril stuff with a bad finish that saw the heels try to cheat right in front of the referee and the referee make no effort to stop them, because the planned finish involving the babyfaces winning because they managed to make said cheating backfire. There must have been about five better ways to get to this same finish, and they picked the laziest one. Skye Blue pinning Ruby does nothing for me. I have no interested in seeing this undercard loser built up for yet another title shot that everyone knows she has no chance of winning.

RICKY STARKS VIDEO PACKAGE/PROMO- He wants to win the Owen Hart Tournament. Again… if you want me to care about this, there needs to be something on the line.

JEFF JARRETT PROMO/MARK BRISCOE VS. JEFF JARRETT VIDEO PACKAGE- snore
They’re having a Concession Stand Brawl next week, forty-six years to the day after the very first one… which, when you bring that up, it just makes it look like you’re doing this gimmick match to be artsy rather than because anything in the feud built up to this in particular. If there is any gimmick this feud has built towards, it should be a steel cage, to keep out all of the interference.

TONY SCHIAVONE INTERVIEWS THE ACCLAIMED & BILLY GUNN- bad
They said nothing of interest. They still want to try to win the Trios Titles.

They’re doing another tournament for a title shot. This time it’s for the tag titles, and is called the “Blind Eliminator Tournament.” Based on that name, it sounds like either the eliminations will be determined randomly, would invalidate the results of the matches, or that it will be a tournament of Blindfold matches.

The build to last month’s AEW World Title match involved two wrestlers conspiring on the air for one of them to take a dive, and now this month we’ve got the champion threatening to no-show a title defense, and neither time has there been ANY kayfabe response from the company. They just keep carrying on, advertising matches where we’re supposed to believe we’re going to get screwed.

CM PUNK & FTR vs. SAMOA JOE & BULLET CLUB GOLD- 8/10
Jim Ross joined the commentary team for this match.
I popped so huge for Punk getting that headlock on Joe. This was a big, long, tag match. It was exciting, but I don’t feel like we learned anything here, either about the direction they’re going to go in or about what might make Collision different from Dynamite or anything like that. In fact, that’s my real takeaway from this whole show. It was pretty good, but it didn’t feel any different.