AEW Collision Match Review: 15 July 2023
Normally Dynamite is my favourite, but this
week Collision delivered a show that couldn’t be beaten
I’ll be honest, it’s been hard to find anything as good as what Dynamite has offered in the past year. Collision has been a good addition to the AEW event line-up, but not quite Dynamite level good… until this week. This week’s Collision delivered pay-per-view quality matches that completely took me by surprise, and I simply had to write about it.
Image courtesy of All Elite Wrestling
This match took place in Regina, Saskatchewan (Canada), and the Saturday night crowd really knew how to bring the energy. They were engaged, chanting, and added to the epic atmosphere. This made it even harder to choose a match to focus on, because the quality of the stacked card was excellent. The headliners of CM Punk and Samoa Joe were great as expected, but it was a Tag Team match that stole the show for me.
Baby-face Tag Team champions FTR (Cash Wheeler and Dax Harwood) went head-to-head against heels Bullet Club Gold (Jay White & Juice Robinson) for a marathon of a match. These guys know how to wrestle, and watching their technical skill in the ring is so good that you can easily lose track of time. This made it super hard to pick my highlights, but I’ve managed to narrow it down to just 5 of my favourite things from this match. So, let’s start:
First up, an excellent offensive move was when Dax delivered a superplex punishing to Jay from the top turnbuckle. This was a great use of height but also followed the superplex move brilliantly. Cash then followed up with a frog splash to Jay to back Dax up.
Second, Jay copped more from Dax, who delivered him a rebound powerbomb to add insult to injury. Then he followed up with a hidden blade hit reminiscent of Will Ospreay’s iconic finisher. It nearly resulted in the end of the match, but Jay ended up kicking out at 2.99.
Third, it has to be the do-si-do that followed a scrap between all 4 wrestlers, and ended up in Jay and Juice getting suplexed in tandem by Cash and Dax. It was pretty entertaining.
Image courtesy of All Elite Wrestling
Fourth, there’s got to be a special mention to the crowd who at one point chanted “this is awesome!” over and over. I agree with them, because was pretty awesome.
And finally, the ending. Right up until the end you couldn’t tell how the match was going to go, especially seeing how exhausted everyone was. So, when it ended with victory for Bullet Club Gold, it was a showstopper. Cash tried his hardest to save Dax, but in the end he was twarted by Jay, leaving Juice to see his pinfall to completion.
Image courtesy of All Elite Wrestling
Given how great this match was, I’m pretty pumped about seeing the rematch at the next Collision. Could this be the start of a wicked rivalry? We’ll have to find out in the next matches between the two teams!
I give this match 4.5 out of 5 stars:
