AEW Collision Review - August 3, 2024

By Graham "GSM" Matthews

House of Black and Bang Bang Gang Confronted AEW World Trios Champions The Patriarchy

Christian Cage is so damn great as a heel that I always enjoy his promos. Here, he bestowed one of the Trios title belts onto Mother Wayne instead of Killswitch, so they're continuing to tease tension between Christian and Killswitch even though Killswitch is reportedly injured at the moment. The rest of this segment was fine as they established two teams who could potentially challenge for the AEW World Trios Championship at All In.

Hologram and CMLL World Historic Middleweight Champion Mistico def. Premier Athletes (Tony Nese and Ariya Daivari)

Hologram and Mistico was quite the random team, but I'm not complaining. They had terrific chemistry as partners and the crowd was into all of the high-flying action. The Hologram character hasn't been clearly defined yet, but at least he's racking up victories. As for Mistico, it was recently announced that he'll be facing Chris Jericho at a CMLL event next month.

AEW Women's World Champion Toni Storm def. Rache Chanel (Non-Title)

We got another brawl between Storm and Mariah May here, but I liked how it happened before the bout instead of afterward. In fact, it may have lasted longer than the actual match, which was a straightforward squash for Storm as it should have been. Storm and May have done an effective job building toward their AEW Women's World Championship match heading into All In, though I'm curious what more they can do between now and then without the brawling getting repetitive.

Kyle Fletcher def. Brian Cage

Fletcher will face MJF on Wednesday's Dynamite, so this provided him with a necessary victory to make him feel like somewhat of a threat before then. MJF even told him that he'd give him a shot at his AEW American Championship the following week if he wins, but that's obviously not going to happen because I don't see Fletcher beating him. This was a good match while it lasted, but I was surprised it was so short.

Claudio Castagnoli def. ROH Pure Champion Lee Moriarty and Tomohiro Ishii in an AEW Continental Championship No. 1 Contender's Three-Way Match

It's easy to forget that the Continental title is even a thing because of how infrequently Kazuchika Okada defends it. Then again, I don't think The Young Bucks have defended the AEW World Tag Team Championship a single time since winning the belts four months ago, so I guess that's part of The Elite's gimmick. At any rate, this was an entertaining three-way. Castagnoli vs. Okada should be awesome if it's given the time it deserves.

Thunder Rosa def. Taya Valkyrie

Valkyrie interfered in Rosa's Lumberjack match with Deonna Purrazzo and cost her the win, so it's logical that Rosa would want to get her hands on her. It was the quality contest you'd expect given the level of talent involved. Post-match, Rosa challenged Purrazzo to a Texas Bull Rope match on next week's Collision. I'm very much ready for this rivalry to be over, but will that actually be the blow-off?

Darby Allin, ROH World Champion Mark Briscoe and The Beast Mortos and FTR def. The Undisputed Kingdom (Roderick Strong and ROH World Tag Team Champions Matt Taven and Mike Bennett) and The Beast Mortos

AEW has done a number of multi-man tag team matches lately, a lot of which have featured the same people. They've all been fun, but they also tend to blend together. Mortos pinned Briscoe last week, so they'll have their own match at some point, but I don't know what the rest of these guys had to do with each other. The Acclaimed coming out afterward to address FTR was the most interesting part.

Overall Show

Needless to say, this felt like a phoned-in show with it being taped in advance and not airing in its usual time slot due to WWE SummerSlam. You can take almost any edition of Collision that airs on a WWE night pay-per-view weekend and throw it away because most of the matches don't matter, but there was some solid wrestling to make the two hours worthwhile along with hype for several upcoming matches.

SEE MORE: Collision Reviews