- Copeland announced he is retiring next year
- Christian broke like three ribs and got a collapsed lung 5 minutes into the ladder match but still finished out the match
- What I assume was a Dragunov teaser video aired
- Jamie Hayter injured yet again but TK is hoping she is back within a couple weeks
- Brian Cage had his best AEW match in ages
Not much else particularly newsworthy from Dynamite/Collision last night other than PPV match announcements. The time on all these qualifier matches could have been much better spent doing stuff to have real build to the PPV. Instead all we got was extremely predictable results that largely accomplished nothing beyond having decent wrestling. We could have accomplished the same thing by just announcing who the participants in the PPV match would be then doing literally anything else with that time. I don't mind a wrestling match for the simple purpose of having a match but it needs to be high quality, these matches were largely C to B efforts.
They need a hot angle coming out of Wrestle Dream. Though I will admit Dragunov debuting has me very excited. Too many PPVs and TV specials (and tribute shows but that's an uncontrollable temporary problem) packed in such a short time frame is killing the ability to properly build anything for any of these shows as long as they continue to jampack them with a bunch of matches.
If they want a PPV every month then they need to kill virtually all these TV specials. Maybe once a quarter at the absolute most. If they want a TV special seemingly every month then they need to get rid of some PPVs.
If they really want to keep all of them, then the TV specials need to be built around one or two big matches. Other than maybe international Grand Slams due to infrequency of visiting those places. Like take Blood & Guts. Off the top of you head can you name a single other match that has happened at a B&G episode outside of B&G? Exactly, you probably can't. Or cut the # of matches on PPVs so more programs can last beyond just a few weeks of build. Almost every single PPV we can come away saying at least one of the matches could have just been a TV match. It's ok to just put some stuff on TV instead. How many people are really going to complain if a PPV had only 8 matches instead of 10+?
AEW can just eliminate like 10% of what they are doing now and it would make the product considerably better with some small sacrifices. Focus more on quality instead of quantity to more effectively utilize the tv time.
