>>18768589I cannot stress enough how based AEW Dark was, for the reasons you're describing and more. It used to have watch threads here (and other places) for a reason, it was truly the show for the Sickos. You never knew who was going to show up, what other skits/vignettes/interviews they would throw in in addition to the matches. It was always fresh new content that viewers could watch live or on their own time.
Collision is failing (don't take my word for it, look at Dynamite doing 2x Collision's numbers) because they took the worst part of Rampage (longer matches) and the worst part of Collision (bottom of the roster talent) and combined the two. What made Rampage great was being Dynamite overflow, jam-packed action matches with short interludes. It routinely had 4 matches in a 1 hour show, such as:
Non Title Continental Classic 2024 Blue League Match
Daniel Garcia [4] defeats The Beast Mortos [0] (10:25)
>10:25FTR took 14 fucking minutes to beat a few nobodies on the last Collision. 4 matches on a TWO HOUR SHOW because now everyone has to get their shit in. Incredibly frustrating and a poor use of available time. They could have had a Hobbs match, Hologram, Big Bill squash (with IN-RING promo), so many things they could have put into this show to make it better.
It's frustrating seeing the shows like this and being surrounded by little dicklickers who insist every single iota of criticism is "bad faith", or insisting that nobody will be happy until AEW is a carbon copy of WWE, and it's just not true. For all AEW fails, we can point to previous AEW shows/segments for guidance on what used to work, and what is currently not working, without ever mentioning how WWE does things.
