The December 2nd edition of AEW Collision featured more Continental Classic matches including Brody King vs. Claudio Castagnoli, Daniel Garcia vs. Andrade El Ídolo, and Bryan Danielson vs. Eddie Kingston. Also, The Kingdom took on the Iron Savages, Abadon vs. Keira Hogan, El Hijo del Vikingo fought Kip Sabian, and appearances by the House of Black, Keith Lee, and FTR.
Highlights:
- The show kicked off with a hard-hitting Continental Classic match featuring Brody King getting a surprise win over Claudio Castagnoli giving him his second tournament win against Ring of Honor champions. Highlights of the match include Claudio getting Brody in the swing and Brodie’s size and strength ultimately being too much for Claudio. The tournament is doing a great job of elevating King’s role on the roster.
- The second of three Continental Classic matches featured Andrade El Ídolo and Daniel Garcia. Quite different from the first tournament match, we got some high-flying spots from Andrade and Garcia fighting back and targeting his opponent’s knee in the corner of the ring before falling to Andrade. Matt Menard joined the commentary team for the match. Follow up later on the night with a confrontation between CJ Perry and the jealous Miro.
- The show’s main event, and third Continental Classic match, gave us the returning from injury Bryan Danielson versus Eddie Kingston. Danielson played the heel role early in the match, staying away from Kingston (which made an unusual circumstance of Nigel McGuinness cheering for the face) but the crowd cheered both men throughout. Eventually Danielson gets the win with the Psycho Knee sending Eddie home with an 0-2 record in the tournament.
- A quick women’s match between Abadon and Keira Hogan was solid, but more interesting than the match was the appearance of Julia Hart at the end foreshadowing something building between her and Abadon in the coming weeks.
- Pre-taped segment highlighting the rivalry between Willow Nightingale and Mercedes Martinez featuring clips and interviews from both women. Solid stuff here building some momentum to the pair’s next confrontation.
- Fun short standby match (nice to see AEW bringing back this concept) between El Hijo del Vikingo and Kip Sabian.
- Unexpectedly close match between Buddy Matthews and Malakai Black defeating Christopher Daniels and Matt Sydal. Julia Hart was notably absent from ringside. FTR hit the ring after the match to respond the the House of Black only to get jumped by Malakai and Buddy.
- Pre-taped backstage interview between Renee Paquette and Toni Storm setting up Storm calling out Skye Blue for a match between the pair on AEW Dynamite. Followed by a strong rebuttal by Skye Blue after the commercial break.
Less Notable:
- Christian Cage promotional segment with Christian explaining his history with Adam Copeland from his point of view and setting up their match next week.
- Ethan Page challenged Kenny Omega to a match on next week’s AEW Collison.
- Backstage interview with Samoa Joe was interrupted by Roderick Strong and The Kingdom whose advice Joe laughed off. Strong and The Kingdom would also come out and cut a ringside promo continuing to offer his Devil conspiracy theories before The Kingdom defeated the Iron Savages.
- Promo segment for Sting‘s final match.
- Recap of the Gold League matches from AEW Dynamite. The show also showed and commented on the brackets multiple times over the course of the night keeping the current state of the tournament in context for the audience.
- Recap of Wardlow brutalizing AR Fox was followed by Willie Mack calling out Wardlow setting up a match for next week.
- Backstage segment with Keith Lee and Shane Taylor setting up a match between the former partners at Ring of Honor: Final Battle.
