4 Ups & 2 Downs For AEW Collision (Jan 27 - Results & Review)
Downs...
2. Laissez Faire Officiating Doesn't Cut It
Yes, this may well come off as the classic 'old man shouts at clouds' sort of complaint to some, but the opening tag bout was just ridiculous when it came to the officiating.
Truthfully, your writer had to check online to see if they'd missed the announcement that Claudio Castagnoli & Jon Moxley vs. Shane Taylor & Lee Moriarty was being competed under some sort of tornado tag rules. As in, all four men are in action at once, with tags not needed.
In reality, this was simply a standard tag team match; a tag team match where referee Rick Knox couldn't give a shiny sh*t about making sure the rules of the contest are in play. It's not like that's the kayfabe job of a referee or anything, right?
In terms of the in-ring work, bar the slack officiating, the action was solid, with a hand injury making Moxley a target for Taylor's power and striking and Moriarty's fluid technical stylings, and also allowing for Claudio to be isolated. And while AEW is famous - or should that be infamous? - for how lax their referees can be, Knox was on particularly bad form here in that regard.
Sure, commentator Kevin Kelly can make mention of how Rick Knox is taking a "laissez faire" approach to this match, but that's solely due to how even Kelly was aware how foolish Knox was looking when illegal men were in the ring for long stretches or how the action spent an age on the outside without any even mild threat of a countout.
Blackpool Combat Club picked up the win as Moxley locked in the bulldog choke on Taylor, but for your writer's tastes, the utterly impotent refereeing badly took away from a match that clearly had plenty of bright spots.