5 Ups & 5 Downs For AEW Collision (Dec 2 - Results & Review)

1. No Stakes Filler

El Hijo del Vikingo is obviously one of the most athletic, impressive high-flyers in the world, and Kip Sabian is another personal favourite of your writer. And while their match on Collision was absolutely fine, it just felt a little lazy from Tony Khan.

Some have questioned Khan for how he has too much of a penchant for putting on matches just for the sake of putting on matches, with no storyline, no emotional investment, and no reason for an audience to care bar for the fact that, yes, the wrestling on display is good-to-great. With the Continental Classic, that in itself allows for contests to take place without any heated rivalries or prolonged stories at play; instead, what would be cold match-ups are justified under the banner of a tournament and the will to win said tourney.

On this week's AEW Collision, Claudio Castagnoli vs. Brody King, Abadon vs. Keira Hogan, Andrade El Idolo vs. Daniel Garcia, the Kingdom vs. Iron Savages, House of Black vs. Christopher Daniels & Matt Sydal, and Bryan Danielson vs. Eddie Kingston were all largely bouts that had no personal stakes to them and weren't part of some brewing rivalry. And that's fine, particularly when three of those contests took place as part of the Continental Classic.

With that in mind, though, did we really need the addition of a no stakes match between El Hijo del Vikingo and Kip Sabian? No, not at all. This served solely as filler designed to pop the crowd with a few high spots and also eat up one of Collision's picture-in-picture breaks.

To the surprise of nobody, Vikingo got the win after hitting his 630, but could this eight minutes of bell time have been used better elsewhere? Absolutely. Hey, maybe we could've got a second women's match or Kiera Hogan and Abadon could've got more than four minutes?