6 Ups & 3 Downs For AEW Collision (Dec 9 - Results & Review)
2. More Ridiculous Tony Schiavone Hyperbole
Pro wrestling is a business built often built on exaggeration and hyperbole, but Tony Schiavone has a habit of taking this to ridiculous levels.
Last week, Schiavone described Christopher Daniels and Matt Sydal as "one of the great tag teams". That'd be the same Daniels and Sydal who have only operated as a tag team on 25 occasions across 17 years, have never won a match on AEW television, and have spent the bulk of 2023 losing in ROH to the likes of the Righteous, the Gunns, and the Gates of Agony. Two extremely talented guys with great careers to their name, but not exactly an all-timer of a tag team.
This week, Tony labelled Ethan Page as one of the greatest Canadian wrestlers of the modern era. Full disclosure, your writer is a huge Ethan Page fan dating back to Page rocking up in IMPACT Wrestling - often paired up with Matt Sydal, as it happens - back in 2018. All Ego is an incredibly talented worker, both in the ring and on the mic, and he has an immense upside of which we've only just scratched the surface.
However, describing Ethan Page as one of Canada's modern-day greats is ludicrous and is the sort of comment that puts a dent in Tony Schiavone's credibility. By throwing such terms around with such loose regard, it makes Schiavone seem either totally clueless or blindly biased - two traits that you don't particularly want associated with your lead announcer.
Describing Kenny Omega as one of Canada's greatest wrestlers of modern times? That's absolutely fair; the same can be said about Chris Jericho, about Adam Copeland, about Christian Cage. Right now, Ethan Page is simply not at that level. Here's hoping the former North man eventually does get to that level, but for now such comments just chip away at what credibility Tony Schiavone still has.
Another mild grumble, too, is that, while Ethan Page was never going to beat Kenny Omega, why book Page in a loss when he's got a big PPV match - an I Quit offering against Tony Nese at ROH Final Battle - coming up on Friday? Was the lure of doing Canadian vs. Canadian in Montreal really worth handing someone a momentum-draining loss ahead of what should be viewed as a major PPV bout?