7 Ups & 1 Down For AEW Collision (Jan 20 - Results & Review)

Downs...

1. Tough To Drum Up Any Genuine Investment

Roderick Strong is great. Matt Sydal is great. Unfortunately, their Collision bout just didn't particularly click, for a number of reasons.

Yes, the point here was to give Roddy a TV win as he continues his march towards Orange Cassidy, and yes, using Sydal was a nice touch given that the show was taking place from his hometown of St. Louis. Still, this contest was just somewhat flat.

Putting a three-minute picture-in-picture commercial break into an eight-minute match always takes the wind out of things a little. Added to that, it was hard to particularly invest in Matt Sydal here, for he's forever used on AEW programming as, essentially, an enhancement talent who has some semblance of name value.

To highlight this, the one-time Evan Bourne has not had a win on AEW TV since a June 2021 victory over Dante Martin. Perception is so often reality, and having Sydal in this match meant that the stakes were extremely low, the result extremely predictable, and thus this was merely a bout with a few fun spots before Strong got the expected win via the End of Heartache.

What Strong and Sydal did for those eight minutes was fundamentally fine, but this would've been better served by either having this a total squash for Roddy or using an opponent with a mildly better win-loss record.

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Once described as the Swiss Army Knife of WhatCulture, Andrew can usually be found writing, editing, or presenting on a wide range of topics. As a lifelong wrestling fan, horror obsessive, and comic book nerd, he's been covering those topics professionally as far back as 2010. In addition to his current WhatCulture role of Senior Content Producer, Andrew previously spent nearly a decade as Online Editor and Lead Writer for the world's longest-running genre publication, Starburst Magazine, and his work has also been featured on BBC, TechRadar, Tom's Guide, WhatToWatch, Sportkskeeda, and various other outlets, in addition to being a Rotten Tomatoes-approved film critic. Between his main dayjob, his role as the lead panel host of Wales Comic Con, and his gig as a pre-match host for Wrexham AFC games, Andrew has also carried out a hugely varied amount of interviews, from the likes of Robert Englund, Kane Hodder, Adrienne Barbeau, Rob Zombie, Katharine Isabelle, Leigh Whannell, Bruce Campbell, and Tony Todd, to Kevin Smith, Ron Perlman, Elijah Wood, Giancarlo Esposito, Simon Pegg, Charlie Cox, the Russo Brothers, and Brian Blessed, to Kevin Conroy, Paul Dini, Tara Strong, Will Friedle, Burt Ward, Andrea Romano, Frank Miller, and Rob Liefeld, to Bret Hart, Sting, Mick Foley, Ricky Starks, Jamie Hayer, Britt Baker, Eric Bischoff, and William Regal, to Mickey Thomas, Joey Jones, Phil Parkinson, Brian Flynn, Denis Smith, Gary Bennett, Karl Connolly, and Bryan Robson - and that's just the tip of an ever-expanding iceberg.