7 Ups & 3 Downs For AEW Collision (16 September)
1. A First Women's Collision Main Event
If you're a regular of these Collision Ups & Downs, you'll be well aware of the constant complaints of how AEW's Saturday show features its female talent. Hell, if you're a regular of any of our AEW content, you'll be well aware of those same complaints across the entire company.
For the most part, AEW Collision will feature one women's match per show; a match which lasts seven minutes, but which spends three minutes of that in a picture-in-picture commercial. Sure, we still only had one women's match this week, and it did take place during a P-in-P ad break, but Kris Statlander and Dr. Britt Baker, D.M.D. were given 12 minutes to showcase their skills in a match that's the first ever women's contest to main event Collision.
Not just was it the length and positioning of this match that gets it an Up here, but the quality of the work was fantastic. In front of Britt's hometown State College crowd, these ladies put on a snug war that had those in attendance in the palm of their hand. Of course, those fans were fully behind D.M.D., and this made for some brilliant near falls - not least where the finish was concerned, as Baker applied the Lockjaw, only to see Stat position herself into a pinning combination to score the win.
Despite the extremely pro-Britt crowd, that didn't take away from Statlander's natural babyface aura, with the Pennsylvania audience choosing to simply cheer the Role Model rather than heavily booing the TBS Champion. And as the TBS Champion, Statlander brings such aprestige to that title with each passing week, and this was the best match of the New Yorker's increasingly-impressive reign with that belt.
Across Collisions, Dynamites, Rampages, House Rules events, and PPVs, this marked the 16th defence of the AEW TBS Championship for Statlander since she toppled Jade Cargill at Double or Nothing in May. And now, it appears that Julia Hart is the next in line to step up and challenge the former alien.
Also, let Statlander vs. Baker serves as an example of what the women's roster can do on Collision when afforded more than just the usual, frustratingly formulaic treatment of those talents.