The premiere of AEW’s brand-new program, Collision, on TNT, took place this past Saturday. This program will air once a week, similar to Dynamite, but unlike Rampage on Fridays, Collision will be a 2-hour live program every week. Skye Blue and Willow Nightingale defeated Ruby Soho and Toni Storm in Collision’s first-ever women’s match, giving Skye Blue the opportunity to win in her hometown and keep up her momentum since she has recently been playing more significant matches in the women’s division. Unfortunately, as we have come to expect from AEW shows, this was the only women’s match on the entire program. Nevertheless, there is still hope that AEW Collision will significantly improve the women’s division by giving women more opportunities to demonstrate their talent.
The fact that AEW has one of the top women’s divisions in the world is widely known. They certainly don’t lack talent with people like Toni Storm, Jade Cargill, Britt Baker, Saraya, Jamie Hayter, Ruby Soho, and so many others. Athena, Mercedes Martinez, and Trish Adora are just a few of the incredibly talented women on the roster of Ring of Honor. The problem has always been that each week, AEW only wants to feature one women’s match per show. Additionally, the company has a sizable roster of male talent that they struggle to find time to air on television every single week.
Before Collision premiered, AEW only had three hours of television each week to try and feature as much talent as they possibly could in those three hours with the women always getting overlooked by having one match per show and maybe one promo if we were lucky. I am hoping that with Collision adding two extra hours of television time per week that women will finally be able to shine. If rumors are true, it seems as though AEW is pushing for these shows to have separate rosters. In theory, this should free up many more opportunities for women’s matches and storylines.
Ideally, the AEW Women’s Championship could be on Dynamite and the TBS Championship could be on Collision or vice versa much like how WWE has their singles women’s championships on separate shows. This gives more time to establish the importance of each championship on each show rather than trying to fit two different championships onto one show and losing a lot of meaningful stories that could happen due to time restraints. Hopefully, since the male roster will also be spread out among two different shows, AEW will be able to find the time to feature other women’s stories as well besides just a single story revolving around the championship.
In addition to the potential of having more time for the women to shine, two live shows a week and separate rosters could also bring a lot of fresh and new matches to the division and hit a reset button on some stories that have grown stale. It could also provide an opportunity for AEW to possibly sign more women to contracts or bring in stars off the independent scene for a couple of matches.
Personally, I think the division would benefit from the addition of some female competitors like Allie Katch, Dark Sheik, Hyan, and, of course, Mercedes Moné for a few matches. I still maintain that the women’s division should have its own show in an ideal world. If AEW continues to oppose having more than one women’s match on a televised show, this might be the ideal time to make Rampage an all-women’s show.
Of course, all of this is just hypothetical. It really shouldn’t be a problem to feature the women’s division more on each show with three weekly programs and five hours of TV time each week. To really make the point, I think, fans need to keep expressing their dissatisfaction with the lack of female representation in AEW programming. There is more than enough talent to have multiple women’s matches and storylines on each show, and we want to see more women wrestlers. I hope that as AEW manages Collision and two different rosters, we will be able to see these improvements.
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