The Ciampa-Jericho friction is the only heat that matters

If you were watching AEW Dynamite this past Tuesday in Cincinnati, you saw the moment Tomasso Ciampa decided to stop playing nice. He didn't just interrupt Tony Schiavone; he nuked the entire segment before it even started. The audacity to tell the veteran broadcaster that he is simply better than Chris Jericho is pure, unadulterated villainy.

We have seen this script before, but Ciampa brings a level of intensity that makes the usual AEW roster chatter look like a polite book club. Cutting off a man who has been the voice of wrestling for decades is a bold choice. It signals that this isn't about mutual respect or earning stripes; it is about a total takeover.

The Cincy experiment is a logistical nightmare

Setting up shop at the Andrew J. Brady Music Center for a back-to-back taping schedule is a classic grind. The Collision spoilers coming out of the building suggest that the creative team is trying to cram a month worth of drama into a single weekend. It feels like the company is burning through matches just to keep the lights on.

The pacing of these tapings often leads to a hollow atmosphere by the second night. When you look at the lineup for Collision, you can see the strain of needing to satisfy both TNT and HBO Max with the same footage. You cannot expect a crowd to stay molten hot for forty-eight hours of content without serious fatigue setting in.

Forbidden Door prep is feeling rushed

This brings me to the biggest head-scratcher of the week: the upcoming clash between Thekla and Starlight Kid. We are supposedly building toward Forbidden Door, but slapping this monumental match onto a Collision taping feels like tossing a steak into a woodchipper. These are marquee athletes who deserve a proper build, not a spoiler-ridden announcement tucked into a weekend show.

The lack of oxygen being given to these major inter-promotional rivalries is a booking failure. Instead of letting anticipation simmer, the promotion is dumping information at 11:00 PM on a work night via online spoilers. It drains the mystery out of the ring before the bell even rings.

The verdict on the booking

  • Ciampa needs a clean win at the next pay-per-view, or the whole angle deflates.
  • The dual-night taping strategy in Cincinnati is doing zero favors for the presentation.
  • Inter-promotional matches are being treated like filler rather than main event draws.

We are watching a promotion that is so obsessed with volume that they are losing sight of the craft. If Tony Khan continues to overload the schedule, he will lose a segment of the audience that actually cares about the narrative stakes. Ciampa is doing his part, but the man cannot carry the booking team on his back forever.

Booking a title defense as an afterthought on a taped show is lazy. It tells the fans that the championship doesn't have the gravity we pretend it does. If they want to reach the heights they hit in years past, they need to slow down and let the matches actually mean something. Right now, it is just content for the sake of content, and that is a race to the bottom.

Look, I get it. TNT wants hours, and HBO Max wants assets. But wrestling is a show, not a data entry task. You can see the exhaustion in the way the segments are structured. They are checking boxes instead of telling stories.

When you have a talent like Thekla being forced into a spot that is revealed via internet leaks, you have effectively killed the pop for the reveal. Professional wrestling thrives on the unexpected, and there is nothing unexpected about a predictable news cycle. This is a 4 out of 10 effort in terms of promotion, and frankly, the roster deserves much better.

Maybe next week they will change the channel on this strategy. Or, they will just keep sprinting toward a wall of their own making. I am betting on the latter, and that is the real tragedy here.