Giving Away The Goods in Portland

There is a sickness in the booking brain of Tony Khan, and as wrestling fans, we are the direct beneficiaries. Or maybe the victims. It really depends on how much you care about the long-term health of the professional wrestling business versus the instant gratification of a Wednesday night dopamine hit.

We are exactly three days away from AEW Double or Nothing in Las Vegas. The pay-per-view card is packed, the stakes are high, and the pressure to deliver a massive buyrate is hanging over the company. So what does AEW do on the go-home episode of Collision?

According to the latest AEW Collision results broadcasting live from the Cross Insurance Arena in Portland, Maine, they decided to give us Will Ospreay against Katsuyori Shibata. On free television. With zero build.

Read that matchup again. Will Ospreay. Katsuyori Shibata. You don't just throw that pairing on cable television in front of a few thousand people who probably just showed up hoping to see someone go through a flaming table. That is a Tokyo Dome semi-main event.

That is a marquee match you build for three solid months with dramatic video packages, bloody pull-apart brawls, and intense press conferences where guys throw water bottles at each other.

Instead, we get it with the casual fanfare of a mid-card title defense. It is the ultimate double-edged sword of modern AEW programming. You get generational wrestling matches on your television, but you sacrifice the emotional payoff that comes from making fans actually wait for it.

The Television Distribution Era

Before we even get to the in-ring action, we need to talk about where this is airing. Collision is now a multi-platform beast. You've got it on TNT, obviously. But the simulcast on HBO Max in the United States is a massive shift for how wrestling is consumed.

We have spent decades conditioned to flip through traditional cable packages to find our weekly wrestling fix. Putting the product on a premium streaming service right next to episodes of The Sopranos and prestige documentaries changes the presentation entirely. It demands a higher level of storytelling to justify its placement on the platform.

Meanwhile, Canadian fans are catching it on the USA Network, and the rest of the world is tuned in via MyAEW. We are living in a deeply fragmented media world. Everyone is fighting for a slice of your attention span.

But this level of accessibility is a trap. When your product is available everywhere, all the time, you have to constantly feed the beast. You have to give people a reason to tune in instead of just waiting for the highlight clips to drop on social media.

Tony Khan's solution to feeding that beast is to empty his chamber of dream matches on random weeknights. It gets eyes on the product in the short term, but it severely damages the prestige of the matches themselves.

A Masterclass in Violence

The bell rang, and for exactly 10 minutes and 48 seconds, these two men beat the absolute tar out of each other.

To really appreciate the madness of this match happening on a Wednesday, you have to look at Shibata’s journey. For years, we thought we would never see him in a ring again. His 2017 match with Kazuchika Okada resulted in a devastating injury that required emergency surgery to literally save his life. He was effectively retired. The wrestling world had mourned the loss of his career and moved on.

When he slowly started returning to the ring, working exhibition grappling matches and eventually transitioning into full-contact bouts, it felt like a legitimate miracle. Every time Shibata steps through the ropes, it is a gift to the wrestling business. He is a living, breathing legend of New Japan Pro Wrestling.

And AEW treated his match against Ospreay like an afterthought.

Shibata is wrestling a much safer, more methodical grappling style these days. But "safer" for him still means he is kicking you hard enough to tenderize a flank steak. His offense is entirely based on quiet intimidation. He doesn't need to do springboard flips. He just locks in a sleeper hold and makes you question your life choices.

Ospreay, on the other hand, is currently the best bell-to-bell performer walking the earth. He sells the damage perfectly, he bumps like an absolute maniac, and his offense is terrifyingly crisp.

Watching Ospreay try to navigate Shibata's ground game felt like watching a sports car try to parallel park in a minefield. Ospreay has evolved so much from his early days as a pure high-flyer. He understands pacing now. He knows exactly when to slow down and let the live crowd breathe.

When Ospreay finally found his opening against Shibata, he didn't waste time with a convoluted setup. He caught Shibata flush with the Hidden Blade for the pinfall. Clean as a sheet. No run-ins, no distraction finishes, no cheap roll-ups. Just an elite striker getting caught by an even faster strike. It was a beautiful, violent piece of business.

The Problem With Dream Matches on Demand

But here is my fundamental issue with the whole thing. Why did this happen right now?

Ospreay is heading into Double or Nothing this weekend. He obviously needed a tune-up match to look strong going into the pay-per-view. But did his opponent have to be Katsuyori Shibata? You are burning a literal dream match on a go-home show just to pop a rating.

It is the classic AEW flaw. They book their television shows like I used to book my universe mode in SmackDown vs. Raw 2006. Just dragging and dropping the highest-rated wrestlers into a ring, hitting simulate, and hoping the match quality makes up for the lack of narrative tissue.

Where is the heat? Where is the animosity? Shibata deserves far better than to be a stepping stone on a random Collision. And Ospreay deserves to have a match of this magnitude on a stage where it actually means something to his overall character arc.

When you give everything away for free, you teach your audience that nothing is worth paying for. That is a highly dangerous lesson to teach your fanbase three days before a fifty-dollar pay-per-view broadcast.

Rush Needs To Be Unleashed

While we are on the subject of Collision, let's talk about the other match that actually made it to air. Rush absolutely obliterated TJ Crawford.

I don't even know who TJ Crawford is, but my thoughts are with his immediate family today. I sincerely hope he was paid well for his evening in Portland, because whatever amount was on that check wasn't enough. Rush didn't just beat him. He treated the poor guy like a rented mule. It was violent, it was incredibly uncomfortable to watch, and it was exactly what Rush should be doing every single week on television.

Rush hit the ring like a guy who was genuinely angry about his current spot on the roster. He threw Crawford into the steel barricades, chopped his chest into hamburger meat, and finished him off before the crowd even had time to settle into their seats. It was a classic, old-school mauling.

There is a massive vacuum for terrifying heels in AEW right now. We have plenty of cool heels, funny heels, and cowardly heels who hide behind managers. But we desperately need more guys who just want to hurt people for the sake of hurting them.

Rush fits that bill perfectly. AEW has this maddening habit of cooling off their most intense performers. Rush will have an absolute war with someone like Jon Moxley or Bryan Danielson, look like a million bucks in defeat, and then completely vanish to catering for a month.

If this squash match means they are finally going to push El Toro Blanco consistently, I am all for it. He is one of the few guys on the roster who feels genuinely dangerous. But I'll believe he's getting a sustained push when I actually see it last longer than three weeks.

Looking Ahead to Las Vegas

So where does this leave us heading into Sunday?

Will Ospreay looks like an absolute killer after putting away Shibata. He has maximum momentum. The Hidden Blade is fiercely protected as a finisher. The live crowd in Portland definitely went home happy.

But I can't shake the feeling that AEW is rushing through its own catalog of dream matches before they figure out how to tell actual stories with them. The promotion is obsessed with the immediate reaction at the expense of the long-term emotional investment.

Tony Khan has assembled the greatest in-ring roster in the history of professional wrestling. That isn't hyperbole. It is an objective fact based on the sheer concentration of talent under one roof. But having the best action figures doesn't mean anything if you don't know how to play with them properly.

We will see what happens at Double or Nothing. The in-ring action will be phenomenal, because it always is. I just hope the front office remembers to save some of the really good stuff for the people paying the bills this weekend.