STATE COLLEGE, Pa. — The funny thing about the AEW debut in a noted college town is that you wouldn’t have known it from inside the Bryce Jordan Center on Saturday night.
To be sure, the fans in attendance enthusiastically joined in both the spontaneous and AEW-directed “We are” chants that are the trademark of Penn State. It just didn’t appear many of those fans inside the BJC were college students.
That’s something to consider as AEW works on ways it can grow over the rest of 2023 and beyond. It’s certainly got a loyal core group of wrestling fans it can count on, whether it’s helping to pack around 80,000 people into Wembley Stadium for All In London, or helping Collision ratings hold up surprisingly well even with college football season underway.
No one would expect college-age young adults to give up a Saturday night to watch Collision on TV, but when it’s literally brought to your campus, you’d hope that would be a different story.
The people who were present were incredibly behind Britt Baker in her quest to dethrone TBS Champion Kris Statlander. That only made sense: The good doctor is a 2013 Penn State grad, and wore awesome blue and white ring gear with the Nittany Lions logo in several places.
And while both Baker and Statlander are fan favorites under normal circumstances, the crowd treated the champ like a heel in the main event. The near falls, especially late when Baker looked like she might pull it off, were probably the loudest reactions during any match all night.
Baker came up short, but Statlander gave her a nice gesture of respect afterward. It was as good a happy ending as a show can have with the hometown hero losing.
It will be interesting to see if AEW returns to State College and can draw more fans while doing so, but in its debut, Collision played well to the people who were there — and that’s never a bad thing.
AEW Collision results from State College:
- Ricky Starks and Big Bill def. Bryan Danielson and Claudio Castagnoli by pinfall, thanks in large part to a low blow by Starks to Danielson that went undetected by the ref
- The Young Bucks and Adam Page (or the Hung Bucks, if you’ve been rocking with them for a while) challenged the Mogul Embassy to a ROH World Six-Man Tag Team Championship at Grand Slam
- Both Powerhouse Hobbs and Miro were featured in recorded promos suggesting they may clash again, with Miro also distraught over the unexpected arrival of his “hot and flexible wife”
- FTR def. Iron Savages by pinfall to retain the AEW World Tag Team Championship, then were confronted by The Workhorsemen in the ring afterward
- Keith Lee had a backstage interview crashed by Shane Taylor, who introduced Lee Moriarty as the newest member of Shane Taylor Promotions and had a tense interaction with Lee
- John Silver def. Anthony Bowens by pinfall thanks to interference by Evil Uno, who was able to pull it off since Anthony Caster and Billy Gunn were barred from ringside
- Eddie Kingston cut another heartfelt promo about his issues with Castagnoli and said all of New York would have his back at Grand Slam
- Renee Paquette had an interview of few words with Orange Cassidy and Hook, who agreed to tag up at Grand Slam
- Aussie Open def. Pretty Boy Smooth and Wes Barkley by pinfall in a matter of seconds, then challenged FTR to a match at WrestleDream whether their tag team titles were on the line or not
- Part one of an interview with Toni Storm made it once again clear that Storm is doing her best character work in AEW right now
- Andrade El Idolo def. Scorpio Sky by submission, but …
- … immediately afterward, Jay White and Bullet Club Gold came out, White challenged Andrade to a match next week, and the two men had to be prevented from brawling right away
- The Righteous def. The Hardys by pinfall, a surprising result that didn’t sit well with the live crowd
- Kris Statlander def. Britt Baker by pinfall to retain the AEW TBS Championship, then consoled a distraught Baker afterward
AEW Collision live notes:
- How over is WWE star LA Knight right now? Most of the spontaneous chants or yells in the concourse before Collision were some version of his trademark “Yeah!”
- One of the more popular merch items was a smaller version of the cardboard Jay White that Juice Robinson carries around, or “Cardblade,” as White calls him
- AEW may need to do some work on familiarizing the audience with some of the tag teams, as the crowd hit both The Workhorsemen and The Righteous with “we don’t know you” chants