AEW Collision Preview for July 29, 2023

Last week’s edition of COLLISION saw CM Punk and Darby Allin fall to Ricky Starks and faux-TNT Champion Christian Cage in tag team action, while The House of Black once again turned back the AEW World Trios Championship challenge of The Acclaimed, leaving the future of Daddy Ass in question. Plus Skye Blue fell to Taya Valkyrie while the BC GOLD pair of Jay and Juice topped Action and Darius! This Saturday All Elite Wrestling returns to Hartford, CT and the XL Center and COLLISION is coming with The House of Black’s Buddy Matthews facing Andrade El Idolo in a Ladder Match, FTR defending their AEW World Tag Championship against AEW World Champion MJF and Adam Cole, plus BC GOLD facing Action Andretti, Darius Martin, and El Hijo Del Vikingo in trios competition! In addition, we will here from CM Punk, Samoa Joe will be in action against Gravity, plus Kiera Hogan and Mercedes Martinez will make their COLLISION debuts with their first-time singles bout!

AEW WORLD TAG TEAM CHAMPIONSHIP MATCH…

FTR (Cash Wheeler & Dax Harwood)(c) vs. AEW World Champion Adam Cole & MJF

As winners of the Blind Eliminator Tag Team Tournament, the mismatched duo of MJF and AEW World Champion not only had to defeat the teams of Matt Menard & The Butcher, Big Bill & Brian Cage, and Sammy Guevara & Daniel Garcia, but also has to survive their own animosity with each other to make the whole thing work.

But somewhere along the way, looking at that wonderfully compiled video about their bromance, Adam Cole and MJF have actually bonded, perhaps even become friends, much to the chagrin of one Roderick Strong. Though Cole keeps saying to trust him, it’s hard when he’s cozied up to man who refers to himself as “The Devil”. Still, however weird this relationship has been, you can’t argue it hasn’t been successful, and against three very different combinations of opponents.

But none of them have been on the level of FTR in terms of tag team competition, in fact because of the nature of the Blind Eliminator Tournament, of the three teams only Garcia and Guevara had any prior experience as a duo, and even that was extremely limited. The fact that Cole and MJF contended with three teams who were as inexperienced working together as them may have helped contribute to their success in the tournament, but Cash Wheeler and Dax Harwood are one of the most experienced teams in the whole of All Elite Wrestling, and just one of two teams able to claim 2-Time status as AEW World Tag Champions. Just in terms of their AEW career, FTR is number two on the all-time win list behind The Acclaimed, are tied with The Young Bucks for sixth place on the all-time number of matches list, and put together a 12 match win streak from 6/10/20-10/14/20 that ties them with Jurassic Express for fourth longest tag team win streak in AEW. Their first run as champs, though just 63 days, saw three successful defenses against SCU, TH2, and Best Friends while their second, just passing 115 days, has also seen three successful defenses, the latest being that epic 2