Wrestleview reader Andrew Elder attending Saturday’s ROH taping and live AEW Collision and the FedEx Forum in Memphis, TN.
Andrew sent in the following report from his time at the event.
ROH Tapings:
-Dalton Castle with the Boys beat Anthony Henry of the Workhorseman
-Marnia Shafir beat some enhancement talent girl (didn’t catch the girls name. She might be on ROH roster)
-3rd match was Angelico and a luchador in mask(with another masked guy with arm in sling). Didn’t catch much of it because we were moving to a new section at the time
AEW Collision/Battle of the belts
-Show was pretty good
-Tony Khan came out before the show started. He said he was happy to be in one of his favorite cities. He then said he was happy he could bring Collision and AEW to the FedEx Forum for the 1st time. (WWE used to be exclusive to the FedEx Forum). Nice guy. He was very hyped up.
-Matches were pretty good.
-Had a few Whoop That Trick Chants during the night including at Bryan Danielson which was weird
-Malaki Black sure can run fast. All of the House Black can in the dark (I’d trip). They were involved all night long
-Eddie Kingston is so loved.
-Jeff Jarrett did get some cheers since wrestling in his dad’s promotion for so many years.
-Announcers got great pops when they were introduced Tony Schiavone who shook hands with the crowd. JR also got a huge pop.
-After Battle of Belts went off the air, Billy Gunn got on the mic told Parker and Menard to leave, that they just wanted Garcia in the ring. They wanted him to dance, got the crowd to chant for him to dance. He eventually did then Billy and The Acclaimed dropped to send us on home.
-Notes on the crowd: Was a very small crowd possibly – 2,000 plus (Wrestletix probably has the numbers) in an Arena that can seat 14,000 for events (20,000 for basketball), so that was disappointing. Big problems was ticket prices, as they did not come down till a few weeks ago (where we usually set for other events had a intial higher price). Also there was little promotion until the last few weeks and also didn’t find out about who was going to be there. Sales were slow for an itial setup of the lower bowl of 5,000.
-Comparison to Raw that had 7,000-9,000 (I normally don’t want to compare, but it is glaring)
-When we got to our seat in section 108 (we were supposed to sit in section 113). An AEW representative came by with a stack of tickets and asked if we would like to move. My uncle said if they were end seats (do to health issues I have to set on the end of the aisle) that we would be glad to move. He said that they were. We ended up with good seats near the stage at top row of section 115. They moved a lot of folks over there.
-Now while did mention the attendance and the failure of promotion, I want to say that we did enjoy the show (I’m a wrestling fan not just of one promotion)
-One disappointment also was that Dave Brown wasn’t announced in the Arena when he joined the commentary. Dave would have got a pop. Got to see a lot of the street fight going on near us and the wrestlers heading to the back. It was cool being near the stage.
-Nice this year that I’ve got to see WWE twice. WWE, Impact (Now TNA again) and AEW in a three month span live.