AEW changed things up this week by airing a live episode of Rampage on Friday night before taping Saturday’s episode of Collision right after the live broadcast from the Oakland Arena in Oakland, CA.
Matches featured on Collision included Andrade El Idolo vs. Daniel Garcia, Dalton Castle vs. Nick Wayne, The WorkHorsemen vs. La Faccion Ingobernable, Roderick Strong vs. Darius Martin, Willow Nightingale vs. Julia Hart in an AEW TBS Title #1 Contendership Match, Powerhouse Hobbs vs. Titus Alexander, and Adam Copeland, Darby Allin & Sting vs. Lance Archer & The Righteous.
While speaking on Wrestling Observer Radio, Dave Meltzer pointed out that AEW has changed up its local marketing strategy and also confirmed WrestleTix’s report that Collision was the second-largest walk-up in the company’s history.
“Some people really want to jump on the AEW is doing bad, and they’re cold. There’s been some signs of life,” Meltzer stated. “And even the show I was at last night, it was not a great show as far as like compared to like, say, the first times and everything like that, and it wasn’t like loaded with great matches, but it was not a cold promotion. For Oakland, for the building they’re in, and how much that building usually has been drawing for WWE. They did pretty well. They did a great walk-up, which is a really interesting thing because they’ve been weak in advance sales, and maybe that’s because of the high prices, but maybe people just kind of are just kind of waiting till the end, figuring they’ll get a better ticket deal at the end. But whatever it was, and in some of these cities, they’ve really started to ramp up local promotion like [Powerhouse] Hobbs did a lot of media here the last couple of days. So it was actually the second biggest walk-up for an AEW television show in history. It beat out the [CM] Punk show in Chicago. They only ended up with 4500 in the building, but I mean, it was tracking to do maybe in the threes. It did not feel like a cold promotion. I mean, it’s not a hot promotion.”
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