It looks like Collision will go head-to-head with SmackDown in November

AEW announced that their annual fall Full Gear event would happen on a Saturday night as usual this year, which made many wonder... “what about Collision?”

Had they planned to run the PPV on a weekend when they knew TNT had something else planned? Would they skip a week? Air a clip show?

Looks like we have our answer. Yesterday (Sept. 5), AEW announced a “Special Friday Night Televised Event” for the night before Full Gear. Both Collision and Rampage are named in the announcement, so it looks like a three hour go home will emanate from Inglewood, California’s Kia Forum — the same building where the PPV will be held.

Unless they’re planning to air the promised live Collision in Rampage’s regular time slot, this would mean going heads up against WWE SmackDown on FOX.

AEW and WWE have fought ratings wars before, but those usually involved NXT. Rampage & SmackDown briefly overlapped in October of 2021, and produced results that let everyone claim victory. But WWE’s show was bumped to cable that night, the WWE product wasn’t as hot as it now, and AEW was arguably the hottest its ever been. We definitely know the guy who helped Tony Khan claim victory that night won’t be wrestling for him that night...

Speaking of Pepsi Phil, the firing of CM Punk does make booking this “Special Friday Night Televised Event” easier for TK. Rampage had been on The Elite’s side of AEW’s soft roster split implemented for Punk’s brief return to the company. Now AEW can have everyone in the building all Full Gear weekend without fear of a “Brawl In”-type incident. Hopefully.

We’ll see how it goes, and how this “Friday Night Fight” shakes out in the ratings.