All Elite Wrestling have announced the debut for AEW Collision, their brand-new Saturday evening show set to debut next month.
The company tweeted out the first poster for the show, which as been rumoured for months. The poster showed which stars will be included in the brand split, which seems to include Orange Cassidy, the House of Black and AEW Champion MJF.
AEW Collision will be broadcast on TNT, joining AEW Rampage on the network, while AEW Dynamite remains on TBS on Wednesdays.
The first episode of Collision will be on Saturday June 17th, and will be broadcast live on TNT at 8pm ET/7pm CT. This is expected to be the return of CM Punk, with the show titled “The Second Coming”.
They also released a press release for the show, which you can read below.
TNT LAUNCHES A SECOND NIGHT OF WRESTLING WITH
“AEW: COLLISION” FEATURING HEADLINERS THUNDER ROSA, MIRO, SAMOA JOE, POWERHOUSE HOBBS AND ANDRADE EL IDOLO ON SATURDAY, JUNE 17
NEW YORK (May 17, 2023) – TNT launches a second night of professional wrestling with a new tentpole series, “AEW: Collision” on Saturday, June 17, it was announced today by Kathleen Finch, Chairman and Chief Content Officer, US Networks Group, Warner Bros. Discovery, during the company’s 2023 Upfront presentation at Madison Square Garden in New York City. This live, two-hour, in-ring show will air every Saturday night from 8-10 p.m. ET and feature more wrestlers, more stories and more action to super-serve fans. “AEW: Collision” will feature headliners including Miro, Samoa Joe, Thunder Rosa, Powerhouse Hobbs, and Andrade El Idolo.
In only four years following the launch of “AEW: Dynamite,” AEW’s footprint has more than doubled across TNT and TBS. Along with “AEW: Dynamite,” Friday night’s “AEW: Rampage,” the recent follow-doc “AEW: All Access,” and now “AEW: Collision,” TNT and TBS deliver the best matches and most entertaining moments in professional wrestling today. AEW has reached 23M total viewers so far this year across all of its shows on TBS and TNT.*
“We’re doubling-down on wrestling with ‘AEW: Collision,’ which gives fans two more hours every week,” said Jason Sarlanis, President, Turner Networks, ID and HLN, linear & streaming. “AEW’s roster of talent has expanded so quickly that we felt it needed another night to bring our audience the epic rivalries, unforgettable matches and stars they love to watch. Adding ‘Collision’ to our programming mix on TNT will allow us to satisfy the massive demand we’ve felt from our hardcore fanbase and be the ultimate complement to ‘AEW: Dynamite’ on TBS.”
“With the addition of ‘AEW: Collision’ on TNT, I’m extremely proud that a Turner network will be the home of Saturday night wrestling for the first time in more than two decades,” said Tony Khan, CEO, GM and Head of Creative of AEW. “The debut of ‘Collision’ is significant across numerous sectors including television, wrestling, entertainment and sports, and reinforces AEW as the bold property we envisioned when we launched in 2019. ‘Collision’will deliver live every Saturday night more of what fans and viewers tell us they want – athleticism, big personalities, exciting storylines and hard-hitting wrestling action, all of which have become synonymous with AEW.”
Big stars like Miro, Samoa Joe, Thunder Rosa, Powerhouse Hobbs, and Andrade El Idolo look set to be included on the Collision side of the AEW draft, although there is still some debate over whether it will be a “soft” or “hard” draft.
While the wrestlers are expecting a hard brand split, Sean Ross Sapp is expecting a softer one, with fixed rosters with some leeway onto appearing on each show.
He also revealed that the champions could wander between each show.
“As of last week, it was believed that there would be a soft roster split for AEW Dynamite and Collision. This would allow talent that didn’t get along to work shows when necessary without the likelihood of conflict that we saw a lot of backstage in AEW in 2022. However, instead, we’re told that talent are expecting a hard brand split, with the exception of many AEW Champions. We’ve been told that there will be additional exceptions here and there. We have not learned how exactly the split will be determined, if there will be a draft, or how that will work out. However, the working plan as of this week is a firm brand split, with some rare exceptions.”