AEW will launch Collision on June 17th, 2023 with it airing on TNT as a two-hour program airing every Saturday night.
It will be built around CM Punk as a way to separate him from those who have issues with him and vice versa dating back to the All Out incidents.
Dave Meltzer reported in the Wrestling Observer Newsletter that The Elite will remain on Dynamite while Punk and FTR will be used on Collision.
“If the idea is a talent split, with one group working Wednesday and another working Saturday, because Rampage is likely to be taped on Wednesday, that would mean it would have the Wednesday night crew predominately. The Saturday crew will be headed by Punk and FTR, and the Wednesday crew by The Elite and BCC,” Meltzer wrote.
The 2023 WWE Draft will kick off on tonight’s episode of WWE SmackDown and then carry over to Monday’s edition of RAW.
On Thursday, WWE posted a complete list of stars eligible to be drafted on each night. While the NXT brand will be involved, the names who could potentially be called up from that specific brand have not been announced.
You can check out a complete list of the eligible names below:
Night One: Friday on SmackDown
Becky Lynch
Bianca Belair
Bobby Lashley
Candice LeRae
Chelsea Green & Sonya Deville
Cody Rhodes
Damage CTRL (Bayley, IYO SKY & Dakota Kai)
Dexter Lumis
Dolph Ziggler
Drew McIntyre
Edge
Hit Row (Top Dolla & Ashante “Thee” Adonis w/ B-Fab)
Imperium (GUNTHER, Ludwig Kaiser & Giovanni Vinci)
Lacey Evans
Matt Riddle
Maximum Male Models (ma.cé, mån.sôör & Maxxine Dupri)
Mustafa Ali
Natalya
Omos (w/ MVP)
Shinsuke Nakamura
The Bloodline (Roman Reigns and Solo Sikoa)
The Miz
The O.C. (AJ Styles, Luke Gallows, Karl Anderson & Michin)
The Street Profits
Viking Raiders (Erik & Ivar w/ Valhalla)
Select NXT Superstars
Night Two: This Monday on Raw
Akira Tozawa
Alpha Academy (Otis & Chad Gable)
Angel Garza & Humberto Carrillo
Asuka
Austin Theory
Baron Corbin
Braun Strowman & Ricochet
Brock Lesnar
Bronson Reed
Cedric Alexander & Shelton Benjamin
Charlotte Flair
Dana Brooke
Elias
Emma
Johnny Gargano
Judgment Day (Finn Bálor, Damian Priest & Dominik Mysterio)
Karrion Kross (w/ Scarlett)
Kevin Owens & Sami Zayn
LA Knight
Liv Morgan & Raquel Rodriguez
Nikki Cross
Piper Niven
Rhea Ripley
Rick Boogs
Riddick Moss
Ronda Rousey & Shayna Baszler
Seth Rollins
Shotzi
Tamina
Tegan Nox
The Brawling Brutes (Sheamus, Ridge Holland & Butch)
The LWO (Rey Mysterio, Santos Escobar, Cruz Del Toro, Joaquin Wilde & Zelina Vega)
Impact Wrestling Digital Media Champion Joe Hendry is dealing with an injury. As of this writing, there is no word on what the actual injury is or how long he’ll be out of action. The last time we saw Hendry compete was at the April 17th tapings in Toronto, Canada.
D’Lo Brown was working as a producer during the latest set of Impact Wrestling TV tapings. As of this writing, there is no word on whether he’s back working full-time with the company. It should be noted that D-Lo is well-respected in the Impact Wrestling locker room.
And finally, Melissa Anderson (aka Cheerleader Melissa and Alyssa Flash) received a tryout as a producer at the recent set of Impact Wrestling TV tapings.
With Mercedes Moné making waves in Japan with STARDOM and New Japan Pro-Wrestling, many have wondered what the future holds for her former WWE Women’s Tag Team Championship-winning partner Trinity Fatu (formerly known as Naomi in WWE).
PWInsider Elite is reporting that Trinity Fatu will debut for Impact Wrestling during this weekend’s taping in Cicero, Illinois, just across the border from Chicago. Impact had been teasing a big surprise for the tapings at Cicero Stadium, and it appears that surprise is Fatu. Not set to be just a one-off surprise appearance, the report states that this will mark the start of the former “SmackDown” Women’s Champion’s tenure with the promotion. There is no information on the length of her deal with the promotion.
The debut will mark her first appearance on a wrestling program since she and Moné walked out of WWE in May 2022, abandoning their women’s tag team titles out of frustration over the creative direction of the women’s tag division. There had been talk of Fatu joining her husband Jimmy Uso in the popular Bloodline faction, but nothing has come of those rumors. Fatu confirmed late last month on Instagram that she was completely finished with WWE.
Fatu’s partner Mercedes Moné debuted for New Japan Pro-Wrestling in January, also wrestling for NJPW’s sister promotion STARDOM as the IWGP Women’s Champion. Moné recently lost her title and has demanded a rematch in Long Beach, California at NJPW Resurgence. She recently signed an extension with the companies, which are both owned by Bushiroad.
AEW shocked the wrestling world on Wednesday night with Roderick Strong’s surprise debut on “Dynamite” in Sunrise, Florida. He had requested his WWE release last May, hadn’t been seen on WWE programming since August, and as of mid-March, was reportedly still under contract. So for him to show up on “Dynamite” to run in and save Adam Cole from the Jericho Appreciation Society was something almost no one saw coming. Very quickly, Fightful Select reported some details to try to help give context to what was a very left-field debut.
The most recent information that Fightful had was that the AEW talents they spoke to were “pleasantly surprised” that Strong had signed. On the WWE side, the newest information was that 2K Games had been told not to include Strong in the “WWE 2K23” video game, that other WWE talent had never been updated on his status, and he had not been at the WWE Performance Center “in quite some time” even though he was fully cleared to wrestle. The report also noted that Strong’s WWE run started its downward slide when Paul “Triple H” Levesque lost power in “NXT,” as he was behind Strong’s push as the center of a revitalized cruiserweight division.
Strong has been wrestling since 2000, breaking into the business when he was 16 years old after years of training under Jim Neidhart. After initially getting on the map for his work in the IPW promotion in Florida, he made a name for himself in Ring of Honor, where he was a mainstay for over a decade before signing with WWE in 2016.
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