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All Elite Wrestling officially announced the debut of their new TNT series AEW Collision for Saturday 6/17 at 8 PM EST in conjunction with today's Warner Bros. Discovery upfront presentation. It will be a two-hour live series.
Artwork for the new series features AEW Champion MJF, the returning Andrade el Idolo, AEW International Champion Orange Cassidy, Miro and Thunder Rosa (who returned last Wednesday on Dynamite) as well as AEW Tag Team Champions FTR, AEW Trios Champions The House of Black, Powerhouse Hobbs and Samoa Joe.
There is an expectation that there will be AEW Collision promotion today on TNT, perhaps on tonight's Inside the NBA broadcast in advance of tonight's AEW Dynamite on TBS.
Notably absent from the artwork and all mentions in the press release is former AEW Champion CM Punk, who had been long expected to be announced as returning at the first-ever Collision taping in Chicago, IL at the United Center. One would think that Punk not being center stage as part of the announcement means there's a hurdle the two sides have yet to cross. The belief among AEW sources as late as over the weekend was that Punk was back "in" and would be one of the main forces in front of and behind the scenes for the new series. Based on the announcement today, It appears that (at least as of this moment) that is not the case. More as we confirm it.
AEW also did not (as of this writing) announce the location of the first Collision taping, which as noted above, has been expected to be Chicago's United Center in order to tie Punk's return into his AEW debut, which took place at that same venue. With one month to go before the taping, AEW will need to announce a location and put tickets on sale fairly soon.
Perhaps even more interesting is that there was no media rights renewal announcement today. PWInsider.com is told by a source at Warner Bros. Discovery that there was never, ever a plan for either side to announce a new deal between AEW and WBD. There had been rampant speculation online about a new deal between the two sides being worth as high as $1.5 Billion, but beyond that speculation, there had never been any inkling from either AEW or WBD that a new rights agreement had been locked in, much less was going to be officially announced today. Once again, like Saudi Arabia buying WWE, another story with no basis in fact ran amuck. We are told there is no announcement expected today on that front.
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