Bizarre AEW Collision Grand Slam Commentary Situation Revealed

A bizarre commentary situation played out on the special Grand Slam edition of AEW Collision from Arthur Ashe Stadium.

Much of Collision Grand Slam was taped following Dynamite on Wednesday, September 25 but the TNT Title open challenge between Jack Perry and Minoru Suzuki was taped before Dynamite went on the air. This led to the bizarre situation of Tony Schiavone, Matt Menard, and Ian Riccaboni being at the commentary desk for Collision, only for Riccaboni to disappear for the TNT Title match. The ROH announcer remained on the call for the match, though, and his absence was explained by Tony Schiavone who claimed Riccaboni was hiding under the announce table because of the chaos that ensued during the match.

Bryan Alvarez reported on Wrestling Observer Radio that Riccaboni was not in the building when Jack Perry vs. Minoru Suzuki was taped so AEW decided to have Schiavone and Daddy Magic call the match live and then add Riccaboni's comments during post-production.

"What happened was they had Tony [Schiavone] and Daddy Magic do commentary and pretend that he was there. So they did not do commentary in post, only Ian did. So they had to like leave spaces where he would say things and then they did the rest by themselves...anyway, he wasn't there. They did the entire match pretending he was there and they had a cover for when they got a close-up of the announcers and he wasn't there. He was an invisible announcer," Alvarez said.

Riccaboni, fortunately, came out from under the commentary table following the TNT Title match.

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