BRM Reviews the 9/3/2021 Rampage

[Big Red Machine]

MALAKAI BLACK vs. LEE JOHNSON- 4/10
So Malakai Black has the coolest entrance in wrestling, right? I mean… who else is even close?
This was very good for what it had to be, given the positions of the wrestlers involved… right up until the dumb sh*t with the chair. I cackled at the announcers burying Rick Knox for his terrible refereeing. It doesn’t matter why he brought the chair into the ring, so don’t waste time asking him. It’s not supposed to be there, so your job is to get it out!
I didn’t for one second believe Excalibur when he told me there would be fines for using a chair in a match. We see people do things that should be a DQ all the time and there is no talk of fines (never mind the f*cking DQ that is in the rulebook).
Black gave Johnson the pretty-much-dead Johnson the chair (buy which I mean he left it by his barely-moving body) and offered him a free shot. Johnson managed to get up and lifted the chair to about his stomach before I guess Black got tired of waiting, turned around, and kicked his head off.
Excalibur claimed that Black was “trying to corrupt” Johnson and that “we’ll never know” if Johnson was going to do it or not, but that seems like an utterly ridiculous assumption to make. First of all, it assumes that the world works like The Force. I’m not saying that the idea can’t work (lots of religions and social philosophies have the idea that committing one sin/breaking one law will make it easier for you to decide to break others), but what is missing from that equation here is that in Star Wars, a Sith gains something strategically by corrupting a Jedi. What would Black have gained from this? Even if Johnson starts hitting all of his opponents with chairs, why would Black assume that he would benefit from this rather than being a frequent victim of it?
Secondly, if Black was trying to “corrupt” Johnson, you’d think he’d have actually let him have the chance to hit him with the chair. A far more likely explanation based on what actually happened is that Black was just taunting him.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- meh
Dustin Rhodes showed up and grabbed the chair. Black walked away. Anyone know where Dustin has been since this dude assaulted his beloved brother? Excalibur told us that Black was “systematically destroying the Nightmare Family,” which is true, but only because they’re coming at him one at a time. It’s a very WWE-like thing we it seems like we’re just supposed to forget that someone exists until they show up on screen instead of wonder why Dustin wasn’t out there last week along with Jonson trying to defend the Andersons, or why he hasn’t even cut a promo on this dude who assaulted his brother.

MARK HENRY INTERVIEWS DUSTIN RHODES- good… if you ignore the fact that Malakai Black has been targeting his family and stable for a month at this point and he only seems to have become angry about it a few minutes ago.
When we pitched back to the announcers, Excalibur pushed the idea that Dustin could have hit Black with the chair but “couldn’t bring himself to do it,” which seems to run completely counter to the sentiment that Dustin tried to push in his promo (Black clearly saw Dustin coming here, so that’s not an excuse for why he didn’t hit him). To me, based on how slowly Dustin was jogging to the ring, it seemed like Dustin didn’t hit Black with the chair because he was just too slow.

MIRO PROMO- GREAT!
He says mean things about Eddie Kingston, ending by calling him a “batboy for Jon Moxley.” Kingston came and cut a great promo in response. Miro dared him to fight, but of course bailed when Kingston got into the ring. Kingston came after him, but Miro levelled him with the title belt. Miro went to do more damage but Kingston came back and floored him with the DDT. Excellent built to their PPV match.

HANDICAP MATCH: Kris Statlander vs. Jamie Hayter & Rebel (w/Dr. Britt Baker, DMD)- 4/10
They got Statlander’s power over, but immediately sticking Hayter on the losing side of a handicap match was not good. I guess they tried to “protect” Hayter by showing that she probably could have broken the submission on Rebel up if she tried, but that opens up a giant logical hole because if the idea is to wear Statlander down before the PPV, why wouldn’t you keep the match going?

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- bad
Anyone foolish enough to answer the above question with “they had a plan for a post-match attack” will now be shown the error of their ways. What happened here was the heels stalked Statlander and surrounded her. Red Velvet came out and chased the off. The problems with that are as follows:
1. They tried to surrounded her on three sides of a four-sided ring. She could have just run to the side they weren’t on.
2. Both the finish and the post-match celebrating took place with Britt and Hayter BEHIND Statlander. If they wanted to attack her, they could have just run in from behind, where they would have the element of surprise!
“Detail Guy” Tony Khan strikes again.

MARK HENRY INTERVIEWS THE PARTICIPANTS IN THE MAIN EVENT- bad
2.0 were loud. Garcia told us that reason he wants to ruin the Darby vs. Punk match is “because I can,” which is code for the booker going “duuuuuuh…. I dunno?”
Darby was fine. He promised to get in Punk’s face after the match (Punk is scheduled to do commentary).

DARBY ALLIN (w/Sting) vs. DANIEL GARCIA (w/2.0)- 7/10
Darby appeared to concuss himself early on missing a running Coffin Drop on the outside.
Garcia was applying some sort of illegal hold using a chain across Darby’s mouth. This should have been a DQ, but wasn’t because… um…
That kind of undermines what they tried to do with Johnson and Black earlier, doesn’t it?
Other than that, I really liked the match. I popped huge for Darby pulling out Punk’s old Pepsi Twist. Darby got the win with the Last Supper.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- okay
The heels jumped Darby and Sting made the save. Shocking, I know. Sting brawled away with Garcia, leaving 2.0 alone beating on Darby, so Punk was compelled to make the save, and we closed the show with them nose to nose.


This was a decent episode of Dynamite. Most of the stuff focused on building up the PPV was quite good. The other stuff… not so much.