BRM Reviews the 10/15/2021 Rampage (and its Buy-In)

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Big Red Machine
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BRM Reviews the 10/15/2021 Rampage (and its Buy-In)

Post by Big Red Machine » Oct 17th, '21, 00:15

I’m just putting the YouTube “Buy-In” hour in the same thread as the main show.

SANTANA GARRETT vs. TAY CONTI (w/Anna Jay)- 4/10
Conti won a short match cleanly. Garrett has always seemed a step to slow to make some of her stuff look good to me, and that happened a bit here. I’m continuously baffled that BJJ blackbelt Conti never uses a submission for her finisher.

VERY LONG VIDEO PACKAGE ABOUT THE DAN LAMBERT CREW VS. INNER CIRCLE MATCH- fine

LEE MORIARTY vs. BOBBY FISH- 6.75/10
Okay… this entrance mask gimmick that people have become obsessed with recently needs to go away. If it’s not immediately apparent to me why you are wearing the mask you are wearing, you shouldn’t be wearing the mask “because it’s cool” is not a good reason to do something that seems to have no bearing on or relationship to your character. And if Lee Moriarty’s nickname is “the white tiger” or something like that which would justify him wearing that mask, then either the announcer or ring announcer or entrance graphic should make that clear.
Fish won clean in nine minutes, but Moriarty had a great showing.

BRYAN DANIELSON vs. MINORU SUZUKI- 8.5/10
This was excellent strong-style stuff. I’m really not a fan of a lot of the strong-style measured strike exchanges, but these guys made them work by 1) building up to them so that they felt like an organic part of the story rather than a spot that was happening for the purpose of creating drama, 2) staggering back and firing up so it felt like they were absorbing the blows and coming back anyway rather than just calmly exchanging strikes and not selling anything, and 3) not doing at moments where it felt like it was part of a formula (a common issue with Suzuki-Gun matches, which, again, makes it feel like a spot in a match that is being done because that’s what you do in your match rather than something happening organically). That doesn’t mean some of the things that annoy me didn’t annoy me (Suzuki giving up the sleeper hold to try to hit the Gotch Piledriver, Danielson giving on the head-stomps of death to go for a submission instead), but it did mean that those spots weren’t piling more straw on the back of an already-encumbered camel.
The crowd was red-hot for this one, and I loved that pretty much everyone in the building was behind Danielson. Yes, there were some Suzuki chants and there was at least one “FIGHT FOREVER!,” but for the most part it felt like the fans were actually invested in the result rather than just cheering because they were seeing quality wrestling.

CM PUNK VS. MATT SYDAL VIDEO PACKAGE- good

CM PUNK vs. MATT SYDAL- 7.5/10
Holy sh*t Sydal countering that body slam with an arm drag looked AMAZING! This was just plain great professional wrestling. Punk won clean, but Sydal felt elevated by losing to Punk this competitively.

THE DARK ORDER ARE CLOWNS BACKSTAGE- terrible
John Silver challenges Adam Cole and the Young Bucks to a match to stop them from interfering in the Adam Page vs. Kenny Omega world title match at Full Gear. After watching this promo, I don’t understand how anyone could watch that match and wish for any result other than the Bucks and Cole superkicking Silver so many times that his jaw shatters into dust.

RUBY SOHO vs. THE BUNNY- 5.75/10
Excalibur wanted me to believe that the result of this match “could have serious implications for the upcoming TBS Championship tournament,” which will start MORE THAN TWO MONTHS FROM NOW. F*ck off.
Ruby won a solid match with a backslide, then got attacked by Penelope Ford and The Bunny. She apparently has no friends and no one in the back has any morals, so no one came out to save her, and she wound up eating some brass knuckles.

MARK HENRY’S SPLIT-SCREEN MAIN EVENT INTERVIEW- fine

THE INNER CIRCLE (Chris Jericho, Jake Hager, & Sammy Guevara) vs. THE MEN OF THE YEAR & JUNIOR DOS SANTOS (w/Dan Lambert & Jorge Masvidal)- 5.75/10
There was some good action here, but the finish really brought it down. Said finish saw Jericho have the Walls of Jericho locked in on Scorpio Sky, but Paige VanZant jumped the guardrail and distract the referee, allowed Jorge Masvidal to run in and hit a running knee strike at the air somewhere near the vicinity of Jericho’s face, knocking him out and allowing Sky to cover him for the win. Even with the camera cut, that looked REALLY bad.
American Top Team beat Jericho up until the others were able to help him… and hey! LAX finally remembered that they are part of the group and came out to help this time. Paige VanZant once again bailed out of the ring instead of helping her teammates because the babyfaces were supposed to win this brawl, but we can’t have them beating up a woman, so the trained fighter had to inexplicable not fight. Once again, if you need the babyfaces to win but can’t have them lay her out, DON’T HAVE HER IN THE SEGMENT AT ALL. There were two other ATT guys sitting next to her, plus you also had Dan Lambert at ringside. Any one of them could have filled the role of the person who hops onto the ringside to distract the referee for the finish.



This was a good episode of Rampage, but matches 2-4 really carried the workload.
Hold #712: ARM BAR!

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