BRM Reviews the 8/19/2022 Rampage (bad)

[Big Red Machine]

Jim Ross, Tony Schiavone, Excalibur, and Chris Jericho are all on commentary.

CLAUDIO CASTAGNOLI PROMO- great, but…
Claudio wants to be defending his ROH World Title, so he makes an open challenge. Out comes Dustin Rhodes, who hasn’t been seen on TV (never mind won a match on TV) in months. It’s the ROH World Title and there is no ROH TV show, so I wouldn’t have a problem with this… except that AEW does it so frequently that when you do it in a situation where it makes sense, it feels like the usual laziness.
Dustin says that he and Claudio have been to war together. I have no idea what he’s talking about. I don’t ever remember them teaming or feuding. Other than that, his promo about wanting to be the world champion for thirty-four years and about how Claudio had also gone for so long without being world champion until he won the ROH World Title so he understands what this means to Dustin was excellent. Claudio had a good response as well, and they agreed to the match.

LEXI NAIR INTERVIEWS RUBY SOHO & ORTIZ- okay, on average
Ruby was okay, although claiming that they’ve wanted to fight Tay and Sammy for a long time when you’re supposed to be the intense, violent babyface stable and Tay and Sammy wrestled just last week and at no point did you show up to try to attack them is not a good look. Ortiz just yelled like a goof. He came off as someone trying to act intense instead of someone who actually is intense.

AEW WORLD TAG TEAM TITLE MATCH: Swerve in Our Glory(c) vs. Private Party- 4.5/10
Excalibur told us that Andrade is “still holding the leverage over Private Party.” What leverage? He gets a cut of their pay because he’s their manager? Okay. They chose to go with him over Matt Hardy. And it’s not like he’s trying t make them do something they don’t want to do. He told them to go out and win the titles.
Kassidy landing on his feet to counter Keith Lee’s biel in the opening spot was great, but Excalibur using this to tell me that “this is not the same Private Party that Keith Lee faced” when he debuted, and that Private Party have “shown a lot of growth” falls completely flat to me because we have seen absolutely nothing of that. They’ve barely even been on TV! All we’ve seen is this one spot where a guy who does flips figured out that a basic wrestling throw can be countered by landing on your feet. If you want me to think that these guys have grown, you have to show us. It’s the first rule of storytelling: show; don’t tell.
Some cool stuff happened, but Swerve in Our Glory won cleanly in just under six minutes.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- HATED IT!
Keith Lee shows Private Party respect after the match, even though they really didn’t do anything out of the ordinary to earn it, so at best it comes off more as politeness than anything else, and at worst it comes off the way it came off to me, which is that the booker has decided to turn Private Party babyface, and thus everyone is suddenly treating them as if they are babyfaces/about to turn babyface, even though there was absolutely no build in that direction whatsoever before the segment the other week where Andrade- their heel manager who they had previously had no quarrel with- started to be disrespectful to them for no reason.

LEXI NAIR INTERVIEWS THE FACTORY- bad
A bunch of them are sitting around a table, playing cards. Ogogo is in the background, not playing with them.
In an amazing coincidence, we started this interview just in time for Lexi Nair to ask Q.T. if he is worried about Will Hobbs being angry with them and for Q.T. to answer it in a nonchalant way before Will Hobbs showed up and was angry with them.
He really is upset with this crew of jobbers because they didn’t take out Ricky Starks like they claimed they could. He tells them “where I’m from, your word is you bond,” which is a very babyface ethos. Q.T. swears to him that they will take out Starks like they claimed they could.
Why does he even need them to be doing this for him? He’s Powerhouse Hobbs. He’s gotten the best of Ricky Starks at every turn, and knows all of Starks’ weaknesses, plus he thinks that Starks doesn’t have the same will to win that he does. If he wants Starks taken out, why wouldn’t he just go beat him up himself?

ZACK CLAYTON PROMO- boring
Yeah. He got to talk again for some reason. This bland dork and Q.T. Marshall have both gotten more promo over the past few weeks than Private Party, who they are trying to turn babyface, and #1 contenders to the two women’s championships.

FTW TITLE MATCH: Hook(c) vs. Zack Clayton- no rating, bad segment
Hook won in seconds. Squashing a nobody jobber doesn’t do anything for Hook at this point. Then, just to make it worse, Hook kept the hold locked in after the bell rang. What a douche.

2.0 PROMO- bad
They were loud and annoying. Which ever one of them is the slightly less loud one decided that he wanted the FTW Title. So Tony Khan thinks this is something people want to see. No wonder he has to hot-shot a title unification match on free TV right a PPV.

LEXI NAIR INTERVIEWS BILLY GUNN- good
Billy cut a good promo on his kids, then revealed that he would “bring some friends” to help fight them next week. I’m not really sure why the Acclaimed hid off camera as if this was some sort of reveal.

RECAP OF POST-DYNAMITE EVENTS- good
Not only did they attack Dragon Lee after Wednesday’s loss, but after Dynamite went off the air, Rush ripped Dragon Lee’s mask off as well.

SERPENTICO vs. BUDDY MATTHEWS (w/Julia Hart)- squash
Excalibur told us that this was a “standby match” that we are getting to see “because Hook made such short work of his opponent.” How about you wait until after all of the announced matches are finished before going to a standby match. I don’t know how long the time limit is for the main event, but if the other quarterfinal match in the tournament we’ve seen so far went 20:54, then I we can assume that it’s at least twenty-five minutes, and we have not only that match left but also the Penelope Ford vs. Athena match, and only thirty-five minutes left in the show.
This is one of those things that is a big red flag to be about AEW’s presentation. They seem to think that they can just say something that sounds like it adds more realism to the show without making that it actually does add realism in the situation in which you’re using it. What they are doing here is like a sci-fi show where astronauts land on a planet with no water and say “thank G-d we brought along our gravity generator to help us make water.” Just because gravity is a real thing doesn’t mean you’re adding more realism to your show by throwing the term in in a situation where it doesn’t make sense!


POST-MATCH SEGMENT- meh
Miro showed up with what was apparently Malakai Black’s mask, so I guess he already beat Malakai up off-screen. Either that or he stole it from his locker room, which seems kind of goofy, because what does doing that accomplished for him.
Anyway, he through the mask onto the ramp. Buddy charged up the ramp to fight him. Miro won the fight decisively, pretty much undoing anything Buddy got from this win.

LEXI NAIR INTERVIEWS DR. BRITT BAKER, DMD & FRIENDS- bad
Britt tries to stir up trouble between the babyfaces, which they will inevitably fall form, and thus wind up looking like idiots because they had no issues before Britt started insisting that they shouldn’t rust each other for reasons that clearly served only Britt.

PENELOPE FORD vs. ATHENA- 5/10
That goofy jetpack prop that Athena wears for her entrance is embarrassing.
They cut to that goofball fan with a box over his/her head who has been at ringside for months and done nothing. There are two possibilities here:
1. That person will turn out to be a wrestler, in which case why the f*ck have they been going around for months with a box over their head?
2. It’s a fan trying to draw attention to themselves, in which case AEW shouldn’t be giving them any attention, as doing so will only encourage more people doing the same.
Athena won cleanly.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- fine
Leyla Grey and Kiera Hogan came out of the crowd and jumped Athena from behind. They held her and forced her to watch as Jade Cargill came out onto the ramp and smashed her dumb entrance prop with a sledgehammer. This might have been effective if they had taken any time to establish what these things were or why they would mean anything to Ember Moon, but why spend time letting Ember cut a promo about them when we can spend TV time on Zack Clayton, Danhausen, and the Factory?
When Jericho said that “she made them herself,” I thought he was joking and making fun of her because they looked so lame.
Athena fought herself free just in time for Jade to hit her in the gut with the sledgehammer.

CM PUNK VS. JON MOXLEY VIDEO PACKAGE- okay

RICKY STARKS VS. WILL HOBBS VIDEO PACKAGE- meh
The thing I didn’t like her was that Starks’ part of it was to say that “next week on Dynamite, I’ve got a lot to say.” Well, why not say it when the camera is on you right here? Why did you have to wait until Dynamite? Hobbs’ part was a fine recap of his reasons for turning, but Starks’ was just a plug for a promo.


Their graphic (and Excalibur, verbally) referred to next week’s Dark Order vs. House of Black match was a semifinal in the AEW Trios Championship tournament. It’s actually a quarterfinal. They called this week’s a semifinal, too.

MARK HENRY INTERVIEWS PEOPLE IN THE MAIN EVENT- bad
The Trustbusters come across as delusional jobbers who think they have a chance. Trent said that the Trios Titles were made for their group, which I really hope isn’t true. Orange Cassidy did he same dumb gag with Mark Henry that he did the last time he was in the Rampage main event.

Oh. I see now. They keep calling it the “Rampage Semifinal” because despite having run about fifty-three tournaments over their three years of existence (including running tournaments for about five straights months now), this time they decided to have a “Rampage” bracket and “Dynamite” bracket. That’s really stupid. Yes, I realize that they think that calling this a semifinal instead of a quarterfinal makes the match look more important, but the difference in interest between a quarterfinal and a semifinal in a tournament for news titles fans have supposedly been “clamoring for” for years should be negligible.

AEW TRIOS TITLE TOURNAMENT QUARTERFINAL MATCH: Best Friends & Orange Cassidy vs. Trustbusters (w/Sonny Kiss)- 6/10
They did flips and action. Someone decided that we needed to have a spot involving Danhausen being in the crowd. I hope the person who suggested that falls down a flight of stairs.
The Goof Troop won with Ant Hill that didn’t look anywhere near as good as when the Colony would do it. Drew Gulak and Tracy Williams > Best Friends.

This was a bad episode of Rampage, with very little good wrestling, and a lot of frustrating crap.

STUPID ANNOUNCER QUOTES:
1. Excalibur said that the Goof Troop were “one of the” longest-tenured trios in AEW, which is correct. Or at least that’s what he tried to say, but Jericho bowled him over to say the same thing, but omitted the key “one of” qualifier, thus wrongly claiming that they are the trio that has been together the longest. Kenny Omega and the Young Bucks have been together for much longer.