BRM Reviews the 4/14/2023 Rampage

[Big Red Machine]

I have seen Dynamite, but the laptop my notes were had its fan die before I could turn my notes into full thoughts. New fan is coming at some point tomorrow, so review should be up by Wednesday morning, unless the Rangers game goes into multiple overtimes.


IWGP TAG TEAM TITLE MATCH: Aussie Open(c) vs. Best Friends- 6.75/10
They did moves. It was vaguely exciting at times.
Shockingly, the ice-cold mid-card comedy team who did nothing to earn a title shot did not win another company’s tag titles from a team making their first defense of those titles in a match whose total hype was one guy cutting a promo saying “we want a shot at those titles!”
This is why I’m not excited when there is talk of AEW getting a new show. They already have multiple shows, and instead of using those shows to get over characters and storylines, Tony gives us filler like this that even the biggest New Japan marks in the US had four years of ROH to realize isn’t going to be important in any way.

CLOWNS BEING CLOWNS BACKSTAGE- bad
Sonjay tells us that he has a camera here because he wants the world to see that Mark Briscoe is on the same page as their group. He wants them to do a “go team!” Mark Briscoes says that he was “tricked” and that this wasn’t what he “signed up for.” When did he sign up for anything? And why would he sign up for anything with these guys?
Sonjay gave some reasons for why Mark would fit in with them, then gave Mark a t-shirt with all of their faces on it, but Mark is way down in the corner. Lethal hugged Mark. Mark took the t-shirt off and threw it against a wall. Excalibur says that this “definitely isn’t what Mark Briscoe signed up for.”
OH MY G-D, SHOW ME A F*CKING REPLAY OF HOW WE GOT HERE! OR AT LEAST EXPLAIN THE SITUATION! I watched all of Dynamite! I even watched last week’s ROH! There is no reason I shouldn’t know what is going on here!

TONY SCHIAVONE INTERVIEWS FTR IN THE RING- awesome
FTR announced that they have signed with AEW for four more years… and then announced that they would retire after that. FTR were absolutely tremendous babyfaces here.

LEXI NAIR INTERVIEWS HOOK, ISIAH KASSIDY, & THE HARDY BOYS- bad
Matt and Isiah making hand motions while Jeff was talking was very distracting.
Matt revealed that the match that he flubbed the promo for on Friday where he and Private Party will get their freedom that they seem to already have will have Stokely on the Firm’s team (so that’s the second time in about a month that we’ve had an angle where the same guy has tricked the same heels into a contract where the same heel manager will have to wrestle), and it will be at the Hardy Compound because UCH.

WARDLOW VS HOBBS VIDEO PACKAGE- mostly great
The only problem here (and it was a minor one) was Wardlow being asked if he could give an interview about what he just did to Hobbs and the car and saying “no! I do all of my talking in the ring!” and then proceeding to cut a promo anyway.

“MAN-SCOUT” JAKE MANNING & THE SPANISH ANNOUNCE PROJECT vs. MARK BRISCOE, JAY LETHAL, SATNAM SINGH, & JEFF JARRETT (w/Sonjay Dutt)- no rating, meh segment
Apparently the idea here is that Lethal is recruiting Mark because they have been friends and also sometimes rivals- “but always with respect”- for twenty years. Whether this friendship is the shoot truth or not, it doesn’t feel like it holds kayfabe water to me because it has been quite rare that these two have been on the same side of the babyface-heel fence in the same promotion at the same time, never mind us being shown one coming to the other’s aid.
The other heels cheated, but Mark didn’t. He saw this happen, and he had to know it was going to happen because we assume has been watching AEW and knows that these guys are heels, so I’m not really sure what Lethal could have possibly said to convince Mark to work with them without Mark looking like an idiot for believing it.
I’ve rated this as a segment rather than a squash because the idea was more to get over the dynamic between Mark and the others as opposed to showing their team’s dominance. The problem is that the segment didn’t work well for me for the reasons I explained above.
Mark got the win for his team, but he wasn’t happy with how they conducted themselves. He kind of left without them, but the last thing we saw him being willing to listen to Sonjay.

YOUNG BUCKS VS. BLACKPOOL COMBAT CLUB VIDEO PACKAGE- decent

EMI SAKURA vs. TAYA VALKYRIE- 6.75/10
Jade Cargill and Leia Grey came out to distract Taya. The match was very good, but also had that frustrating element of inevitability about it, which is only enhanced by the fact that while I have to watch weeks of Taya beating people there is almost no chance of her losing to in order to get a title shot that I already know she is going to get because they started this program with Jade a month ago, Jade has defended that same title against someone who had no business getting a title shot, and I’m certain that this will continue for over another month until it’s time for the PPV.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- decent
Leila attacked Taya but gets laid out. Jade gets into the ring and Taya seems to have the best of her but not definitively, as she wasn’t able to get her up for Valhalla before Leila got back up and attacked her from behind. Jade then laid Taya out with Jaded.

DRALISTICO VIDEO PACKAGE/PROMO BY JOSE THE ASSISTANT ON HIS BEHALF- Look… Jose did the best he could here, but there is no way that anyone could possibly care about Dralistico challenging El Hijo del Vikingo for the AAA Mega Championship. This match- which is already official for next week’s Rampage- will be will be Darlistico’s second singles title shot in two weeks. It will also be his third title shot in a Khan-owned-and-booked company in this shared universe in just over three weeks. He has one just one singles match in AEW or ROH total, and it was on Dark, many months ago. The only matches against non-jobbers that he has been on the winning side of in either company have been tag matches, and he didn’t score the fall in any of them. Tony… if you want anyone to care about this match for any reason other than we’ll get to see some flips well already saw in two other matches (vs. Omega and vs. Kommander), how about instead of booking pointless title matches like OC vs. Dralistico last week and Best Friends vs. Aussie Open tonight, you use those spots to give Dralistico some semi-meaningful wins in order to set up with match against El Hijo del Vikingo?

JERICHO APPRECIATION SOCIETY PROMO & SEGMENT WITH THE ACCLAIMED- okay
It’s just 2.0 and Hager out here. They did a purposely bad rap to try to get heat by mocking the Acclaimed, but they focused on their stupid comedy lines that fans in AEW like (because these fans will decide that anything is a catchphrase id you say it three weeks in a row, and will pop for it regardless if you’re a face or a heel), so their rap intended to get heat just got cheers instead. The idiot production people purposely cut to a shot of a fan bobbing along to the rhythm. THEY’RE SUPPOSED TO BE HEELS!

The Acclaimed and Billy Gunn came out, and instead of rapping, they just charged in. That was great.
They knocked Parker and Hager out of the ring. Then the Acclaimed held Menard while Billy set up to stab him with scissors, but the other two pulled him out of the ring to save him. That’s the third time they had that happen this week (it happened with both Moxley and Saraya on Dynamite)! Anthony Bowens made the challenge for a six-man tag on Dynamite. He also said that “only six people appreciate Chris Jericho. Even if you don’t count Jericho, there are still more than six remaining members of the JAS (these three here, Sammy Guevara, Tay Melo, Daniel Garcia, and Anna Jay). Oops.



MARK HENRY INTERVIEWS THE PEOPLE IN THE MAIN EVENT- meh
Mark’s questions were not good. Shawn Spears has had one match on TV in the past eleven months, and he was an undercard lackey even before that. You cannot possibly say anything that will make him come off as a threat to a big win for Jungle Boy. I don’t care if he had a kid. That doesn’t explain the f*cking eleven-month layoff, and it doesn’t instantly make him a bigger star when he returns.

Tune in to Dynamite next week to watch Jay White wrestle a dude who hasn’t won a single match on TV yet (Kommander).

“JUNGLE BOY” JACK PERRY vs. SHAWN SPEARS- 7/10
A Pillar won a match against an undercard wrestler while another Pillar was shown watching backstage. In other words, the same thing we’ve gotten pretty much every week for over a month now. Tony is booking this world title program via cut-and-paste.
Tony Schiavone told us that both Sammy Guevara and Darby Allin were “red hot” because of them “won his last match.” Yeah. ONE WIN mean “red hot” in Tony Schiavone’s mind. Why does he still have a job in AEW while Veda Scott doesn’t?

This was another mostly dull episode of Rampage. Even things that aren’t stalling or filler have started to feel like it at this point.