Tonight, live at the James L. Knight Center in Miami, Florida, Rampage is back with a special two hour edition, half which is being hosted on YouTube and the rest on TNT. This was an interesting off show in that this week, Dynamite was rescheduled for tomorrow (Saturday) for a second night at the same venue.
Santana Garrett Vs. Tay Conti
This match kicked off the YouTube show. It’s Garrett’s second match in AEW, the other one being on Dark. But it also is a re-match of sorts as both had faced each other a while back on WWE NXT, where Tay had far less experience. This pretty much was a Tay Conti match, although Garrett really isn’t that much of a carry type of wrestler. Garrett has the experience advantage of Conti but I think she might end up in a Matt Sydal type of role with AEW if they sign her. The moves weren’t executed that badly but the ring psychology wasn’t great and Tay is still learning. Tay got the victory but there wasn’t much reaction from this crowd.
Bobby Fish Vs. Lee Moriarty
This was Fish’s second showing in AEW. Both worked for MLW while Fish has the experience advantage. Fish received some chants but again the match was a bit quiet from the crowd. Also, the venue did not seem mic’d very well so the reactions seemed a lot tougher. Not a bad match but it felt off maybe because of Moriarty’s inexperience. Fish got the win with a KO type of round house kick to the head. Fish might be another guy who will hang around the mid card helping to put people over but having a long term spot because of his experience. Still good to see him get a win.
Bryan Danielson Vs. Minoru Suzuki
Long match of the night. Suzuki’s Kaze Ni Nare got some reaction but again I could not tell because of the poor acoustics. Bryan got a nice reaction coming in and there was a much better atmosphere here. Problem with this match is that Suzuki is very limited and he’s pretty much just relegated to doing a series of exchanging blows. Whatever mat ability he had from his Pancrase days is long gone but Bryan did attempt to pull out a wrestling match with Suzuki before it disintegrated into the typical Suzuki blow exchange. I saw one review calling this a match of the year candidate and I can’t conscientiously call anything Suzuki is in at this point in his career even close to MOTYC worthy. But I bet Bryan Danielson was happy he got to work with one of the NJPW guys.
CM Punk Vs. Matt Sydal
This is where Rampage started. The main storyline is that CM Punk is effectively Bret Hart after he won the world title for the first time and challenging everyone from the lowest people on the roster and working his way up while pulling out the best matches in everyone, getting the best reactions and making everyone look good. Easily as far as I have seen, this was by far Matt Sydal’s best match, at least in AEW.
CM Punk is now getting basic body slams over. He’s slowed the pace down, showing people selling, making each spot meaningful. I read people saying Punk looked exhausted and got blown up because his pace isn’t as fast as say Dante Martin’s etc. But that’s just people who’ve never seen good wrestling and only watch people trading spots. Punk’s matches have the most impact because he can get the spots over and is versatile enough to work any style. This was an old school Ring of Honor type of match with a show of respect before and after. Punk won when Sydal attempted to go for some crucifix move which allowed Punk to change it into a GTS. I wonder if Punk and Bryan Danielson are secretly attempting to out do each other on each show.
Ruby Soho Vs. The Bunny
If you really want to kill the heat of a wrestler put them with either the Bunny or Penelope Ford. Poor Ruby had to endure the Bunny. The Bunny looked better than usual here because Ruby let her get her offense in. But the Bunny just isn’t very good and people don’t really care for her. There was a small dueling chant between the Ruby fans and the Bunny fans but it died down early. Surprisingly, Ruby got the win with a basic backslide, which I actually liked because you don’t see that type of move getting the pin anymore and it worked because it came out of nowhere.
There was a silly after birth when Penelope Ford came out to quickly help Bunny double team Ruby, following up with the brass knuckles to knock her out. Ugh. These two just are terrible. But I guess this is how you farm up wins.
Inner Circle Vs. Men of the Year & Junior Dos Santos
Lambert came out to good heat but his act is getting redundant. My belief is that once you’ve done a few promos/vignettes to lead towards your first angle, you drop the promos and start focusing on the wrestling aspect. Otherwise, it just takes away from the match time and places the emphasis on the wrong person, which in this case was Dan Lambert.
I keep saying that Scorpio Sky and Ethan Page don’t belong in this angle because they don’t really fit America’s Top Team mold of shooter types. The only part that got me interested was anytime Junior Dos Santos got involved. Jake Hager actually got some fans backing him because they recognized once Jericho made a cold tag to Hager for him to face Santos that some “UFC” stuff was going to happen. It still looked like bad pro-wrestling since Santos was exchanging light open palm strikes which allowed Hager to do a big take down.
I hardly noticed Ethan Page in this match. He might as well have been home since the real stars were Santos and Jericho. Paige VanZant interferes by distracting Aubrey Edwards while Masdival gives Jericho another running knee strike. That allowed Scorpio Sky to get the pin over Jericho. Sometime before Hager gave Santos a bit Uranage on the floor through a table, which was stupid and apparently Sammy Guevara got hurt on some outside move that made the crowd go “Holy shit!” although for some reason the camera never showed us what happened.
The after birth of America’s Top Team coming in to further beat on Jericho went on until Santana and Ortiz ran out to clear the ring, DESPITE THE FACT THAT THEY WERE CLEARLY OUTNUMBERED. This angle is atrocious and doesn’t do what Jericho thinks it ought to be doing.
Final Thoughts
The only match I really enjoyed was CM Punk vs Matt Sydal. The rest was pretty bland. Tony Khan thinks he’s competing against Smackdown but he doesn’t really put his best foot forward in these matches. I can appreciate the long term story line of Punk going through all these competitors but it isn’t must-watch TV. We know who’s going to win and whether it’s a good match is irrelevant.
The Bunny just does nothing for me besides making me want to fast forward the match. Same with Penelope Ford or Anna Jay. It’s just that they’re no good. I’m holding out for Ruby but her matches haven’t been top grade whereas at least with Britt Baker she’s super over still.
Tay Conti’s in ring works improves but she doesn’t get the mental aspects of pro-wrestling. She seems to be more focused on getting her spots in rather than how it all fits together. Santana can take the moves but she needs the snap to make herself look better.
But the tragedy in all of this is Jericho’s plan on making Ethan Page and Scorpio Sky become the next pair of stars. I think that time has long passed. After Darby put Ethan through the coffin and Sting embarrassed Sky and Page, their chance of being elevated was over. Even if Scorpio got the win over Jericho, he wasn’t allowed to soak in the moment because of the after birth with the continued beat down. So the pinfall appeared meaningless and not worth the time. The announcers did a horrible job in pointing out Sky’s win over Jericho in any capacity.
Then you had Ortiz and Santana come in to help clear the ring when they were clearly outnumbered. This was beyond frustrating. There were legit fighters who ran from two people. Why? Because there’s a stupid formula in pro-wrestling where one group gets the heat only to lose it on the next exchange. It’s just as bad as the stupid “strong style” exchanging of blows spot. It’s okay if America’s Top Team continues to build their heat by embarrassing all the pro-wrestlers every week. That’s what should happen because they’re the outsiders in this who need credibility. Right there, all the mysticism about them being MMA fighters just disappeared into thin air.
I suppose the only positive to come out of this will be that Jericho won’t be gobbling up some other sucker’s heat since the MMA fighters can always go back to MMA and do real fighting. But at this point, Jericho is worse than useless in his role. His Lionsault is at the worst that I’ve ever seen it and I’m waiting for him to pull a Hayabusa just on how low he’s hitting it these days. He’s put on too much weight and doesn’t have the spring he used to. At least with CM Punk and Bryan Danielson, they still can go and are pulling some of the best matches out of people. Jericho is just embarrassing himself anytime he gets in the ring anymore. But again, at least in these multi-man matches, he can hide and just do 2-3 of his trademark spots that he can still barely execute and get away with it based on his reputation. As far as carrying the company, there’s better people around at this stage and they are doing much better.