This is another pre-recorded show coming from Philadelphia, PA at the Liacouras Center. Unlike previous Rampage shows, this one actually managed to smoosh four matches onto the card. However, I was only curious about one and didn’t really care as much for the rest.
CM Punk Vs. Daniel Garcia
Naturally, the start off with one of the two big stars in AEW, CM Punk facing off against Daniel Garcia. This match was a follow up from a beating that CM Punk received at the hands of Daniel Garcia and 2.0 back on one of their Chicago shows. Before the match started, they did a backstage interview with Mark Henry hosting in giving both competitors some pre-match mic time.
Match was really good and CM Punk has been showing why he is the best in the world. Basically, CM Punk is playing Bret Hart in ’92-’95 where Bret had the Intercontinental and World titles in the WWF, giving good little matches every week against people who normally wouldn’t get a chance. In Punk’s case, he’s tackling all the young stars, giving them some rub by having these moderately long matches, leading them through, showing them spot placement, comebacks, etc.
Against Daniel Garcia, Punk seemed really at home, maybe even more so than Darby Allin or even Hobbs. Garcia does really good technical wrestling and they pulled out a nice, small story with Garcia focusing on Punk’s legs to prevent Punk from doing his kicks while Garcia is known to use leg locks and the Sharpshooter/Scorpion Death Lock as his finisher.
Punk did hit an impressive cross body onto the three men on the outside as well as a piledriver prior to getting the Anaconda Vice for the tap out. This match made Garcia look great, Punk sold his leg very well and you can see Garcia being a future star for AEW. His facials work because he isn’t goofy and tries to play serious. In the meantime, Punk continues to farm small wins as he climbs up the ranks.
Lio Rush, Matt Sydal, and Dante Martin Backstage Segment
Schiavone is backstage with the three men. Lio Rush is now associating with Dante Martin as per his little promo from Dynamite. Matt Sydal tries to brush Rush off but Lio promises Matt Sydal a match with CM Punk on Rampage next week. Should be interesting to see where this goes because Dante Martin does have that open challenge but won’t immediately face CM Punk, but Malakai Black for Dynamite first. But I’m curious if Dante and Rush come out to ring side with Sydal when he faces Punk.
Either way, I’m sure Sydal is excited to be facing Punk because he’ll get time to have a good match while Punk should structure a good match without the guy going off the deep end just doing spots.
Lucha Bros. Vs. The Acclaimed
This was for the tag team titles. Pretty much at this stage, the Lucha Bros are farming wins to build themselves up as the tag team champions while giving other teams their shots. Really didn’t care much about this match because it’s another Lucha Bros match and just pure chaos. They did announce that the Lucha Bros will face a masked team for the AAA tag titles next week with Andrade in the challenger’s corner. Not sure whom their opponents will be but I assume it’ll be a team from AAA going through the proverbial forbidden door.
Jade Cargill Vs. Skye Blue
They had another video package just before this talking about the upcoming women’s TBS title match with a few of the women getting a few seconds to say their pieces. Skye Blue was the worst in all of that as she was inaudible. Without seeing the participants, I have no idea who will win but I’m guessing it’ll boil down to Ruby Soho, Thunder Rosa, Serena Deeb and Jade Cargill. Personally, I hope Serena Deeb wins it and becomes a Macho Man IC champion type.
As for this match, it was just a squash so Jade could farm wins on national TV and look impressive. One thing though about Jade is that I decided to watch her interview on AEW Unrestricted and was very impressed by the way she speaks. She comes across as highly intelligent, thoughtful, kind and yet with a healthy ego. And I commented that I think she is the prettiest lady on the women’s roster at the moment. I find her to have great presence, she’s a tremendous specimen and has an exotic look compared to everyone else that makes her stand out.
That said, I don’t like her being booked similar to Goldberg. My fear is that she’ll end up being too one dimensional and only have three moves rather than learning how to sell and improving her conditioning to have long matches. She has an impressive training regiment from what I understand and a great work ethic. But she really needs to be kept on Dark and Elevation to learn. Right now, she has three moves she can execute and she’s going to run out of opponents she can squash soon. My ultimate fear is that she might get sloppy and really hurt someone. I don’t think she’s as reckless as Goldberg but working on the execution and figuring out how to apply moves is what her agenda should be.
At any rate, Jade continued to humiliate Skye Blue a bit more (is she going to turn into the female Fuego Del Sol?) until Thunder Rosa ran in with a chair to chase her and Mark Sterling out.
Ricky Starks Vs. Brian Cage
They had Mark Henry do another “Main Event” double interview segments. Mark is coming along much better each week, he’s getting a good feeling for the rhythm, the emphasis and now has a saying he can work off of. That said, I don’t care much about Brian Cage. He did a reasonable interview but I just shrugged.
The match was a Philly Street Fight for the FTW championship in tribute to ECW down the street. Not my cup of tea here and I got bored fast once the match broke down. Hook and Hobbs came out to help Starks for the victory with Hook giving Cage a nut shot so that Starks could get Cage on his shoulders for Rochambo finisher. Afterwards, Tazz came down with a bit of emotion and pointed to Cage. Really hope that’s the end of this feud because anything else after this just stretches too thin something people just don’t care about.
Final Thoughts
Not the greatest show but I did enjoy CM Punk’s match against Daniel Garcia. He’s not wrestling squash matches even though he’s against undercard guys. But every match is meaningful and generally the best match for that program because he paces those matches well and the crowd is into him. So the other person comes off looking better, getting the rub and learning. I’m not a fan of Matt Sydal but Punk’s match might be interesting just to see what he does with Sydal, although I feel it’s more like a Dark match. But again, when you’re against Punk, it’s like having a main event.
I want to come back to Jade Cargill and just say that I don’t want to bury her because after listening to her interview on Unrestricted, I came off having more respect for her as a person. I just think that when they paired her with Mark Sterling and did those endless promos that meant nothing, it didn’t help her much and possibly killed some of her mysticism rather than having her wrestle more and getting more experience. I’m more about having the person wrestle as much as they can when they get the opportunity so they can sharpen themselves up, especially if they don’t work independents or while this pandemic is going on. I want to see her do well eventually, but I think they need to build her up slowly and not over push her. She has youth, the natural athletic ability, the look, size and strength as well as intelligence and a great work ethic. But she lacks the experience, execution and psychology to make her natural gifts work just yet. Thus, I keep hounding on the point of give her more opponents and allow her to wrestle longer matches before she settles into bad habits like Goldberg.
Because Goldberg never learned how to work properly and was fed the wrong information early on, he can’t really use all the build up over the years in his 50s. I mean if Bret wasn’t concussed, I think he would still be able to put on a reasonable match, similar to how Sting can still go with the right people and environment.
So when I look at someone like Jade Cargill who has all these natural gifts, I can’t help but think that they need to avoid doing the same mistakes as Goldberg. The good thing is that there is no Hogan, Nash or Hall in AEW so I don’t think she has people poisoning her ear.
Taking a little look forward to next week, I did see a few of the matches for Dynamite and Rampage. The interesting ones are CM Punk vs Sydal, Bryan Danielson vs Bobby Fish and Dante Martin vs Malakai Black. I think Punk is trying to do more Ring of Honor style matches with whomever he faces. So that match against Sydal should be good on quality, even though it’s obvious Punk will farm up another win.
Now, Bryan Danielson vs Bobby Fish is interesting on the fact that it’s out of nowhere. I don’t know if either faced each other before but they have a sort of similar style with their kicks. So I want to say that this match has the potential to be fresh along with the fact that both guys are veterans.
Lastly, there is Dante Martin vs Malakai Black. I’m hoping they give these two some time and do away with the screwy Malakai Black finish. Should be interesting given that this is Malakai’s first match outside of his feud with the Nightmare Factory. The variable in all of this is Lio Rush. Not sure if they’ll have him wrestle given that he has “retired” multiple times.
Now, there is one other match that I want to mention but think it’s odd and that is Ruby Soho vs The Bunny. I like Ruby Soho, I think she has a fun character. But The Bunny has been awful. She has experience but she’s so skinny and gimmicky that I end up getting bored watching her matches. I figure Penelope Ford will interfere here thus setting up another match later on between Ruby and Ford just so that Ruby can work with other people and have a reason. But they just did an angle like that with Tay Conti and Anna Jay. So my best hope here is that Ruby goes over clean and moves to someone else.
That goes to my wishing that there was someone like a female CM Punk in the women’s division. Serena Deeb is really good technically and has the experience but not the popularity and recognition of CM Punk to help someone like Jade Cargill get over while still protecting themselves with a win the way Punk beat Hobbs. As far as I figure, there are only two women in wrestling currently around that can do something like that in Becky Lynch or Charlotte Flair. I doubt Becky will be leaving the WWE anytime soon and who knows about Charlotte.