Sammy Guevara vs. Tony Nese

Advertised for the TNT title, this was Tony Nese’s AEW TV debut after he had been wrestling on Dark for a few weeks. I didn’t see him in WWE 205 but only heard he was the cruiserweight champion at one point but had little to no charisma. So this type of match probably suited him well because he could just focus on the wrestling aspect.

This was a nice little back and forth match. They had 14 minutes or so total which was a good amount of time to showcase Tony Nese. Pretty much they’re playing up Sammy Guevara’s injured ribs which he sells inconsistently throughout the match. Guevara suffers from losing the storyline during a match because he’s still developing and panders to the crowd too much. One example of this was delaying a while before attempting an Asai Moonsault. He paused too long to try to get the crowd behind him, but that forced Tony Nese to sell for much longer, although the camera was not on him. Still, it looked awkward in the scheme of things, even though Guevara is one of the more graceful high flyers.

Nese did not get to hit his finisher but did pull off a sweet 450 splash. Also, he pulled out a nasty corner powerbomb with one arm. Ultimately, Guevara hit his GTH finisher which put Nese out for the clean pin. But Nese looked damn impressive here and it was formally announced that he signed with AEW, which probably is a good home for him.

Christian Cage Backstage Promo

Pretty much Cage is like a manager for the Jurassic Express as he did all the talking here and was rooting for them to become the next AEW tag title holders since they currently are the #1 contenders. Not sure if they’ll be facing the Lucha Bros but I’m hoping FTR since I think that dynamic will work better.

Jade Cargill vs. Janai Kai

Thunder Rosa was on commentary. She came out to watch her student Kai, who looks like Elektra. This pretty much was a one sided squash where Bill Cargill…I mean Jade Cargill did her three moves of doom before putting Kai away. Cargill continued to beat on Kai post match until Thunder Rosa came down for a pull apart.

So let me pause since fortunately this match only lasted 30 seconds or so. First, Thunder Rosa better hand Jade her first loss. Pretty much unless Jade is in a one sided squash match, she looks awful. Second, the Goldberg booking only worked for Goldberg because:

• He had the look (Austin comparison)
• He had the intensity
• He was over
• He was a ratings draw

Also, they gradually built Goldberg up, giving him bigger wins over time before he took the US title from Raven. Jade right now has a good look but lacks everything else that justifies the type of push and booking she’s receiving.

I really believe at this point the finals will be Ruby Soho vs Thunder Rosa. And that match up makes sense because of how Soho was the one that literally kicked Rosa out of that battle royal. So they haven’t settled that score but the fans were really into it. No one wants to see Nyla Rose vs Thunder Rosa nor Ruby Soho vs Jade Cargill. But Ruby Soho vs Thunder Rosa should be a great match and both can carry the TBS title well.

Another thing I read is that Brandi Rhodes is back in wrestling action. Le sigh. Perhaps, Jade will rekindle her feud against Brandi in a more disastrous bout that will be a worse car crash style match than we can imagine. Otherwise, please don’t let Brandi on TV anymore. Just don’t.

Bucks/Adam Cole Backstage Segment

More Best Friends garbage vs the Bucks for next week. Yawn. Let’s talk about the relevant aspect that people actually care about in this situation: Kyle O’Reilly.

So the current rumor is that both O’Reilly and Gargano’s contracts have expired or are expiring. Most believe that O’Reilly is gone to join Adam Cole but the WWE is doing their best to retain either. I don’t know much about either to be honest, but the current hope is for O’Reilly to join AEW and hook back up with Cole and Fish to feud against the Elite. Don’t know how soon that might happen but it’ll be interesting if it does.

Eddie Kingston Segment

They talk about 2.0/Garcia attacking Jericho and Eddie Kingston not caring about Jericho’s welfare. So I’m assuming they’ll be teaming against 2.0 in the future only for them to miscommunicate and fight. On the other hand, Jericho supposedly is touring again hence the injury angle so we might wait until he finishes to see if they do feud.

Bryan Danielson/Jon Silver Video Package

This was actually well done. The major point here was Danielson pointing out how Silver has been goofing off while he had been winning world titles at the age of 30. It’s only a week build but it does put into perspective how serious Danielson is trying to make these situations, especially against the Job World Order.

FTR (Dax Harwood & Cash Wheeler) vs. Pac and Penta El Zero Miedo

Mark Henry did the “main event” segment just before this match and both teams ended up getting into a shouting bout before Mark did his catchphrase. Originally, this match was supposed to be a 2/3 falls title match but supposedly on Dynamite they said Rey Fenix had travel issues. Now, in this segment they claimed FTR injured Fenix, which is why Penta was pissed. If Fenix did have travel issues, then I keep thinking he’s just inconsistent and the Lucha Bros need to drop the titles soon.

Nonetheless, Rey Fenix not being there meant the match quality was much higher because he often times is the one messing up spots. Since the Jade match was super short, they pretty much gave quite a bit of time for this match. I keep a super close eye on FTR these days because of how good they are. They do things to set up and feed for their opponents. Pretty much they’re programming Cash vs Penta while Pac goes against Dax.

There were a few awkward moments in the match like a hesitant Pac doing a hip toss to Dax. One of the intentionally awkward moments was when Pac slipped on the ropes. Normally, this would seem like a botch but he was selling the eye patch and then Dax took over just before a commercial break. So it pretty much seemed to me to be intentional here.

They did a long heat spot on Pac where Dax and Cash frequently double teamed Pac to prevent him from getting the tag. He finally made a hot tag that was setup perfectly by Dax and Cash to Penta. The tag wasn’t as hot as it could have been because Penta seemed too eager to get in and hit his moves.

My favorite spot of the night was FTR hitting Demolition’s finisher which looked awesome. FTR is like a modern mix of all the great tag teams of the late 80s. This probably was one of the better matches between these groups just because Rey Fenix wasn’t around and botching up everything or overcomplicating everything.

End came when Pac hesitated for doing a top rope move to the outside after “botching” it earlier but hit an Moonsault to the outside on FTR with Cash moving Tully out of the way. He threw Dax in and tried to hit another move when Malakai Black came up from behind, sprayed black mist to blind Pac’s other eye and caused him to be rolled up.

Afterwards, Penta tried to assault FTR but was quickly overwhelmed and had his mask taken away with Cash wearing it to add insult to injury. Abrahantes quickly rolled in to cover Penta’s face which allowed Malakai to get back in the ring and gouge Pac’s eyes and get some color on his hand. Malakai actually got booed properly for being a heel (since he isn’t wrestling Cody here). Finally!

Final Thoughts

Better Rampage than previous weeks. Two really good matches, one solid video package and I’m pretty happy overall. I think not having Rey Fenix showed where the Lucha Bros problem lies. Pac wasn’t as crazy here since he was forced to sell the eye.

Also, I’ve been thinking about all the recent challengers against Sammy Guevara for his TNT title. So far it’s been Bobby Fish, Jay Lethal and now Tony Nese. Who should be next? Who should be the one to beat him?

Since Miro is off doing a film and probably will focus on the main title in the future when he’s ready, I think it’s a safe bet that he won’t go back after Sammy. MJF would seem like the natural one to beat Sammy but he just doesn’t wrestle that often and he now is claiming to be “a special attraction like Andre the Giant.” And with the upcoming Battle Royal next week on Dynamite, it just reminded me that he already has a title from the previous two years’ battle royals with that ring.

The only person I can think of that should beat Sammy is Adam Cole. I could see Sammy facing guys like Lio Rush, Lee Moriarty, Daniel Garcia and Dante Martin just to give him some extra defenses. But Cole would be the perfect person to hold that title. Not to mention that would be a fresh match with good potential. Malakai Black would’ve been my other choice but I think he’s going to be feuding with Pac so who knows how long that’ll be.

Going back to that Battle Royal next week, I read that Team Taz has 50% of the spots. I’m going to guess the participants from Team Taz will be Powerhouse Hobbs and Dante Martin at the very least. Doubt Hook will be in there. Maybe Ricky Starks. However, I can’t see MJF winning it three years in a row. Not with the current roster. Instead, I could see Dante Martin picking up the victory. Powerhouse Hobbs would’ve been a good choice too but I see AEW trying to push their young hot stars and Hobbs, while I like him, isn’t getting that same push as Dante. Either that or perhaps Lio Rush might take it to justify his existence in the company. Either way, I’m intrigued how this turns out.

Very interested in next week’s Dynamite. Not interested in the Bucks match though.

The post AEW Rampage 12/3/2021 Review appeared first on Kontroversial Keith.

Jungle Boy vs. Bobby Fish

This was actually setup on Dynamite when Adam Cole introduced Bobby Fish to the Bucks. Jungle Boy started hot and the goal for Fish was to wear Jungle Boy out prior to their falls counter anywhere match. If you isolated this match by itself, it was pretty decent. Jungle Boy sold an injured shoulder where Bobby attempted to weaken him. However, Jungle Boy locked in the Snare Trap for the tap out victory.

Immediately, Adam Cole ran in to beat up Jungle Boy. Fish soon recovered and as Cole had Jungle Boy in the camel clutch, he released him for a second to hug Fish, which got a nice pop because the crowd recognized the whole Undisputed Era meet up here. Also, the announcing team couldn’t help themselves in referencing Fish and Cole’s NXT group without a few chuckles.

Of course, Christian Cage and Luchasaurus ran down to help out, chasing Cole out but leaving Fish in the ring to be the sacrificial lamb for Christian’s Killswitch finisher.

Comment: The big aspect was seeing the in ring reunion of Adam Cole and Bobby Fish. This was pretty significant because up until Wednesday on Dynamite, Bobby Fish was mostly wandering in AEW aimlessly. Now, that he’s officially being associated to Adam Cole, the crowd is receiving him in a bigger way. With all the hints of the Undisputed Era being dropped, one can only imagine that down the road we’ll eventually see a reunion. As I mentioned in my previous review for Dynamite, people are anticipating Kyle O’Reilly coming in once his contract is up, which they say is soon. Before I go into more theorycrafting here, I’ll stop because there’s more shortly.

Bryan Danielson/Miro Package

Good package reminding us what’s gone on between these two. Bryan makes reference to Miro, as I mentioned, finding his voice and being more experienced. He also mentioned that Bryan has yet to beat Miro, which is significant because it shows going into tomorrow’s PPV that there’s a chance that Bryan can lose. It makes the bout worth watching because now there’s a huge question mark on if Bryan will get this win.

Adam Cole/Bucks/Adam Page Segment

Normally, I dislike Bucks segments because they end up being pretty goofy. This one was damn good. First, Adam Cole is about to sell their PPV match when Adam Page interrupts. But Page gets in Cole’s face to which I’ve learned they have history in RoH. At the same time, this might be foreshadowing Adam Page winning tomorrow and Cole eventually challenging for the title. However, it’s clear that neither guy likes each other here.

Adam Cole leaves after Page asks for some private time with the Bucks. He acknowledges their lack of involvement on Friday’s title signing and even apologizes for making them lose the tag titles. But he also talks about how they made him lose to Kenny Omega in his title shot, calling the situation even. He threatens though that if they interfere, he’ll go after them.

So right now we have some interesting potential long term booking if things continue to go in the WWE, especially with NXT getting trashed and putting a lot of existing talent on alert. People believe that Kyle O’Reilly will sign with AEW once his contract finishes (which is supposedly “soon”) and him having an NXT contract implies a 30 day no-compete compared to someone on the main roster. If that’s the case, we could see the reformation of the Undisputed Era in AEW.

So what happens with The Elite since Adam Cole will possibly leave? People think that he’ll turn on them and once Kyle O’Reilly signs, they’ll end up feuding with the Elite. Some people don’t know when Roderick Strong will be done but the guy people think will show up eventually is Kevin Owens. If Cole gets his version of the Undisputed Era in AEW, then the Elite might end up just being Omega and the Bucks.

Which leads to this segment where Page has apologized to the Bucks. Maybe he might return to the Elite so that they can have a feud with the Undisputed Era. Or perhaps Omega takes time off to heal after losing to Page while this version of the Elite get into this big time rivalry. That has some interesting potential.

Jade Cargill vs. Santana Garrett

Or as I call it “Storm” vs “Wonder Woman” in the non-dream match because this was far from good. But it was short. If AEW puts the TBS title on Jade, then they’re insane. She still looks really bad in what she’s doing. There was a moment where she got tossed into the corner then flipped her hair out of her face while breathing heavily because it was apparent she already had been blown up. Do you really want someone who gets blown up in less than 4 minutes as your first TBS title holder?

Poor Santana Garrett continues her losing ways as a jobber here in AEW but I guess work is work and she did enough to get Jade where she needed to be. But no matter what Jade still has too many problems where they need to get her in other places for a while so she can get more experience. I think being in front of this many people live is just too much pressure. She might be the best looking woman in the AEW division in my opinion but she’s one of the worst wrestlers in the company right now for her spot. I think if they still have that Forbidden Door open, they should send her to Impact and the NWA to allow her to work on smaller shows that aren’t seen by as many people while working under the tutelage of Gail Kim, Mickie James, etc. to learn how to work. The thing is whoever is giving her advice is doing a really bad job and they need to switch it up.

Dante Martin vs. Ariya Daivari

This was Ariya Daivari’s debut. I read that Ariya is Dante’s trainer. Both got a nice pop and the announcers mentioned that this is also both men’s hometown. Dante is just so fluid in that ring and can fly in ways that seems unnatural but completely natural to him. Daivari looked great here too and he must be happy he’s allowed to be a wrestler. I wrote on Reddit that matches like this necessitate eventually creating a cruiserweight type of title. That should’ve been the TNT title but Guevara is buried in Jericho’s garbage angle and they didn’t get the title off of him prior to the PPV so that it could be defended. Dante won big but I think Daivari showed he can go and probably will get signed soon.

Afterwards, Team Taz came down (Powerhouse Hobbs and Hook) with a special contract with Ricky Starks (still in the announcing position) getting the mic and telling Dante to look it over. So I guess now they’re doing an angle of all the groups/managers looking to grab Dante. It would almost be good if they didn’t do something similar with Jade and Mark Sterling. But at least with Dante they’re doing it in front of a large crowd where he’s getting over huge.

Orange Cassidy vs. Matt Hardy

This was the worst Lumberjack Match I’ve ever seen. It just was nonsense and an excuse to dump whatever remaining wrestlers were in the back on camera so that they could get some air time. I zoned out a few times but Hardy beat Cassidy when the Blade brass knuckled Cassidy. I suppose it’s somewhat worth noting that after tomorrow’s PPV, Cassidy wants to be done with Matt Hardy and vice versa. We all do. But I think it’s better for Cassidy to have this unending feud with Matt just because it’ll force him to not be involved in anything else.

Final Thoughts

Outside of that crummy main event, the rest of the show wasn’t bad. However, besides the Elite vs Jurassic Express/Christian Cage match, the rest of the PPV wasn’t really built up all that well. The video packages were good but they still weren’t live to make me interested in themselves. Everything else seemed to point towards after the PPV such as the TBS title, Dante Martin’s continued success/push and Adam Cole’s connection with Bobby Fish as well as Adam Page and Cole having the start of a confrontation.

I do think we are seeing Matt Hardy vs Orange Cassidy tomorrow but it might be on the YouTube pre-show along with the women’s tag team match. I am sad that Ruby Soho isn’t part of the PPV but I’m sure she might be on the next one. I might do another preview of the card for tomorrow given the updated status since the “leaked” note came out. There are quite a few matches that I am interested in though so I really can’t wait to see what they do. Also, I have to wonder if there will be any surprises. I feel there should be at least 1-2 but it’s anyone’s guess whom they may be.

The post AEW Rampage 11/12/2021 Review appeared first on Kontroversial Keith.

Bryan Danielson vs. Anthony Bowens w/ Max Caster

Max Caster came out second to do his spiel and shot on the WWE a bit, I think with regards to their layoffs that same day. Very strange pairing but I think the agenda with Bryan Danielson wrestling the entire AEW roster is to not simply showcase him but also help train all the young talent. This match was almost one sided but Max Caster would get involved here and there to help his partner turn the tide. Not surprisingly, Bryan Danielson won but we can chalk part of that up to Anthony Bowens not being a singles competitor.

CM Punk and Eddie Kingston In Ring Confrontation

Punk came out first with his usual Cult of Personality music and had the fans initially behind him. He taunted Eddie to come out where Eddie’s music started to play but he needed that extra taunting to bring him out. The second time, Eddie came out to no music, grabbed a mic rather rudely and got in the ring with Punk.

This was a very weird promo but logical too in trying to piece together an issue. Punk was trying to put Kingston over in saying “judging him to a higher standard” back in the day while Kingston came off as being the working class man. Kingston was pretty over here and Punk started to get some boos in this arena. Punk still called out the arena and would ask “his friends” about having an upcoming match at Full Gear since the crowd wants to see this match.

When Punk tried to leave, Kingston insulted him again and Punk headbutted Kingston. That caused the referees to come out to try to break them apart, followed up by more officials. Basically, it was exactly how Jim Cornette laid out a pull apart in his podcast. But this segment was well done. The hard thing to pinpoint is who the heel is going to be in this coming match. Logically speaking Kingston should be that way, but I think Kingston is Dusty Rhodes 2.0 in terms of the whole “working man charisma.” When Kingston calls himself “fat and likes to eat a bit much,” you immediately start relating to him. Kingston is America and with the pandemic increasing a lot of mental issues like depression, it’s hard not to get behind him.

I don’t know if Kingston should be the person to wrestle CM Punk on the PPV. It really should have been MJF because this could turn CM Punk heel and it’s not something I think AEW is ready for at this stage. However, Kingston is in a very weird spot because, and this is just my gut instinct talking, I feel he’s on the verge of becoming huge for all the wrong reasons in a company like AEW. AEW is more of a company about workrate but they do their booking wrong because they don’t seem to quite understand how to really get a guy over. So in all likeliness, Kingston will lose but that might make him an even bigger star and bigger babyface because he is the absolute underdog type. And it has nothing to do with his style but it’s his look, the way he talks, the way he carries himself, his openness and the authenticity about everything. Barebones-wise, I haven’t seen someone as natural as this in pro-wrestling in a long time in terms of what pro-wrestling has made its big bucks off of, which is a representative of the people.

The Bunny vs. Red Velvet

This was the last of the first round TBS women’s title match tournament. Red Velvet didn’t hesitate to attack the Bunny in waiting for the bell. The match was short enough to not be offensive since the Bunny sucks. The main thing here was that Jade Cargill was at ringside so Red Velvet would get in her face occasionally to taunt her back. Red Velvet won with her finisher, which I hate btw.

John Silver vs. Adam Cole

They had a small segment before the match with Mark Henry. John Silver is a goof but at least Adam Cole knows to take things serious enough. People are starting to chant with Mark on the “It’s time for the main event!” catchphrase and he’s delivering it a lot better. BTW, I like listening to Mark Henry with Paul Wight on Dark Elevation because he’s getting a lot more comfortable speaking.

This match had a small angle going in with Adam being in pain from the conchairto received from Christian Cage. So there was some work against the back of his neck/head done by John Silver. John Silver wants to goof around and tried by doing his version of the Budge rather than “Adam Cole Bay-bay” mockery. However, Adam Cole gave him a stiff kick to show he was serious.

Adam Cole’s purpose here was to make John Silver look far better than he was. So Silver got in a ton of offense and a good looking spinning Liger Bomb that got a “holy shit!” chant. Cole sold his neck and hit a series of knees before finishing John Silver with his “Boom” knee.

My main beef with this match was that John Silver goofs around too much and flexes a lot. Anytime he flexes I can’t help but think that he’s trying to figure out what to do as well as attempting to get a quick pop from the crowd. It’s really night and day in terms of the difference between a pro like Adam Cole and John Silver in terms of ability. Also, I hated the fact that the Bucks were at ringside which caused the Dark Order to come out to chase them away. It’s just visual noise to me and distracts from what’s going on in the ring. Lastly, having those goofs (all of them) at the ringside pretty much nullifies the attention from the people in the ring, meaning that they seem to have less of a sense of individuality. Maybe I would buy John Silver if people like himself or Alan Angels distanced themselves away from the Dark Order.

Final Thoughts

Weird Rampage. None of these matches were marquee matches by any means except in Tony Khan’s head. I read the other Dark matches and they had less indy people and more internal wrestlers to make the show looked beefier than usual as “part of his apology to the people in St Louis.” But this didn’t feel competitive in terms of star power since the matches were mostly glorified squashes, even the main event.

Also, I wanted to mention that they added a 6 man no DQ match for Full Gear between the Elite vs Christian Cage/Lucha Express. They did have an interview with Cage and Lucha Express where Jungle Boy proposed the no DQ stipulation. I am sad that we aren’t seeing Adam Cole vs Christian Cage in singles but I think this is just going to be a lead up towards that match. Jungle Boy has absolutely no oomph in his promos and Luchasaurus reminds me of a bad combination of the Ultimate Warrior and the Missing Link in terms of the snarling.

Next week they’re also going to have the signing between Adam Page and Kenny Omega on Dynamite. I really hope they don’t have a stupid weigh in. That just never has worked for this company. Also, I still wonder if Adam Page will win. There’s three title matches at Full Gear so far and one finals match (maybe a second for the TBS women’s title tournament). So we have:

• Bryan Danielson vs Miro (pretty sure Bryan will win this one)
• Tay Conti vs Britt Baker (Britt will win this one but Tay will finally get her title shot even though she sucks still)
• The finalist in the TBS women’s title tournament (I’m guessing Ruby Soho vs Jade Cargill, although I’d prefer Thunder Rosa here; I think Ruby should win but they might go with “well, Jade needs the title to look good” philosophy, which in this case is totally wrong because Jade is way too green)
• FTR vs the Lucha Bros for the tag titles (FTR will probably win the tag titles)
• Adam Page vs Kenny Omega (I can’t see two titles change hands on a single night so I’m picking Omega to win it)

The only way Adam Page wins here is if Kenny Omega decides to get some time off. He doesn’t really wrestle enough to justify PTO imo but that’s the only situation I can see where Page moves forward. But then you’ll have an awkward situation if Bryan wins his match and instantly goes after Page. Page vs Bryan might be good but it’s another weird face vs face match. And I don’t want to see a three way between Bryan, Miro and Page. Miro is credible enough to beat Bryan because he already did on a bigger platform. But Bryan might have the better contract in AEW. So who knows?

The post AEW Rampage 11/5/2021 Review appeared first on Kontroversial Keith.

Bryan Danielson vs. Eddie Kingston

This was a semi-finals match for the world title eliminator tournament. It also possibly was Eddie Kingston’s best match of his career, or at least in AEW. But once again you can give all the credit to Bryan Danielson. This match was pretty hot because the audience actually cared about both guys. Technically, Kingston was the heel here but they’ve blurred that line and as a result he was looked at as the underdog by the audience, which made him a favorite especially towards the end.

They tried to work an AJPW mid-late 1990’s style of a match with Kingston getting his AJPW style offense in. Excalibur and Jericho were all too happy to make reference to that promotion with the chops and nods to Kenta Kobashi and Misawa Mitsuharu. Let me just stop and say that given how Misawa died in the ring as a clinical “decapitation,” that wasn’t surprising in hindsight, I would NOT be praising that style.

They did an interesting spot where Bryan tried for the baseball slide kick, got Kingston, then Bryan attempted to launch himself off the apron at Kingston where Kingston nailed him with a punch. That part actually looked good. But then Kingston got Bryan in a cringeworthy release suplex on the floor targeting Bryan’s neck. That part I hated just because of Bryan’s neck and concussion issues. The announcers also pointed it out and given the history of injuries in AEW, I get worried every time I see things like that.

Bryan’s selling in this match was amazing. Kingston would try to get his fake Kobashi rapid fire chops and Bryan would go down to sell the damage so it didn’t look like crap. Kingston sold fatigue but his selling with the facials weren’t nearly as good as Bryan’s. They did an exchange of shots until Kingston hit his uraken back fist style hit to take Bryan down and both men hit the mat. That got the audience to give them a standing ovation.

So Kingston slowly crawled towards Bryan who had lured Kingston into a ground submission armlock with his legs wrapped around Kingston’s neck. Kingston, being the less technical wrestler than Bryan, gave him the middle finger knowing he couldn’t get out but showing what he thought of Bryan and passed out. Knox immediately called the match when Kingston passed out rather than checking the arm, which just shows how bad of a referee Knox is.

Again, Bryan is showing how great of a pro-wrestler is by still having his style but managing to work around every wrestlers’ faults and abilities. It’s really a toss up between Bryan and Punk who is the top wrestler in AEW right now. I would lean towards Bryan as having the best technical matches but Punk can have the best varied matches.

CM Punk Backstage Interview

Poor CM Punk now is the victim of an interrupted interview. But unlike every single interrupted interview this segment made sense. Eddie Kingston came in hollering and trying to get in CM Punk’s face, assuming that he’s probably jealous (kayfabe) of CM Punk being a big time star. Schiavone attempted to crawl out of the area but they actually got a mix of wrestlers and referees to break up the situation and drag Kingston out so that Punk could finish up the interview. Schiavone slunk back in and apologized while Punk yelled at Kingston that his behavior was unprofessional. So at least they rectified what generally have been nonsense segments by getting the formatting of the segment correct with Eddie slowly approaching from far away, getting in Punk’s face to interrupt and stir up an issue, others coming to take Eddie away and presumably calm him down and Schiavone returning to give Punk the last word as well as saying, “We’re out of time.” I can completely forgive everything that happened here because the segment made sense.

So as far as where this segment is leading, I presume we’ll be seeing Eddie Kingston vs CM Punk at Full Gear. CM Punk told Kingston, “You want to go to sleep again? I saw the last match.” So this is the first big feud CM Punk will be involved in to get him higher towards the card. Given what we saw with Bryan Danielson, I assume this match will be to help Kingston in the long term if/when it happens as well as give Punk more of an edge and put him into a small angle that makes the audience care about a match. Also, I still think CM Punk and Bryan Danielson have a secret pact going between themselves where they’ve challenged each other on seeing who can produce the best matches in AEW. We just saw with Kingston that he’s capable of having a good match if he’s given someone who is very over and can lead him through. So this should be an interesting one to see what Punk can do to make Kingston look good.

Matt Sydal vs. Dante Martin w/ Lio Rush

This is where my interest for the remainder of the show sharply started to drop off. Unfortunately, Matt Sydal is basically a jobber in AEW. Actually more of a JTTS. He can work but he’s floating in limbo, he’s in his late 30s and he just gets positioned lower and lower every time I see him. He reminds me of Brad Armstrong in WCW in the mid to late 90s. Nothing wrong with that but we know he’s not going anywhere and I think the audience sees that too.

But Dante Martin is going places and having Lio Rush helps a bit. This match was better than I had hoped because both men have a bad tendency to go at 100 MPH. Instead, they slowed the match down, especially Dante so that his moves stood out better and allowed the audience to process them. Also, he looked very crisp here, no flubs for the complex stuff he does which can go either way. So I liked this match for the real purpose in letting Dante shine with a person who isn’t really a good match carry type, even though he can work. Also, Dante getting the win here was great since he’s definitely going to be a future star.

The other thing to mention is that Lio Rush was supposed to wrestle with him in a tag but they said that Matt’s brother was injured. I really have no idea what happened but we haven’t seen Matt’s brother in a while. Seems like a bunch of brothers are out for that matter.

Dr. Britt Baker D.M.D. vs. Abadon

This is where I flat refused to watch anymore of this show. I just can’t stand Abadon. I hate her gimmick and the fact that they attempted to make this a goofy Halloween, no DQ match made me even less motivated to give it a chance. And usually I like watching Britt Baker to see how much she improves but this was not the match for me. I saw that the table wouldn’t break and they re-attempted the spot but it just shows how dumb these planned out matches are.

Final Thoughts

There’s only one match to really watch on this show. I really enjoyed the Kingston vs Bryan Danielson match. I’m utterly convinced that Bryan Danielson probably is the best wrestler in AEW right now, followed by a close second of CM Punk. But it varies depending on the match and opponent. The thing with Bryan is he’s having more matches and more opponents than CM Punk so I’m giving him the edge. I do think CM Punk tells better stories in the ring and his segments have been better produced so far.

Now, for the “controversial” part, I read that people started to leave during Rampage. My guess is that they stayed for the Bryan Danielson match but left after that. The Matt Sydal vs Dante Martin match felt like a Dark match and got a few pops here and there but wasn’t nearly at the level of Bryan Danielson. And while Britt Baker is over, Abadon is pretty much relegated to Dark and rightfully so. She just looks like one of those troll dolls except far more disgusting and has no importance to AEW except as a freak show. I can’t even call her an attraction because I argue that she’s a turn off with her look.

I feel that probably during the “main event” people walked out because they simply do not want to watch Abadon. It goes with my belief that there are people in AEW that are hurting the company because no one wants to watch them. Also, why would they give credence to some of these people like 10, Abadon, Brandon Cutler on national TV when you can see the ratings plummet?

AEW does have their stars but they have people who just have a negative effect. Watching people like 10, Abadon, Brandon Cutler, The Bunny, Nakazawa, etc. is where I either fast forward or take a bathroom break if the match goes on for too long. They really have no business being in TV in their current state because their gimmicks stink badly. Now, either get them off TV and repackage them or fire them. I’m sorry but I feel very strongly about this situation and the ratings are proving me right.

Now, what is interesting in relation to what I just mentioned is that Tony Khan admitted that at some point there will be cost cutting measures. I think once the pandemic situation evens out, the people I have mentioned will be gone. Tony Khan has been getting better talent all the time with all the NXT wrestlers getting expunged and this influx of pro’s having better and better matches than the previous indy people.

And you can’t tell me that Brandon Cutler, Abadon, 10, Nakazawa, etc. built AEW. They didn’t. They were fodder who got lucky because of their relationship with someone and the fact that Tony Khan needed warm bodies to plug up his holes. But once you start eliminating them the shows will drastically improve, I can guarantee. With ROH effectively becoming an indy promotion and eliminating their contracts, I won’t doubt that we’ll see some solid talent coming from them soon. So the Chikara and GCW goofs will be the ones getting boot soon enough imo.

The post AEW Rampage 10/29/2021 Review appeared first on Kontroversial Keith.

Orange Cassidy vs Powerhouse Hobbs

This was a world title qualifying match. They never explained how people got matched up nor why this tournament exist except for the sake of existing and to setup an eventual title match. There is no theme behind this tournament and the brackets are pretty clear in terms of whom the winners and losers will be.

They mentioned at the start of the match how Orange squashed Hobbs one year before in less than 15 seconds. Pretty much that was when Hobbs was super green so this match was used to showcase how far Hobbs had come along. For the most part, Hobbs dominated and seemed more confident and had a response for Orange’s stuff.

Hobbs looked great and I think the point was that even though Hobbs lost here again to Orange Cassidy, he still will be a contender in the near future based on his improvement. Cassidy won in a surprising manner so Hobbs looked fantastic here. Didn’t really see any botched moves so I didn’t have much of a problem with this match except for the stupid ending where Hobbs got in the referee’s face, which distracted him from a roll up by Cassidy. I think a surprise roll up by Cassidy alone would have been enough since Orange is reasonably over and Hobbs still is inexperienced.

Penta El Zero Miedo and Alex Abrahantes Interview

Tony Schiavone starts the interview off in the ring and Penta manages to utter one word before some masked guys in the crowd get their attention. Penta gets ambushed by FTR while Alex gets punked by Tully Blanchard. Pac makes the save because he’s still associated with Death Triangle while FTR take the belts back. It just irks me to no end when they have these interviews that aren’t interviews.

Dr. Britt Baker, D.M.D. vs. Anna Jay

This was considered a “grudge” match.  Meaning, give Anna Jay TV time and try to justify her being on TV. Anna Jay sucks. Her kicks are slow and she moves like she’s wrestling in molasses. There’s no energy behind what she does, her facials are about as blank as a brick wall and she looks lost a lot of the time out there. Chris Jericho had to cover up just how awful this match was in trying to put Anna Jay over the entire time.

Britt isn’t the one to carry Anna Jay neither. The only people capable of making Anna Jay better in front of a live crowd in AEW are Serena Deeb and Thunder Rosa. Either way, the match sucked the crowd dead so badly they needed an after birth again. So Tay Conti rushes to the ring and it’s hinted she’ll probably get a title shot next against Britt. That’s fine for me just because Britt needs to be fed wins at this stage before facing either Thunder Rosa or Ruby Soho for the title loss. That said, Tay vs Britt won’t be good because Tay is about one year better than Anna Jay, which isn’t saying much.

Andrade and Pac Main Event Interview

Oddly, no Mark Henry at all tonight. They need to avoid putting Andrade in front of a microphone at all cost. He’s just terrible at speaking. Pac is okay but I got bored and zoned out.

Pac vs. Andrade El Idolo

This was a re-match. This match went very long, probably too long because of how the ending happened. This match felt better paced than their first one because they slowed it down a little and the spots were organized slightly better. But they couldn’t help themselves in starting off with big moves within the first 30 seconds. It’s somewhat understandable given that this was another “grudge” match.

Both guys are insane in terms of the type of spots they worked. A lot of apron moves and outside moves like a rana on the outside, a strange DDT on the apron, a moonsault to the outside, etc. Andrade took a nasty bump on the apron and you could see red welts on his back.

The ending was stupid because for all the huge moves both men were pulling out on the outside, the pin fall result was from a roll up by Pac. Huh? That was so anti-climatic to everything they were doing in this match. And here’s where things broke down completely.

Almost immediately, the lights went out so you could not register the winner. Afterwards, Malakai Black showed up and assaulted Pac with his mist. They started a beat down on Pac with Malakai being the assailant, which was hinted by Andrade as “having friends from all over the world” earlier in that interview that I zoned out half way. Then Cody, of course, comes in to make the save for Pac. We’re supposed to get Cody vs Malakai tomorrow and probably Cody will win but with this assault against Pac, it seems that we might have either Pac or Andrade interfering to cost Malakai the match and thus protect him while giving Cody his redemption/win back. Is the writing this obvious?

But what I hated about this match was the fact that it was obvious they had to get all their shit in, causing the last moments of the match to come off abruptly and not letting the win for Pac to breathe even for a few seconds. The lights out part is just overdone and disjointed. I mean whoever plans this shit really needs to take a hard look at the formatting. It’s obvious they have a formula now of two men’s matches + one women’s match per week but when you get an awful match like Anna Jay vs Britt Baker, you just want to cut it out and leave it on a Dark Episode instead so that a match like this gets better time. Or at least cut down the awful match by half so that the angle you want to shoot has more time to breathe.

I suppose the exciting aspect of the ending of this match was getting three NXT stars together and basically acknowledging that AEW is effectively NXT 2.0 minus Hunter/HHH’s thought process. But here’s the thing for me. The matches that are being booked are great on paper and sometimes live up to their hype to a point. However, the way Tony Khan books things to get to that point and attempts to justify everything with these extracurricular activities is so nonsensical that I want to skip all the middle parts just to get to the meat of the subject.

Final Thoughts

At least, for now, the thing AEW has going for it are the matches and certain people they now have to elevate the show. If you got rid of the week-to-week booking, the wretched interviews with the unending interruptions, the shitty backstage promos and focused exclusively on the video packages (which are actually well done and put together in a meaningful manner) and the core matches with the right talent, then AEW is miles ahead of the WWE on the wrestling portion. But trying to make sense of everything in between for the most part because of the middle cruft is where AEW just blows hard. They need to work on that aspect big time.

Also, they need better women wrestlers. I’m sorry. As someone who is a big proponent of women’s wrestling, I do like women who are good. But Anna Jay, The Bunny, Penelope Ford, Big Swole, Rebel, Emi Sakura, etc. are pretty bad. This is where the WWE is miles ahead of AEW. Actually, light years ahead. There’s only four women who are S-tier in AEW with Serena Deeb, Britt Baker (mostly for her popularity and ability to execute a promo), Thunder Rosa and Ruby Soho. The rest need a tremendous amount of work either on the execution, the psychology of their matches and just the realism to make me feel anything. The experienced women in AEW outside of the four I’ve mentioned are pretty shameful. Hikaru Shida seems to get worse every week, Emi Sakura never was good in Japan compared to her contemporaries, the Bunny has a job because of her husband, Rebel has been awful since day one. Maybe the only two I respect not in that group are Leyla Hirsch since she has an actual background and Jamie Hayter. But that TBS title almost feels unjustified at this stage of AEW. I’d prefer a cruiserweight title since there’s an overabundance of small guys in AEW.

The big problem with the women’s division in AEW is that there’s really no one for them to go after these days. All the good veterans in Japan got signed up with the WWE or have retired. Mima Shimoda still wrestles but she’s in her 50’s. The only person AEW can get that would actually mean anything to bolster their women’s roster right now would be Charlotte Flair. Or even Bayley just because I’ve heard good things about her being a coach. But in terms of both meaning something huge and being a mentor, Charlotte is by far and large the best acquisition that AEW could make for an addition to their women’s roster.

The post AEW Rampage 10/22/2021 Review appeared first on Kontroversial Keith.

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.

The post AEW Rampage and Buy-In Friday Night Special 10/15/2021 Review appeared first on Kontroversial Keith.

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.

The post AEW Rampage 10/8/2021 Review appeared first on Kontroversial Keith.

Bryan Danielson Vs. Nick Jackson

Not a great match by any stretch of the imagination. Nick Jackson is too used to teaming with his brother and he looked lost here. The crowd was pro-Danielson but they felt quiet compared to the lively Adam Cole vs Jungle Boy match on Monday. Bryan Danielson did his best to carry Nick Jackson here but the reality is that Nick Jackson isn’t a good wrestler and it really shows when he’s facing a trained competitor.

While reading Reddit, someone mentioned that this match looked more like a squash match. Well, in reality it was. Nick Jackson tried to do some lame flippy offense and his kicks were awful. The super kick has become so overdone that I can’t stand seeing it with the exception of 1-2 people.

Danielson won with the Cattle Mutilation tap out over Nick Jackson. The Elite came into check on Nick Jackson while Christian Cage and Jurassic Express went to Danielson. There was a small after birth to promote Wednesday’s big 8 man tag team match where poor Adam Cole and eventually Kenny Omega were put into submissions. But overall the only thing that matters at this point are Omega vs Danielson part 2 and possibly Adam Cole vs Christian Cage or Bryan Danielson vs Adam Cole down the line.

Ricky Starks Video Package

Again, AEW does a great job when it comes to these video packages in making their wrestlers look like actual stars. Unfortunately, poor Ricky is still stuck in another unending feud with Brian Cage. After CM Punk’s win over Powerhouse Hobbs, I was hoping he would have the opportunity to take on Ricky Starks since he mentioned him by name at one point. And it would give someone Starks could sink his teeth into and actually deliver an exchange of good promos.

CM Punk Video Package

Puts over Hobbs but says that he’s about to make that serious turn where he’s going to start aiming for bigger stars soon. Not sure who is in Punk’s crosshairs yet. During the MJF promo on Dynamite, it was very clear people want to see Punk shut MJF up. I think they should keep these two clear for a while just because MJF did that huge job to Chris Jericho on the PPV.

I thought Ricky Starks would’ve been a better next opponent just because of the mic stuff they could do. But again Starks is in the never ending feud with Brian Cage. Since MJF did that promo against Darby Allin, I have a feeling Punk won’t have to deal with MJF for now.

Now, I could see Punk facing Men of the Year. Since Jericho got punked (pun intended) and Punk admits to dabbling in MMA, he could take them on along with Jericho. But I’d feel really bad for Scorpio Sky since the guy deserves better. Yet it might lead to some worked MMA fights with the rest of American Top Team. I personally think that whole angle is dead because they fucked it up badly but who knows?

Nyla Rose Vs. Thunder Rosa Vs. Jade Cargill

This was supposed to be a grudge match that turned into a semi-garbage match with a trash can, table and chair being brought in. Jade Cargill is very pretty but she just can’t work. Thunder Rosa managed to power bomb Nyla Rose through the table on the outside for the “holy shit” moment of the night. Then Jade Cargill used a chair to bash Thunder Rosa for a pin. Some of those chair shots just looked awful and they never explained why any of these implements were allowed in this match. I have no idea why Jade was given the victory over Thunder Rosa because Thunder Rosa is probably either 1 or 2 in terms of AEW’s best women workers while Jade is at the bottom. And Mark Sterling is an even cheaper version of Don Callis with less personality.

Malakai Black Segment

Sounds like Malakai Black is done with Cody Rhodes and the Nightmare Factory for now, which is GREAT. He did mention that Cody needs to basically become a heel but anything moving forward will probably be done by Cody on his own in moving towards a heel turn. Black does say that he’s looking for more souls to collect so hopefully he can move onto bigger things like a TNT title shot since Miro is out of that picture.

Sammy Guverra Video Package

They talk about his victory over Miro in becoming the new TNT title holder and already receiving his first defense next week on Dynamite against Bobby Fish, whom I believe works for New Japan, thus the Forbidden Door once more opening up. I can’t see Fish winning although I’ve read numerous people getting excited about his arrival. I still think it’ll be Malakai Black beating Guverra at Full Gear in November for the TNT title.

Matt Hardy/Jack Evans and Orange Cassidy with Mark Henry

Another backstage segment with Mark Henry. It’s basically stupid comedy with Matt pretending Jack thought about this plan while Jack tries to deny it and Orange casually saying he just has to beat Jack as his strategy. Mark Henry is looking more and more confident in these segments which is cool. I did see him on Elevation while Paul Wight was wrestling and thought he did a good job. It’s better than Jericho shouting over him and interrupting him constantly.

Jack Evans Vs. Orange Cassidy

Really a nothing match. Crowd seemed dead except when Cassidy was on offense. Jack Evans has some good offensive moves but no one cares because they realize that he’s a jobber. This match was better suited for Dark or Elevation. Jack lost to Orange’s Orange Punch hit which meant he would have his head shaved.

HFO tried to come out to save Jack but Cassidy’s buddies formed a line. Then more of HFO came out which brought out part of the Dark Order. In turn, Angelico attempted to save his partner then got knocked silly while Hardy made a strategic retreat as Jack Evans got the top of his head shaved.

This lead to -1 being invited to the ring so that the Best Friends and Dark Order could give the kid a hug to finish off the night.

Final Thoughts

After reading the spoilers on Wednesday, I knew this wasn’t going to be an exciting show. It really was meant for Brody and even then it felt lifeless. I still argue that rather than have a dumb show full of shitty matches with jobbers, they’re better off having a one night tournament culminating with a big match on Fridays because at least you’ll have a meaningful bunch of pro-wrestling matches rather than boring angles that lead nowhere.

Next week we’re supposed to be getting a special anniversary edition for Dynamite. On top of the big tag team match and Shida vs Deeb match, they’re having a stupid ladder match that will be formatted like their Casino Battle Royale, including a joker card. The participants they announced are

• Jon Moxley
• Lance Archer
• Pac
• Andrade El Idolo
• Matt Hardy
• Orange Cassidy

So far there hasn’t been a clear indication for the Joker. Since Lio Rush just re-signed, there’s a small possibility he’ll show up since he got injured supposedly at their last Casino Battle Royale. There was another name mentioned on Reddit on a thread where Jay White was brought up based on a rumor from a cancelled appearance. It didn’t sound concrete but just received a lot of upvotes.

Jokers in the AEW context have been outsiders so there’s no reason not to suspect a debuting wrestler will show up. The thing is that outside of Ric Flair and Bray Wyatt, there hasn’t been any major rumblings of AEW’s next major signings since the WWE had done all their releases. With the recent two Dark Side of the Ring episodes putting a great deal of shade onto Flair, it’s unlikely he might make a debut anytime soon. And for Bray Wyatt, his contract deal isn’t up for another month or so.

The one major name that the WWE released who could make a debut is Braun Strowman. Yet this doesn’t seem like the type of match he would do compared to the people listed and there hasn’t been mention of any public interest in him thus far from AEW. The only thing that was said about Strowman was that he was commanding a pretty big contract with the WWE. But I don’t think he might bring the upside Tony Khan wants with the way the roster is being built.

From other possible WWE related stars that might show up for something like this, I have a few that could be in this position:

• Buddy Murphy – Style would fit for a match like this but not sure if AEW is the right place for him. Others said he probably will heading to Impact.
• Bronson Reed – Doesn’t seem to fit this type of match but he is free I believe. Visa issues might present a problem though.

• Tony Nese – Not familiar with him but he might fit. Haven’t seen him signed to anywhere just yet

• Tyler Breeze – Friends with Adam Cole and Shawn Spears. Now runs a wrestling school with Spears. Could see him here but I read that he wasn’t interested in pursuing a company at the moment. So hard to say.

So I think the interesting thing will be seeing who the Joker card is. It’s not going to be a the level of CM Punk nor Bryan Danielson (or heck Adam Cole for that matter) but I would imagine the debut to be not someone yet seen. So should be good.

At any rate, I’m glad this show only went for an hour. It was pretty bad and I don’t think I’d enjoy watching a whole 2 hours of this with all the jobbers from both shows.

The post AEW Rampage 10/1/2021 Review appeared first on Kontroversial Keith.

CM Punk Vs. Powerhouse Hobbs

They started the hour with their biggest name in CM Punk taking on Powerhouse Hobbs. The attraction here was seeing CM Punk’s first television match and he chose the youngster Hobbs as his opponent. Hobbs looked super excited but had to contain himself since he was being positioned as a heel but you could tell that this was the biggest night of his life up to this point.

Match was good and showed Hobbs’ potential. It was well paced and only had a single botch where Hobbs seemed to land wrong on a top rope rana that CM Punk did. After that, CM Punk got bloodied possibly in the jaw or nose. So again as with many things in AEW, we have our first injury of the night. Hobbs didn’t have a chance to do his big finisher so that’s being protected as hitting on Punk would mean that Punk shouldn’t kick out. Punk did a special top rope elbow drop a la Randy Savage. Have to note that there was a guy in the audience dressed up exactly as the Macho Man so not sure if Punk paid homage after seeing the guy. Also, Punk did a corner buckle whip similar to Bret Hart. CM Punk looked great here. A much different match than the one he had with Darby Allin but still a good pace. Hobbs looked like a million bucks in this match minus the rana. Some people on reddit noted the comparison with him and Ice Train/Scott Norton (Fire and Ice). He even did Ice Train’s running tackle.

Adam Cole / Young Bucks Vs. Christian / Jurassic Express

This was the second match I wanted to see. More because I wanted to see Adam Cole. He got one of the loudest reactions that night. The main story was Adam Cole avoid Christian and Jungle Boy most likely because they’re saving those matches. But they did have a few moments together. Don Callis was on commentary while Brandon Cutler and Luke Gallows were outside along with Marko Stunt.

Typical chaotic Young Bucks match. Tonight I forgave them a little more because the match was pretty hot. Too many super kicks though but I will say that Jungle Boy looked great. Ending was Luchasaurus getting triple kicked then receiving Adam Cole’s Boom knee. No post match but Adam Cole did get in Jungle Boy’s face when Jungle Boy was checking on Luchasaurus. So that match will happen on Dynamite next week so that’s another one I’m looking forward to seeing.

Jericho / Hager Vs. Men of the Year

Dan Lambert accompanied Men of the Year. Jericho is still over massively with his dumb song even though Jericho physically looks awful. Some people pointed out Jake Hager looked good here but he had zero response from the crowd. That’s what happens when no one sees you anymore for months at a time. Finish came with Dan Lambert tripping Hager up while Scorpio Sky got an inside cradle for the pin.

Let me just say how stupid that ending was. It was an old school ending but considering you have people in the previous bouts kicking out from crazy moves, it just makes a big guy like Hager look like a goof. Like Ruby Soho can kick out of a 2nd rope Air Raid Crash which should’ve broken her neck but Hager can’t even make it out of a little trip. No wonder Hager doesn’t see any TV time.

Post match was Jericho and Hager trying to get retribution on Dan Lambert. Suddenly, Scorpio Sky invites a bunch of people from Top Flight and security allows them to surround the ring. Paige VanZant looked completely out of place there. She was waving and acting like she was too excited to be around. She gave awful looking shots Jericho and Jericho should be ashamed. Jorge Masvidal gave Jericho a big knee strike that looked like it missed the mark.

So I was talking about that whole MMA vs pro-wrestling angle. It looks like they tried to do it. But this whole thing stinks. It was more like bad pro-wrestling. The shots looked bad and there was a take down that looked awful. The fact that the MMA people just walked out from the back and started waving made this look terribly fake. Jericho and Hager looked like idiots just standing in the ring while Dan Lambert slipped out before everyone stormed in on Scorpio Sky’s orders. I felt like the guys from the MMA group were just confused on what to do.

Part of the problem is that they got two pro-wrestlers who were wasted by a 62 year old mime and a skinny skateboarder punk just before as key players in this. No one takes Ethan Page and Scorpio Sky seriously. You can have them in a midcard feud but they don’t have the star power to make people care in a situation like this.

Jericho could be the right person but he’s just so old and fat now that it looks awful. You needed someone in there who could take the punishment. The punches from VanZant were awful. Some of the green females in AEW can throw better punches than those. Excalibur sounded like a goof for trying to put over VanZant’s abilities. She just needed to slap Jericho hard across the face and I think he could’ve taken that.

Why not wrench Jericho’s arm back and have him sell a twisted broken arm? Or break another appendage that he could sell in a cast? And why did they need to get all those people involved? It just makes the MMA fighters look super weak needing a whole gang to beat up two people. It was too much sports entertainment rather than playing to the strengths of MMA.

Tony Khan should go back and watch the old NJPW vs UWF stuff. Or check out Akira Maeda shooting on Riki Choshu’s face with that shoot kick that broke Choshu’s orbital bone. Heck, go check out the Akira Hokuto vs Shinobu Kandori Dream Slam stuff to see how you can build up intensity between a legit shooter and a pro-wrestler. Honestly, this was an embarrassing failure of a segment and I’m seriously disappointed the way this was done. They already fucked the whole thing up big time.

Lucha Bros / Santana & Ortiz Vs Butcher & Blade / Private Party

Just a stupid match. Chaos. The usual Lucha Bros stuff. Matt Hardy looks more like a schmuck as each week passes by. I bet he’s glad though collecting that big Tony Khan money. Other than that, I could care less. They did a stupid spot with Orange Cassidy and Jack Evans that belongs on Dark because Evans is used to wrestling in front of crowds of 100.

Matt Hardy Backstage Segment

Schiavone got an interview with Hardy and Jack Evans. Hardy challenges Orange Cassidy in a hair vs hair match where it’s Jack Evan’s wrestling Cassidy to represent Hardy. Again, it’s so convoluted and stupid that you wonder why these people get time at all.

Anna Jay Vs. Penelope Ford

Here is the bathroom break match of the night. As I mentioned before, both girls are attractive but have no talent. Anna Jay is too green and Ford has one good move. The Bunny comes out to give Ford brass knuckles and Ford gives Anna Jay a shitty looking shot that knocked her out.

Of course, an afterbirth happens so Tay Conti comes out to save her friend and gets waylaid. The rest of Hardy Office come out and surround the ring as Orange Cassidy, for some god knows what reason shows up with Kris Statlander while the rest of the Job World Order show up to clear the ring. As Tay checks on her friend, the Job World Order continue that horrible, never ending, nobody cares angle of whether they’ll split or stay together with Evil Uno walking out.

So at least if you have a big show like this on a major TV network and the boss is kind enough to give you some TV time, fucking end the angle already or at least push it forward. Stop wasting time or just get off TV already. I understand the boss wants to give people as much time as possible since they’ve got their biggest crowd, but sorry, no. It just comes off very amateurish and there’s no pathos since nothing gets resolved. They didn’t even have a brawl with the heels so only more apathy is created here. If you’re going to do nothing save it for Dark where this shit belongs.

BTW, somewhere in there was an Andrade Idolo package that I didn’t care about. You know when is he ever going to wrestle again?

Jon Moxley / Eddie Kingston Vs. Lance Archer / Minoru Suzuki

Mark Henry attempted to conduct a pre-match interview but Eddie is not civilized. It seemed like he was attempting to crack Lance Archer up the entire time. I kept thinking what a great job Mark Henry has. Just do 3-4 lines, hold a microphone and smile then collect a massive paycheck. Where can I sign up?

As far as this match is concerned, it was just rubbish. I feel sorry for Suzuki, thinking back on his Pancrase career. Now, he’s just an oyaji wandering around laughing as though he shared in Moxley’s meth addiction. They called this a Lights Out, Unsanctioned match. That’s the professional way of saying this is a garbage indy brawl.

At one point, Moxley got his wrists taped up so I think he’s into some kinky shit. Inexplicably, Lance Archer goes around the ring to chokeslam a bunch of ring attendants. Some of these people were already lying around on the floor it looked but more importantly, why were they even around in the first place?

Oh, it’s because Lance Archer needed to do his apron chokeslam and required the cooperation of others to catch Moxley. Suzuki looked completely out of place in this match. He’s just become this shit brawler. It’s really sad. He beat Ken Shamrock in Pancrase and now he’s reduced to this.

At one point, Homocide, of all people, makes his entrance. He got a pop and I now many of my suspicions are satisfied. He helped Kingson and Moxley by being a distraction as well as untying Moxley. Kingston got a win over Archer after bashing him inside a trash can with a kendo stick that looked absurd. At least, after “bashing” poor Archer “dead”, he actually got a pinfall.

Final Thoughts

There was one good match tonight and one guy I enjoyed watching. The rest of the show was pretty bad. The one good match was obviously Hobbs vs CM Punk and the one guy that I enjoyed watching was Adam Cole. Everything else just fell apart and became typical AEW. The most disappointing aspect was the awfully executed pro-wrestling (AEW) vs MMA fighter angle. Honestly, they better cut their losses if this is how things will go.

When you look at a show like this, it’s clear that Tony Khan wants to push his younger talent badly. So you get people like Hobbs, Jungle Boy, Jake Hager, Ethan Page, etc. involved on a show that has a 20k audience but the result is really mixed because the execution just sucks.

There was a lot that should have been shaven off. Anything dealing with Hardy and Orange Cassidy is just awful. It’s boring and it’s in one of those endless feuds that never goes anywhere. So they’re doing a hair vs hair stipulation match next week. But I thought that was Peter Avalon’s gimmick.

The women’s match was really bad. It had no place being on this card. Nothing against women wrestling but these two are green jobbers. They’re now having a tag match with Penelope Ford/Bunny vs Tay Conti/Anna Jay next week. So we have to be tortured for one more week? At least, if you did the tag match this week, you would have four people trying to cover for each other rather than putting two green girls in.

Also, the Job World Order continues to bore and generate increasing apathy. Nothing ever happens besides inexplicable arguments. There’s a difference between a slow burn like Roddy Piper turning on Captain Lou Albino vs. an angle that never goes anywhere. The reason I hate shit like the Job World Order or the unending pile of insomnia that is Matt Hardy’s midlife crisis is that nothing new happens. There’s no subtleties that lead me to suspect something big will happen. There’s nothing for me to care about in these people because they have no personality. It just takes up valuable TV time that could be used for another match or giving time for someone else that can use it and is capable of doing well in that spot.

I just realized I glossed over Miro vs Sammy Guevara. It was a stupid segment. I’m glad Miro got some time on stage but I really hope that Sammy Guevara doesn’t beat Miro. That said, the bright side might be if Sammy beats Miro, Sammy should be challenged by Malakai Black and get his head kicked off appropriately. Either way, if Miro loses to this chucklehead, I’m going to feel really bad for the guy. He really has had an uneventful title run. I think if he was beating jobbers every week on TV then I wouldn’t have minded. But he wrestles infrequently and the people he gets are mostly jobbers so his title reign looks pretty bad.

The main event was….ugh. Another Moxley match. You could tell it was all his idea because they repeated the hands behind his back spot. Also, what’s his goddamn fascination with these shitty brawls? It’s not like Chris Benoit vs Kevin Sullivan where the brawl goes through the crowds and concession stands and had energy. I get Kingston getting the big win in his hometown but he looked terrible out there. Basically, Kingston and Moxley looked like marks that got into wrestling doing bad imitations of their favorites.

The Homocide run in was stupid even though I found out that he’s having a match against Suzuki in GCW. But they didn’t even announce why he was around. He just shows up out of nowhere. And they prepared his entrance music. Like this is just bad fan service at this point. It’s not as though Ric Flair suddenly showed up and started “whooing!” the audience (although he probably won’t be around for a while after those last two Dark Side of the Ring shows).

When I look at the combined effort of Dynamite and Rampage, I kept thinking to myself, there was absolutely no need to go 5 hours for this total show. They should’ve opened up with CM Punk vs Hobbs on Dynamite rather than Bryan Danielson vs Kenny Omega. Bryan Danielson vs Kenny Omega should’ve been Rampage for the full hour. Maybe move Adam Cole’s match to Dynamite. The rest of Rampage easily could’ve been cut out. It just wasn’t a good showing.

Either way, two hours for a taped Rampage is excessive to me. The big problem with AEW is that they think certain people are stars but really they aren’t. The good thing about having 20k people is that you can see which people are real stars because people will react to the ones they care about.

The post AEW Rampage 9/24/2021 Review appeared first on Kontroversial Keith.

Lucha Bros Vs. Butcher and Blade Tag Team Title Match

This match had virtually no build going in. In fact, somehow they advertised Butcher and Blade having a 7-0 win/loss record and were ranked #1 going in, despite the fact that Butcher had been out for months while Blade wandered around in meaningless, silly single match feuds.

Match pretty much was a standard Lucha Bros match with chaos. No Penta glove/Zero Miedo spot. Butcher/Blade worked a spot where they tied Penta’s mask to the corner while they bullied his brother around. When they were about to go for a double team move, Penta escaped in quickly sacrificing his mask for knocking Blade out to allow Rey Fenix to hit a rana for the surprise pin.

Afterwards, Matt Hardy got pissed and summoned Private Party out to do a post-match beat down while Penta tried to get his mask back on. Poor Alex Abrahantes got knocked to the floor. But Ortiz and Santana made the save. Since there is a segment that addresses all of the aftermath, I’ll save my comments until that time. Overall, the match was more of a setup and probably gave Butcher/Blade an old title shot that was long forgotten since the Bucks had the belts for so long.

Bryan Danielson and Kenny Omega Video Package

Sadly, I still believe that AEW’s video packages manage to get across what’s needed far better than their live segments. They should really stick to this formula as opposed to having most of their hokey live segments except for the really good people. I’ll also get back to that in a moment.

Anna Jay Vs. The Bunny

Matt Hardy stayed by ringside for this, which felt weird. Bunny came out with Penelope Ford while Anna Jay was accompanied by Tay Conti. This match sucked because neither girl are very good. At least with Anna Jay, she has the excuse of being on the shelf for a while along with being inexperienced. But the Bunny is just really bad. She has experience and seems to only look partly reasonable when she’s in a squash match in front of a small crowd.

Anna Jay got the pin over the veteran, which says a lot about The Bunny in the scheme of things, which lead to Penelope coming in to help beat down Anna Jay. Tay Conti came in to help her partner but got a brass knuckle sandwich from The Bunny. I really hate that because the punches she does looks awful. They gave one to Anna Jay for good measure. Otherwise, this was just a setup match for next week.

Powerhouse Hobbs and CM Punk Video Package

Hobbs got a chance to talk here. They gave him kudos for the comment about Punk’s 7 year lay off. Many people think he’ll be a star one day and it’s really a matter of time and experience at this point.

Matt Hardy Interview

Schiavone is in the ring with Matt Hardy. Schiavone basically tells Hardy he’s a loser since both his members lost on the same show. They announce that next week will see Blade/Butcher/Private Party vs Lucha Bros/Santana/Ortiz on Rampage while Anna Jay gets Penelope Ford at Rampage. Matt spots a wannabe Orange Cassidy plant in the crowd and Jack Evans and he grab him to embarrass the man by shearing the guy’s hair. The plant must be some upcoming wrestler in training because he took a bump to the floor being pulled over.

This leads, of course, Orange Cassidy to make the save. There’s now “anticipation” of an eventually hair vs hair type of match with Cassidy, which sounds stupid because Cassidy’s hair is short to start. So I’m guessing Matt Hardy wants to become Matt Baldy.

But I’m going to pause for a moment to go over Hardy Office/Matt Hardy. If you look at his group, he’s effectively got the largest faction in AEW, discounting the Dark Orders’ eminent albeit meaningless break up. Hardy now has H20 (Jack Evans/Angelico), Blade/Butcher, Private Party and The Bunny/Penelope Ford. Despite having this many people, Matt Hardy effectively is John Paul Jones feuding endlessly against Jimmy “the Boogey Woogie Man” Valiant in the NWA where Orange Cassidy is playing the role of Valiant.

Despite having all these people, Matt Hardy right now is effectively a mid-carder who just acts as the door and filler to lead to whatever is next for a given talent. Sadly, his excellent match against Christian led to nothing for the guy and he’s been stuck in this purgatory for a long time.

As far as the upcoming 8 man tag match next week, it’s a situation where I anticipate Private Party might somehow get a match against the Lucha Bros just because AEW likes giving gratuitous matches with teams that have been on a losing streak title shots and/or Santana/Ortiz will have a moment against the Lucha Bros somewhere in that match, leading to a feud/title match. I’m betting on the latter.

Penelope Ford vs Anna Jay is going to be the bathroom break match. Some people anticipated Penelope Ford/The Bunny vs Anna Jay/Tay Conti at this show but now we’re getting just a singles match. It’s going to be bad because both women suck. I’m not going to beat around the bush on my feelings about their abilities. Both might be really pretty but neither are very good, they’re both inexperienced and it’s a mistake to put them in a match like this on a huge show. At least, a tag team match would have hidden all the BS that would potentially happen but I’m guessing Tony Khan is thinking a slow burn for that match. However, no one really cares because none of the people involved are great and should be kept in tag matches so they don’t overexpose themselves. So I expect a disaster there.

Britt Baker Vs. Ruby Soho

Where the previous match was the display of two indy level girls, this segment was the display of what you can achieve at a high level. Pretty much this was the highlight of the show for me. I really wanted to see Ruby on the mic and she delivered! Ruby easily had the line of the night by explaining Britt Baker was like other broads she faced in “banging some dude in the back” (poor Adam Cole, but I guess Tony Schiavone was enjoying that one). That’s when the crowd woke up from this otherwise dreary, insipid show.

The line was so good Britt gave the perfect face in not trying to bust up but realizing that she got owned. Lots of great crowd reaction from that and people finally got to see Ruby make the situation her own.

Both traded a few sharp barbs, including Britt getting in a nasty “you got fired” remark which popped the smart crowd. Ruby owned that one by saying she was happy about it being the “best damned thing that ever happened to her.” There was a lot of emotion in Ruby’s voice so you could see she meant everything and the crowd was solidly behind her.

Ruby commanded Britt’s attention, using the old Game of Thrones “look at me!” line while snapping her fingers in Britt’s uninterested countenance, which got a small reaction from the announcing booth, who had been really eating their popcorn and enjoying the banter this night. The final line of the night from Ruby came by saying Britt is blind because of how far up Tony’s ass her head is. Then she brought it all home by talking about next week and beating Britt for the title match.

Naturally, Britt didn’t let it go and tried to smack her with the title. The post-interview schmoz didn’t look great with a weak take down by Ruby and some lame shots. But Ruby held the title aloft while Britt walked away and Jericho tried to oversell it with an overt, “That is what we call a money segment!” and a “I want to see this match!” Please Chris, don’t make things like this seem so obvious.

I have to comment that this was one of the best interview segments I’ve seen in a while. Some people are saying for women’s wrestling but I think this was an extremely solid moment for Ruby, possibly her own Austin 3:16 moment when she gave Britt her “banging some dude in the back” line (though not as catchy). Yet the importance of this interview was demonstrating that Ruby can go on the mic, make her into a main event player, a wasted talent in the WWE who was waiting for the moment and selling a match. This promo was academic for me in terms of everything that should be done in a promo. It felt like pro-wrestling and told a nice story, giving both people a chance to shine and show that they can talk people in the building. I mean, afterwards, I really want to see the upcoming match just because of the jaw jacking. And that’s what you want to do in these situations.

Fuego Del Sol Vs. Miro

And now back to our regularly scheduled AEW programming. They had the backstage segment with Mark Henry pre-match. I guess that’s a permanent thing but it does not explain why Mark Henry was not on commentary this week. Match was Miro giving Fuego a chance in this match with Fuego’s car on the line. Fuego tried to verbally elevate the importance of the TNT Title by putting his newly purchased car on the line for the opportunity.

The match wasn’t a complete squash and Fuego’s pre-match interview showed he could speak. But no one really was going to give Fuego a chance against Miro. After Miro destroyed Fuego with a pair of bicycle kicks, Miro shoved the car keys into Fuego’s mouth, put on the Game Over modified Camel Clutch until Sammy Guevara came into the ring to clear it.

It’s obvious that Sammy is going to be Miro’s next major challenger but that match hasn’t been set just yet. If it was going to air next week, then I would assume Sammy would have a chance of winning. Sammy did say that he wants that title but I don’t know if he’ll get it just yet.

Final Thoughts

Besides the Ruby Soho vs Britt Baker interview segment, the rest of this show wasn’t anything to write about as their go home leading into next week’s big Arthur Ashe Stadium event. Two of the matches just provided some gratuitous material for Rampage next week while the Fuego vs Miro match is obviously going to get Sammy his chance at a TNT title shot.

The Matt Hardy stuff just doesn’t click with me. In truth, Matt looks completely lost without his brother and he’s just lost in the shuffle since he’s older, his name only matters when he’s team with his brother and there being so many other main event level guys that can handle the top spots. Matt reminds me of what I would think Vince Russo would almost be like if Vince became a wrestler within a semi-limited confines of a bigger structure.

I hate ripping on women’s matches but the fact is that outside of a few women, the vast majority in AEW don’t really do much for me. I think the problem here is just a very wide gap in experience and talent. At the top of the pyramid in terms of raw talent, you have Ruby Soho, Thunder Rosa, Serena Deeb and Britt Baker. Then it’s steep decline from there. Hikaru Shida is okay with me but I think she’s more of a trainer at this stage. Riho works fine if she’s bumping around for others. The rest are green or terrible. Red Velvet, Layla Hirsch, Kris Statlander and Tay Conti might have a shot some day but they need better opponents and at least 2-3 years worth of experience more before they should go near a title. Penelope Ford, Anna Jay, The Bunny and Tay Conti might be able to just get by on their looks initially but it’s going to take a lot of work for them to get over because they aren’t naturally talented.

The Miro vs Sammy Guevara match should have been placed next week rather than one of the two filler matches they announced this week. If it were on Dynamite along with the women’s title match, I would have a harder time determining the winner of either. So it’s a mystery why a huge show like that only has one title match.

Nonetheless, with that said, I can see Ruby Soho walking away with the women’s title next week. There might be interference from Rebel and Jamie Hayter just because Tony Khan would want to get as many faces in front of a large crowd as possible, but with only one title match at a huge stadium event, I can only see a single outcome there. Although it would only be roughly a 4 month reign for Britt, the fact is that Britt still isn’t that great in the ring. Some people still think it’ll be Britt vs Thunder Rosa and I do think maybe they pulled the trigger on Ruby Soho getting a title match too soon. I would’ve saved that for Full Gear in November but they can always have a re-match, despite AEW’s poor history of re-matches.

Either way, this show was pretty bland outside of the Britt Baker vs Ruby Soho match. Fuego Del Sol should not have received any title shot, although it just served for Sammy Guevara’s purposes. But he’s shown so little after the Pinnacle feud died down that he’s just wandering around too. Then again I think that Guevara might beat Miro so that we will see Malakai Black vs Guevara for the title down the line or Adam Cole.

The post AEW Rampage 9/17/2021 Review appeared first on Kontroversial Keith.