Rampage - 8/26/2022

[The Natural]

[zendragon]

4 hours ago, The Natural said:

Had a soft spot for The Dark Order ever since the late great Mr. Brodie Lee on Being the Elite. Feels a little to late with Stu Grayson, Alan Angels and Anna Jay no longer with the group. Time to do something with them was last year when Adam Page teamed up with them but they then lost that big tag team match that Page could no longer challenge for the AEW World Championship. House of Black losing to a distraction finish sucks. House of Black should have won.

Really weird heat with Miro- HOB. The Preacher man comes out to interfere gets beat down yet we are supposed to feel bad when he started shit with 3 men? (plus no way am I going to side with a man who can't stop pushing his faith on to people over three metal heads) 

[Shartnado]

45 minutes ago, zendragon said:

Really weird heat with Miro- HOB. The Preacher man comes out to interfere gets beat down yet we are supposed to feel bad when he started shit with 3 men? (plus no way am I going to side with a man who can't stop pushing his faith on to people over three metal heads) 

Not even with a Goth-Punk and a Crow-lookalike in the Preacherman's corner?!?

Wow, we sure got our monkey's paw wish of Death Triangle vs House of Black NOT being the finals, huh?

Is this the first regular US PPV with 3 six-man tag team matches on it? The first one in a while, anyway!

...anyway, the stuff that Dustin is still doing at 53 is just off the charts nuts!

Edited August 27, 2022 by Shartnado
...

[GuerrillaMonsoon]

The suspension of disbelief required to understand why Sting's facepaint, that he paints on himself, now has the black mist infection is probably a step too far for me, especially when there's about a 99% chance nothing will come from it.

[Shartnado]

27 minutes ago, GuerrillaMonsoon said:

The suspension of disbelief required to understand why Sting's facepaint, that he paints on himself, now has the black mist infection is probably a step too far for me, especially when there's about a 99% chance nothing will come from it.

His face has the infection, not the paint. The paint doesn't stick to the evil infected part anymore. True story.

[zendragon]

30 minutes ago, GuerrillaMonsoon said:

The suspension of disbelief required to understand why Sting's facepaint, that he paints on himself, now has the black mist infection is probably a step too far for me, especially when there's about a 99% chance nothing will come from it.

Nothing will happen for 6 months if history is anything to go by

[southofheavy]

2 hours ago, GuerrillaMonsoon said:

The suspension of disbelief required to understand why Sting's facepaint, that he paints on himself, now has the black mist infection is probably a step too far for me, especially when there's about a 99% chance nothing will come from it.

Nah, see, Sting's got immunity because Muta hit him with the yellow mist in '89. 

He's sayin "Fuck you and your crew, Tommy."

[Pedro]

15 hours ago, zendragon said:

I still feel like people are sleeping on this gimmick. There rich asshole frat boys, its a license to print money!

90210 Steve Sanders would have been a perfect douch heel.  Way better than Miz and MJF.  His finish could be the Legacy Key lock

[HarryArchieGus]

This was one of the weakest AEW TV shows I can remember. Absolutely awful finish in that Dark Order-HOB opener. Goddamn, am I alone in not giving a fuck about Hangman Page and the Bucks' friendship? The Sting make-up/mist storyline is a classic Excali-planation. I'm going to try and forget this whole opening segment. Nice to see Daddy Magic and Ange. Do we really need the Ryan Nemeth local promo? Nice to see Wardy beat this shit out of him. Chris Sabin is here. I love the MCMG, but Sabin solo is the Madison Rayne on the Men's side. I always enjoy Andrade on the mic. Puh-puh-puh-Powerhouse! Fuck this remix, bring back the original. Terrible segment. Jade and Athena, sure. Can Athena work a miracle? Mixed tag was fine, but just compounds a nothing happening show. Even the Punk update video was fucking lame. Castignoli and Dustin was good, but short of a strong finish was a bit of a disappointment. Terrible show. 

[DEAN]

LL KFC!

 

 

[madl]

Great to see that Theme Music Distraction Spot is now officially All Elite.  Was concerned it would be unable to find work after Vince retired.

[Matt D]

Full disclosure: I had seen the spoilers on this one in passing and I did, of course, watch sans commercials. I thought it was a fun show though.

• Dark Order vs HOB was a lot more of what I want out of a match like this. They had the 10 vs King stuff. I liked the standoff between all three. Reynolds got to hold his own and looked about as good as he's looked, had the moment with Black where they were both sitting, got to play FIP, got a hot tag. I liked when things broke down that it didn't overstay its welcome and that the HOB had an answer to a lot of the Order's usual tandem stuff. Things had weight (and in King's case, literal weight). 10's leg was on the backburner for part of the match and then paid off later which is always nice. Story beats instead of just spots. The Miro thing has been building for weeks and weeks so I didn't mind it. All of this felt like logical pieces on the road to different stories. I'm not going to watch whatever the Trios final ends up being so I'm not bothered that the Hangman thing isn't working for people. I'm just not going to watch. Problem solved!
• Nemeth's promo was like a bad parody. I liked seeing Sabin's reactions to things. You think Wardlow would have been even more over in Cleveland but maybe it was sound mixing or something. I liked the headbutt. I liked Nemeth being completely dead and not going over smoothly for the last powerbomb. Good touches.
• I actually think this was Angelo Parker's best promo in AEW maybe. Even better than his part of the post Blood and Guts (which wasn't nearly as good as Daddy Magic's).
• Weird if this is Grey being taken out of the baddies. It'd be bad if the Athena match ends with Velvet coming back as the big moment. AEW does that sort of non-surprise a little too much (like when Sammy came back during the Kingston/Jericho match; that's not a big surprise/moment/return).
• Hobbs squash was fine. Jericho saying it was the other guy's night was funny.
• I liked the mixed tag. On the one hand, you kind of want to just let them go full intergender with the rules but on the other, it does allow for certain narrative beats, whether it's affronts/cheating of the two sides interacting or the big spots that they build to. It'd be more of an issue of it was a regular thing, but there's been maybe four of these in the last year, tops; it's just that two of them have been in the last week or two. This felt like standard NWO mid-card, mid-feud stuff where the numbers win out over the faces. Because they hadn't caught the blood earlier, it made it seem like the cutter just magically wildly opened Ortiz up, which obviously it didn't, but it was a cool visual. Obviously the end result here should be Kingston going over and the booking is fine so long as the real life stuff hasn't disrupted that.
• Really liked the Dustin vs Claudio match. A few things about how Claudio is working. One, I think he's doing a lot of the small/close up/mean stuff in a way he wasn't in his WWE run. Granted, I haven't seen him much in the last few years, but I really don't remember it. I don't think the BCC is teaching him to rub his arms against people's faces or anything but I do think it's a part of their training sessions so it's on the front of his mind. I really liked how he'd go from a pin to immediately looking for the next hold too. It's all an interesting dissonance to his personality which is light and fun, but when he gets in the ring he's really grinding down and punishing people. Two, there's a certain moveset limitation in WWE. I noticed it the other day with Danielson having the freedom just to do a brainbuster because he wanted to. I think it's less likely that Claudio would have just been able to do a shoulder-breaker even though it made sense at the point of the match, so that freedom is nice to see. He can express himself so freely now just in general and he's making the best of that. The early chain-wrestling/oneupsmanship was a lot of fun. The twos in the face and then Claudio having enough of it. Dustin is a very unique character (let alone wrestler, given his size and experience) for guys to push up against and it's good to see someone really lean into it. As the match went on the focus on the shoulder, mixed with Claudio's recent tendency to really bear down on something, made for a pretty compelling story. Dustin had to fight from underneath because everyone has to fight from underneath against Claudio but Claudio respected him enough to target a weakness instead of just having a lark with it. Finish was odd and it's all about if it's going somewhere or not. Is this why Dustin's never won a title, because he doesn't have that edge when it counts in the end whereas Claudio does? Is Arn going to do something coming out of this like he did for Cody? Will he find someone else who can get the job done? Or encourage Brock to be different? Or is it all just going to be swept under and we'll see Dustin again in six months? A lot of the issue was that they didn't know how to frame the camera right. It was very focused on Claudio's selling the collision and low blow instead of Dustin being emotionally conflicted. Remember, this comes right after Mox wasn't conflicted even a tiny bit. It would have been good for them to highlight that as well. If they REALLY wanted to make it work, they would have referenced Clash XXI and Dustin refusing to capitalize in a similar situation (which led to the Windham turn). This is one of those situations where Khan probably went to Dustin with "Hey, I want you to do the Clash 21 finish!" and Dustin going "Which one was that?" which is something Dustin says happens all the time.

Anyway, it's ok if you weren't feeling this one, but I enjoyed it for my Saturday morning viewing.

 

Edited August 27, 2022 by Matt D
Forgot about Ortiz bleeding.

[Peck]

Bobby Fucking Cruise

Caprice Fucking Coleman

#HireToddSinclair

[porksweats]

I'm hoping the reason Grey got kicked out of the Baddies is because Red Velvet's recovered from her injury. (I mean, I'm okay with any reason, I'm not feeling this for Grey)

[Matt D]

3 minutes ago, porksweats said:

I'm hoping the reason Grey got kicked out of the Baddies is because Red Velvet's recovered from her injury. (I mean, I'm okay with any reason, I'm not feeling this for Grey)

There were other Dark/Elevation enhancement talents which would have worked better in that role probably. Rossi, Amber Nova, Renee Michelle? Though I did love the one Rampage where Grey and Hogan teamed up and they both tried to leap in front of each other during the entrance.

Edited August 27, 2022 by Matt D

[(BP)]

Don’t give up Leila; becoming a Baddie is like converting to Judaism, you’re rebuffed three times to test your commitment. 

[porksweats]

7 minutes ago, Matt D said:

There were other Dark/Elevation enhancement talents which would have worked better in that role probably. Rossi, Amber Nova, Renee Michelle? Though I did love the one Rampage where Grey and Hogan teamed up and they both tried to leap in front of each other during the entrance.

Rossi definitely, I personally don't want Nova anywhere near AEW. I've got no time for any Chasyn Rance associates.

[JLowe]

2 hours ago, Matt D said:

Full disclosure: I had seen the spoilers on this one in passing and I did, of course, watch sans commercials. I thought it was a fun show though.

• Dark Order vs HOB was a lot more of what I want out of a match like this. They had the 10 vs King stuff. I liked the standoff between all three. Reynolds got to hold his own and looked about as good as he's looked, had the moment with Black where they were both sitting, got to play FIP, got a hot tag. I liked when things broke down that it didn't overstay its welcome and that the HOB had an answer to a lot of the Order's usual tandem stuff. Things had weight (and in King's case, literal weight). 10's leg was on the backburner for part of the match and then paid off later which is always nice. Story beats instead of just spots. The Miro thing has been building for weeks and weeks so I didn't mind it. All of this felt like logical pieces on the road to different stories. I'm not going to watch whatever the Trios final ends up being so I'm not bothered that the Hangman thing isn't working for people. I'm just not going to watch. Problem solved!
• Nemeth's promo was like a bad parody. I liked seeing Sabin's reactions to things. You think Wardlow would have been even more over in Cleveland but maybe it was sound mixing or something. I liked the headbutt. I liked Nemeth being completely dead and not going over smoothly for the last powerbomb. Good touches.
• I actually think this was Angelo Parker's best promo in AEW maybe. Even better than his part of the post Blood and Guts (which wasn't nearly as good as Daddy Magic's).
• Weird if this is Grey being taken out of the baddies. It'd be bad if the Athena match ends with Velvet coming back as the big moment. AEW does that sort of non-surprise a little too much (like when Sammy came back during the Kingston/Jericho match; that's not a big surprise/moment/return).
• Hobbs squash was fine. Jericho saying it was the other guy's night was funny.
• I liked the mixed tag. On the one hand, you kind of want to just let them go full intergender with the rules but on the other, it does allow for certain narrative beats, whether it's affronts/cheating of the two sides interacting or the big spots that they build to. It'd be more of an issue of it was a regular thing, but there's been maybe four of these in the last year, tops; it's just that two of them have been in the last week or two. This felt like standard NWO mid-card, mid-feud stuff where the numbers win out over the faces. Because they hadn't caught the blood earlier, it made it seem like the cutter just magically wildly opened Ortiz up, which obviously it didn't, but it was a cool visual. Obviously the end result here should be Kingston going over and the booking is fine so long as the real life stuff hasn't disrupted that.
• Really liked the Dustin vs Claudio match. A few things about how Claudio is working. One, I think he's doing a lot of the small/close up/mean stuff in a way he wasn't in his WWE run. Granted, I haven't seen him much in the last few years, but I really don't remember it. I don't think the BCC is teaching him to rub his arms against people's faces or anything but I do think it's a part of their training sessions so it's on the front of his mind. I really liked how he'd go from a pin to immediately looking for the next hold too. It's all an interesting dissonance to his personality which is light and fun, but when he gets in the ring he's really grinding down and punishing people. Two, there's a certain moveset limitation in WWE. I noticed it the other day with Danielson having the freedom just to do a brainbuster because he wanted to. I think it's less likely that Claudio would have just been able to do a shoulder-breaker even though it made sense at the point of the match, so that freedom is nice to see. He can express himself so freely now just in general and he's making the best of that. The early chain-wrestling/oneupsmanship was a lot of fun. The twos in the face and then Claudio having enough of it. Dustin is a very unique character (let alone wrestler, given his size and experience) for guys to push up against and it's good to see someone really lean into it. As the match went on the focus on the shoulder, mixed with Claudio's recent tendency to really bear down on something, made for a pretty compelling story. Dustin had to fight from underneath because everyone has to fight from underneath against Claudio but Claudio respected him enough to target a weakness instead of just having a lark with it. Finish was odd and it's all about if it's going somewhere or not. Is this why Dustin's never won a title, because he doesn't have that edge when it counts in the end whereas Claudio does? Is Arn going to do something coming out of this like he did for Cody? Will he find someone else who can get the job done? Or encourage Brock to be different? Or is it all just going to be swept under and we'll see Dustin again in six months? A lot of the issue was that they didn't know how to frame the camera right. It was very focused on Claudio's selling the collision and low blow instead of Dustin being emotionally conflicted. Remember, this comes right after Mox wasn't conflicted even a tiny bit. It would have been good for them to highlight that as well. If they REALLY wanted to make it work, they would have referenced Clash XXI and Dustin refusing to capitalize in a similar situation (which led to the Windham turn). This is one of those situations where Khan probably went to Dustin with "Hey, I want you to do the Clash 21 finish!" and Dustin going "Which one was that?" which is something Dustin says happens all the time.

Anyway, it's ok if you weren't feeling this one, but I enjoyed it for my Saturday morning viewing.

 

You definitely made me better appreciate the wrestling and the in-match stories on this show, so thank you for that. 

[Shartnado]

Do you think there will be a continuance to the Dustin story?

[Phil Schneider]

Man I was thinking a very similar thing when I was watching Dustin's match. My Ringer piece and your Segunda Caida piece are going to cover some of the same ground :).  This was Dustin's post match tweet, which does suggest they are going to do something further with this, although AEW has so many balls in the air

 

 

 

 

[Matt D]

8 minutes ago, Phil Schneider said:

Man I was thinking a very similar thing when I was watching Dustin's match. My Ringer piece and your Segunda Caida piece are going to cover some of the same ground :).  This was Dustin's post match tweet, which does suggest they are going to do something further with this, although AEW has so many balls in the air

This is not super surprising in the grand scheme of things, though usually we come at matches at slightly different angles. Still,I won't say too much more on it on Monday and I'll say some things about Punk vs Mox too. Usually, I don't write so much here about things I'm going to write about later there, but people seemed down on it, so I wanted to push back a bit.

Also Thanks @JLowe, I've enjoyed you trying to make sense of all of this over the last year as I've done much the same. Glad you're part of the community in general as you bring a unique voice to the proceedings.

As for what's next here? I doubt that Khan would ape the Clash finish lightly knowing that it led to Barry's turn which is no small thing. I know people were relatively high on the  recent indy Brock/Pillman heel pairing and maybe that's where we're headed here? One last chance for Pillman, Jr.? Not sure though.

[JLowe]

23 minutes ago, Matt D said:

This is not super surprising in the grand scheme of things, though usually we come at matches at slightly different angles. Still,I won't say too much more on it on Monday and I'll say some things about Punk vs Mox too. Usually, I don't write so much here about things I'm going to write about later there, but people seemed down on it, so I wanted to push back a bit.

Also Thanks @JLowe, I've enjoyed you trying to make sense of all of this over the last year as I've done much the same. Glad you're part of the community in general as you bring a unique voice to the proceedings.

As for what's next here? I doubt that Khan would ape the Clash finish lightly knowing that it led to Barry's turn which is no small thing. I know people were relatively high on the  recent indy Brock/Pillman heel pairing and maybe that's where we're headed here? One last chance for Pillman, Jr.? Not sure though.

There are a lot of little hints and seeds being planted setting up a large-scale AEW “originals” vs. NXT/WWE guys. Even the Acclaimed/SioG (thanks @Gordlowfor reminding me of their proper name) set-up included a mention of that. It’s going to be a slow build since I think they’re still trying to get a stand-alone ROH set up and they have a lot of injuries to heal (Bucks/Omega versus Cole/ReDragon being one of the top rivalries in that angle, for example, plus whatever is going on with Punk). So maybe trying to salvage a Horsemen Babies tag team is part of that originals angle, or destined for ROH.

Edited August 27, 2022 by JLowe

[AxB]

When you say Rossi to the baddies, do you mean Kayla Rossi, or Mafiosa (Valentina Rossi)?

[Matt D]

5 minutes ago, AxB said:

When you say Rossi to the baddies, do you mean Kayla Rossi, or Mafiosa (Valentina Rossi)?

For this temporary (interim) role, Valentina. Kayla isn't there yet and needs more time to develop. Plus I don't think she fits in given her strengths/persona. If Hayter and Britt do split, she can be a new heater for Britt maybe?

[tbarrie]

9 hours ago, zendragon said:

Really weird heat with Miro- HOB. The Preacher man comes out to interfere gets beat down yet we are supposed to feel bad when he started shit with 3 men? (plus no way am I going to side with a man who can't stop pushing his faith on to people over three metal heads) 

How does Miro push his faith onto others? I don't recall him inciting anyone else to murder God.