BRM Reviews the 1/7/2022 Rampage (bad)

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Big Red Machine
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BRM Reviews the 1/7/2022 Rampage (bad)

Post by Big Red Machine » Jan 10th, '22, 00:24

ADAM COLE vs. JAKE ATLAS- 6.25/10
Can the fans with the fat-heads of the people in no way connected to AEW be, like, flogged or something? Don’t do that sh*t, people.
Cole won cleanly, as he should have. Unfortunately, Atlas injured his knee and they had to rush the finish. I really appreciated the fact that they realized that Atlas’ knee injury was so obvious to everyone that it would make sense to have a knee submission be the finish, but if you can’t safely do a submission on an injured body part without it looking ridiculously light, then just don’t do it.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- meh
reDRagon came out and they were all going to beat Atlas up some more, but Orange Cassidy’s music played, and he slowly moseyed down to the ring with a steel chain. Atlas is very lucky that FutureDRragon didn’t decide to start stomping on his injured knee while they waited for OC to get to the ring. Wheeler YUTA and Chuck Taylor came out and showed some actual concern for Atlas and ran down to the ring. The heels bailed.

CODY RHODES CAN’T COMPETE BECAUSE OF “MEDICAL PROTOCOL” AND SO TONIGHT WE WILL CROWN AN INTERIM CHAMPION IN A MATCH BETWEEN SAMMY GUEVARA AND DUSTIN RHODES-
First of all, do we really need an interim champion if the guy is only missing (so far) one defense?
Secondly… DUSTIN? He’s not even in the Top Five. He also hasn’t won a match on TV in six months, and his most recent match on TV was losing in a #1 contendership tournament match. Would it really be that hard to just give Will Hobbs the match? And if you want him to lose, you can just rebuild him with some credible wins. I doubt you’re doing anything with him (I certainly wouldn’t have guessed he was in the Top Five. I had to look it up).
And no, “Dan Lambert is going to cut a promo about Cody politicking to duck Scorpio Sky again is not a justification. First of all, you can still cut the same promo because Hobbs is below Sky in the rankings, but even if he was, there is no good reason for Tony Khan to constantly be giving in to Cody on these things. Just because Tony Khan is not an on-air authority figure does not mean that that his actions don’t have to make sense. Tony Khan’s character within the universe of AEW is that he is a fair and objective wrestling promoter, so why is he not being so here?

SAMMY GUEVARA VS. DUSTIN RHODES VIDEO PACKAGE- Dustin was passable, given the situation. Sammy was awesome.

TONY SCHIAVONE INTERVIEWS ANDRADE EL IDOLO- bad
So far in AEW, Andrade’s gimmick seems to be that he just doesn’t understand friendship. That’s a sad gimmick. In this case he thinks that Darby Allin is Sting’s assistant, and wants to buy him Sting. Yes, really.

HOOK vs. AARON SOLOW (w/Q.T. Marshall)- 3/10
Okay, now I’m confused. It was established back in 2020 during that Cody vs. Team Taz feud that Hook was training at the Nightmare Factory, and Q.T. reaffirmed this on Dynamite. On commentary here, Taz said that Hook never cared about training with Q.T. and Cody, and instead trained at the Team Taz Dojo. Well, which one is it? Or was he doing both, and he was just wasting money paying Cody and Q.T. while training with Team Taz?
They let Solow get some offense in, but Hook was back on top in short order. Hook won with the Redrum. Redrum? Hey! Wait a minute! Did you know that Redrum is murder spelled backwards!
Anyway, Hook is massively over as a babyface, so some genius decided that the best thing to have him do here would be to hold in a submission after the bell for no f*cking reason. Q.T. hopped into the ring to stand up for his student, which makes him a babyface. Then he begged off and tried for a sucker-punch, but Hook countered it with a suplex.

RICKY STARKS WENT TO TONY KHAN TO GET AN FTW TITLE DEFENSE BOOKED FOR BATTLE OF THE BELTS- Matt Sydal will be his challenger. Starks cut a good promo saying that he chose Sydal to prove that he was better than Dante Martin, as it took Dante three matches to beat Sydal, but Starks says he will do it in one.
The FTW belt was a good kayfabe reason to get Starks booked on the show. That’s making good use of what you have to come up with a reason for something. That being said, they need to use it more often or it will start feeling like a plot device, and that’s not good, as it’s already at the point of something Tony is just humoring Starks with.
I also like the idea of the match, but everything about this feels cold at this point. I don’t know if someone had to quarantine or something, but the whole Team Taz/Dante Martin/Lio Rush issue was completely ignored on TV for weeks, and that’s bad.

TAY-JAY AND PENELOPE FORD/BUNNY PROMOS/VIDEO PACKAGE- meh
Tay-Jay didn’t have much to say, and the Penelope and Bunny’s promo was basically all them transparently trying to spin a loss into something other than a loss (then “making a mark” by having such a violent match and making sure no one will ever forget their names).

RUBY SOHO & RIHO vs. JAMIE HAYTER & DR. BRITT BAKER, DMD (w/Rebel)- 4/10
The babyfaces won a relatively short match when Riho ducked a Hayter forearm that accidentally hit Dr. Baker. Riho then rolled Hayter up for the pin. This was a good way to advance to two stories at once. Baker and Hayter had a shoving match after the match.

DAN LAMBERT & MEN OF THE YEAR PROMO- meh
They point out the things I pointed out earlier, as well as calling Cody and Tony Khan suck-ups, and saying rude things about “Bambi Rhodes.” Scorpio Sky goes full delusional heel ad says that he should have been crowned interim champion without having to wrestle a match. He also had some ridiculous-sounding statistics about the last time he had been pinned and the last time he had lost a singles match. I’m sure both are true, but it’s the sort of thing that almost makes such streaks actually feel unimportant if a midcard guy can accumulate such a streak and the announcers never mention it.

MARK HENRY INTERVIEWS THE PEOPLE IN THE MAIN EVENT- bad
2.0 were loud and annoying, and not in a good heat way. This was “change the channel” heat. Kingston and LAX apparently found out where these guys were and just went over to them and started the…

NO DISQUALIFICATIONS MATCH: Daniel Garcia & 2.0 vs. LAX & Eddie Kingston- 6.25/10
They hit each other with stuff. Babyfaces won.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- snore
We get YET ANOTHER post-match attack by the heels in this feud, this time so Chris Jericho could make the save.


A bad episode of Rampage, mostly because they tried to shove too much into this one show, but the promos were nowhere near good enough to pull it up, either.


STUPID ANNOUNCER QUOTES:
1. Excalibur referred to Aaron Solow as a “crafty vet.”
This would be the same Aaron Solow who was being trained by Q.T. Marshall as recently as the beginning of last year. Oops.
Hold #712: ARM BAR!

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