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BRM Reviews the 6/3/2022 Rampage (Big news. Is it a work?)

Posted: Jun 8th, '22, 18:10
by Big Red Machine
YOUNG BUCKS vs. LUCHA BROS. (w/Alex Abrahantes)- 8/10
The Hardy Boys and Jurassic Express were shown watching from the crowd. Adam Cole was on commentary and didn’t add anything of substance. Chris Jerico was very annoying.
Other than starting off by exchanging hand-signals in each other’s face (which was one of those stupid mid-2010s things that needs to go away forever), I really loved those first few sequences they did of fast-paced action meant to show off their athleticism while showing us that they were evenly matched… until the spot where Fenix and Nick superkicked each other at the same time (that can work with a lariat, but with a superkick, it’s goofy because it’s pretty much impossible to do it unless you’re working together to do a spot), and even more so when they both kipped right back up and had a stare-down. If they had ended it with a stare-down after they both slid back into the ring it would have been fantastic, but they killed the whole sequence for me by going too far and making it feel like they were putting on a performance designed to impress me with their athleticism and intensity rather than feeling like what it’s supposed to feel like, which is an actual competition.
I actually liked a lot of this match. Yes, it was a bunch of spots, but it flowed together very well, and they did some really cool stuff. Then, after one of their big crazy spots, Fenix pinned one of the Jacksons and Rick Knox went down to count… but then didn’t count so that the attention could be on the other two while they did the follow-up they had planned. That is the sort of thing that really hurts a match for me, and it pretty much took me out of this one.
More stuff happened. Penta was late making a save, which I only know because the announcers all immediately started to tell me about how the Bucks making the cover made mistake by shifting his weight and Fenix definitely wouldn’t have kicked out. This is the sort of thing that should only be done if you have a specific plan in mind for protecting the finisher in question, as all doing this does is indicate to the viewer that something happened that wasn’t according to the plan in a situation where if you had said nothing, they would never have known that anything went wrong. In this case the move in question was the Meltzer Driver, which I have seen the Bucks attempt s rarely that the idea of it being kicked out of didn’t feel like it was particularly notable because it’s not being used to put people down very often.
The Bucks won by pulling Penta’s mask off so they could take him out before pinning Fenix. Apparently pulling a luchador’s mask off isn’t a DQ in AEW.

TEAM TAZ (Ricky Starks & Will Hobbs) vs. TWO JOBBERS- squash
They beat up the jobbers. We cut to split-screen to show a promo they cut earlier tonight, because apparently this generic promo was more important than showing us the wrestling here on this wrestling show.

STOKELY HATHAWAY PROMO ON BEHALF OF KIERA HOGAN- good

ATHENA vs. KIERA HOGAN (w/Jade Cargill, Red Velvet, & Stokely Hathaway)- 6/10
If you want Athena to be a challenger to Jade, she can’t be taking too long to beat an undercard wrestler like Kiera Hogan.

HOUSE OF BLACK PROMO- snore
We were told that that the segment with Julia where she first teased turning on the Varsity Club was all a part of the plan. Fine. I still have no interest in any of their magic or verbal gobbledygook.

CM PUNK PROMO- weird
Excalibur told us that Punk “seemed to sustain an injury” in his match on Dynamite, but apparently people are doubting him. Why would anyone be doubting him? This is one of those cases where it feels like the storyline speculation exists only because they want us to think they might be turning Punk heel, rather than giving us a reason to think that Punk might be faking and having that be a hint that he might turn heel. It’s the cart leading the horse; the voice of the author dropping in something completely out of left field just to play into online speculation.
Anyway, Punk was a total babyface talking about the crowd, but told us that has some broken bones and needs surgery ad thus needs to vacate the title and take time off. When rattling off people who might replace him as champion, he only mentioned Danielson and Moxley, which I’m sure people will read into as an “ex-WWE guys” thing, and I’m sure that was the idea (whether or not it’s a red herring remains to be seen).
Punk vowed to return. The crowd treated him like a babyface and Punk treated this the way a babyface would. If this was a shoot, then this was very good.
And yet, if this was a shoot, why the hell would they have Excalibur say that people are doubting that Punk really is injured?

MARK HENRY INTERVIEWS THE PEOPLE IN THE MAIN EVENT- meh
Dante was meh. Sydal was bad. He comes off like such a good. Also, “we die flying or we die trying.” So you die either way? What a TERRIBLE catchphrase!

AEW TNT TITLE MATCH: Scorpio Sky(c) (w/Dan Lambert & Ethan Page) vs. Dante Martin (w/Matt Sydal)- 5.75/10
The match was meh, and felt completely unimportant. They teased that Scorpio Sky might have an injured ankle as well.
During this match they announced that Dynamite would open with a battle royale to determine who would advance to Forbidden Door to face Jon Moxley for the Interim AEW World Title. Moxley is apparently being given the bye because he is 7-0 in 2022. I’ll bet you there are plenty of people with better records than that (I’m late enough getting to this show that said battle royale is minutes away from starting while I’m typing this, so I’m not going to do any hard research, but Wardlow immediately comes to mind as someone who almost certainly does. Adam Page and Bryan Danielson are probably up there as well). Excalibur later clarified that Moxley is also the #1 ranked wrestler (so why didn’t they put that on the graphic, as it does a much better job of explaining the decision than putting “7-0 in 2022” on the graphic does?) which makes a little more sense, but it just makes you ask they don’t just give him the title if he’s the top-ranked guy? Or, if you insist that their must be a match, why isn’t it just Moxley vs. whoever is ranked #2?
Oh. And Adam Page isn’t even in the battle royale, because he was already booked against undercard jamoke Dave Finlay. Whatever.


This was one of those episodes of Rampage that makes you shake your head because it’s so obvious that this show would be much better if Tony knew how to manage his TV time.