Stiva

Didn’t the dude in charge of all that get fired for it recently? Sounds like his head rolled for the contract situation but it doesn’t really help much to fire him AFTER the main NXT draw has walked out. Talk about locking the door after the horse has bolted

There’s also Moxley/Kingston/Darby vs The Wingmen which should be fun at the very least. Mostly because it confirms the former as an official trios team and also because the idea of them all being friends is great.

I was thinking that Archer feels like a guy who is coming to the end of his AEW run, especially after he lost the IWGP US Title as quickly as he did. Intrigued to see where this is going with Dan Lambert but at best, Archer feels like he could be a Gatekeeper for guys to beat on the way up. A modern day Meng but with far worse hair.

I was flabbergasted at the Becky return angle and the Bianca squash. Whenever they’re booked into a corner, they seem to think that the right move is to burrow even further and take the most damaging way out possible. It’s like they’re booking a Rube Goldberg machine

Wyatt as AEWs Raven makes some amount of sense when you consider Tony Khan is a huge ECW fan. I guess The Dark Order was originally supposed to be a collection of oddballs and outcasts until they morphed into the “Friendship is Power” collective. Wyatt as Raven also makes sense when you consider they both love cutting rambling, nonsensical promos

The Punk pop and entrance was everything you’d ever hope for, topped with a good return promo and hype for Darby/Punk which should be incredible if the rumours of Punk looking at his best in training are true. Thought that hour flew by; Cargill is green as grass and looks to the hard camera far too much but get her in there with Emi Sakura and she’ll be golden. Really dug the main; told a nice little compact story with a good body part focus and a nice little go-home crowd pleasing end. I like the duelling promos hosted by Mark Henry that they did this week and last. Both Moxley and Matt Lee popped me with the pregnancy line and “This arena has waited 20 years for a main event like this!” Obviously not every Rampage will have something like Punk’s return but give me a good tag match, a semi-squash, a good angle and a competitive main event every week and it’ll be a great formula.

Tony Khan has said the whole show is going to be formatted differently to normal so I’m intrigued to see what that means, especially since they’re dealing with just an hour.

AKA CM Punk’s “surprise” debut. Moxley takes on Daniel Garcia, Jurassic Express have Private Party in that thrown together tag tournament and Cargill will flex her way through Kiera Hogan. Hopefully, we hear Eddie Kingston’s response to Miro too but this is really a one angle show so let’s hope they stick the landing.

I think it’s pretty incredible that they’ve had the restraint. I suppose it helps that all the shows are pretty much sold out anyway but has anyone ever built to a debut in such a fashion? Fun show, all in all but I’m definitely ready for the Bucks to lose their belts now and I’m leaning toward Jurassic Express being the ones to do it since the cage seems designed to book a title change. Wight/QT seems a thrown together match for his return but I’d bet money on Shaq showing up to run it at Full Gear. Miro/Kingston promo battles should be all that program needs to heat it up. Finally, I’m loving the focus on Daniel Garcia and 2.0 recently; just a fantastic way to debut them, feature them and make them TV acts within a month. Great stuff and the fantasy Booker in me is wondering if they’re positioning Garcia for a showcase match with one Bryan Danielson in the future.

Yeah, I like how AEW doesn’t beat you over the head with things and trusts your memory but even then, expecting me to remember Jamie Hayter after 2 years is a bit much. Fun show though; If Rampage is going to be three matches of a similar ilk every week, it’ll be a really fun watch. Would be perfect for the trios titles too.

I suppose the reason she’s still straddling the heel line is because there’s a raft of babyface challengers but no real heels other than Nyla or Cargill. You’d need to open the door to Impact to get Baker some heels to beat.

I do wonder if they’re heading towards Omega/Christian/Jungle Boy in a triple threat at All Out because it feels bizarre to run your PPV main event 2 weeks beforehand for a different title. Then again, another part of me still thinks this is all smoke and mirrors and Hangman will still get the shot, his wife’s due date be damned. The real worry is that they still don’t know what to do with Miro or who to position with him. Jungle Boy feels like the obvious challenger but he’s involved with the Elite at the moment. You also have to think that the Big Show angle is leading to Shaq coming back in, possibly for something at All Out. Would pop for a training montage of Shaq throwing Solow all around the gym. Now that I think, Ogogo has been missing a while and Big Show had that knockout punch finish, maybe it’s leading to that.

In its current incarnation at a trim 40 minutes, Dark: Elevation is finally the perfect AEW tribute to WCW C-Shows. They even have their own programs like the Janela and Kiss break-up. Good stuff

I also wonder where they were going with the Colt Cabana/Brodie story before The Dark Order became the fun loving guys they are now. Seems crazy to think how they changed after Brodie died.

MJF sits and reads Fozzy album reviews to him for 15 minutes.

Hyped for 2.0 debuting. Great personalities and nobody was watching 205 Live but they were good hands on there. Despite having something like 20 teams, it still feels like they could do with another team on top of them though so get that Forbidden Door open. Or give us that Dustin/Sonny Kiss team they teased for like a week. What are we guessing for Jericho’s fourth Labour? At this point, I wouldn’t be surprised if Nick Patrick showed up.

Every time you’d get a random Steiners/Faces of Fear match on a 1996/97 Nitro, it was always a joy. Probably not up there with the Heavenly Bodies match but just four big bastards throwing each other around

Is there a definitive list of who was booking WWE ECW over its years? Was it Dusty who took over from Heyman and how long did he last? As a self-contained (more or less) show that did such a good job of building to TV main events and utilising everyone very well for the last two and a half years of it’s run, it has a lot of parallels with Dusty booked NXT so I was wondering how long he was booking it for.

To be honest, I assumed the plan was to find a way to get to Page/Omega for All Out and put Punk in as the ref. He’d be the attraction but at the end of the night, Page would still be champ. But the Darby Allin promo suggests otherwise.

I really do hope Wyatt is ok but with all these persistent rumours of his mental health and the fact they cut him, Nick Khan really doesn’t care about being the bad guy, it’s fair to say. As for the AEW ad pressuring, I think that’s finally an admission that someone, somewhere, in WWE is a little bit worried with Punk and Bryan coming in

I think they could probably dial it back for a bit considering you had a Texas Death Match and then this back to back. It certainly worked as a one-off spectacle though. Saying that, I can't imagine Cody not wanting to bleed next week considering he'll probably be in white tights.

I’m amazed they went full Gage on national TV and even more amazed that a lot of the gruesome shit really got over. Not too keen on Page being beat since nobody else on the roster gets that reaction and the story is there but I guess the Danielson match is happening since it seems like Punk is going with Darby. Unless they’ve beat Page to go with Omega/Christian which, I cannot imagine even if they were hinting it

Shame about Marc Quen’s performance against Jungle Boy. I hope he’s carrying an injury because otherwise, that was about as sluggish and slow as you can be in a national promotion. Everything looked like he was running through treacle

They got over a million for this Dynamite and beat Raw in 18-49. What are we saying? Moxley? Darby? Fans being back? Sakazaki?!

Great show that flew by. All I can think about is how it must have absolutely sucked to be Ethan Page in that coffin, waiting for Darby to come crashing down on top of you with barely any idea of when it would be happening