Happy Sunday, mga ka-Rampage! It's time for your possibly second-favorite wrestling show of the week. Okay, maybe third, because NXT UK is still thankfully a thing that hasn't been torn apart yet. Let's get it!
Welcome, Jake Atlas
One of the best NXT cruiserweights to never become Cruiserweight Champion is finally on AEW, and the sad part is that he blew out his knee on his first televised match for the company. Here's hoping that it isn't too bad, though we haven't really had an update yet.
It's a pretty big feel-bad as Cole was giving a lot to Atlas in this match, letting him showcase his gymnastic athleticism at every turn and admittedly making Cole look a little silly—making Atlas look like a big name when he objectively probably wouldn't be remembered by many WWE fans from NXT. That's doing a lot for someone who spent most of his time in 205 Live and the cruiserweight division, though he deserved a lot better then. Let's hope his injury isn't too bad so he could get more out of his new opportunity in AEW.
Teasing a split
In the buildup to today's Battle of the Belts live special, AEW put on a tag match between the team of Ruby Soho and Riho and the team of Britt Baker and Jamie Hayter. In a move that will piss off a lot of non-joshi fans, Riho scored the rollup pin, watering the seeds of a feud between Britt Baker and Jamie Hayter.
If you're pissed at Riho winning, you're probably missing the entire point of the story that's actually making her second fiddle to the white girls about to split up. It feels a little early to be splitting Britt Baker and Jamie Hayter, especially when they're doing the exact same thing with MJF and Wardlow and taking a lot longer to cook the steak. Kind of tells you that there isn't quite the same care being taken with the women, but most people will let it slide.
Fightin' in the streets of New Jersey
This week's Rampage main event is a six-man street fight between the Puerto Ricans and 2point0 and their son, and you can tell that AEW put on too much big matches on Dynamite if this is the main event we're getting on a Friday night. It's your typical street fight, and like I said last week about the street fight the women had, it's not hard to pop the crowd with a lot of gratuitous violence. (I'm not saying it's bad, but it's not mindblowing, either.)
Interestingly, Daniel Garcia is spared from eating the pin, which tells me that he's being protected for a bigger role this year. Chris Jericho comes down to make the save in the perfunctory AEW post-match beatdown segment, and what I once was confident was going to be a Jericho vs. Kingston feud is now up in the air as it seems he'll be feuding with 2point0—or perhaps Garcia himself. Or maybe even Garcia and Kingston at the same time. This is intriguing.
Rampage 1/7/22 Report: Rampage feels like a B show again especially after the stacked Dynamite we had last Wednesday. There's nothing wrong with that, only that it isn't a mindblowing show. B
Little rampages
- Not mentioned in the main review section is a quick Hook match we had that saw him go up against the Factory's Aaron Solo (without a W). Looks like Hook's first feud is with QT Marshall, which people may not be excited about, but is actually pretty good and fine. QT's going to bump around well for him, and Hook might even work faster. Definitely some interesting stuff.
- So it's already a moot point as of today's Battle of the Belts, but the Men of the Year are right: why is Dustin Rhodes getting an Interim TNT Championship shot? The question of having an Interim TNT Championship in the first place aside (WWE never made an Interim Universal Championship went Roman Reigns went down with COVID) why is Tony Khan deliberately booking in a way that makes a) himself look bad and biased, and b) the heels actually correct? It's like a weird galaxy brain move that I've yet to figure out, but is not actually playing anyone. I'm willing to let this play out, but it needs to be called out as a weird booking decision that, in the end, doesn't actually make the heels look like the heels they're supposed to be.
*****
Romeo Moran (@roiswar) is the Editor-in-Chief of Smark Henry and one of the three hosts of the Wrestling-Wrestling Podcast. He gets by in this hard-knock life through working in advertising. Smark Henry was his and Stan Sy's original vision of a watering hole for local wrestling fans. He roots for the undersized guys who hit hard, and he likes taking your wrestling questions over on his Curiouscat account.
