All Elite Wrestling Rampage 4/29/22

All Elite Wrestling Dynamite, 4/27/2022

Full disclosure: I sat down to watch Rampage and an episode of The Wayans Bros. from 1998 was ending on VH1, with En Vogue as a special guest musical act. This was followed by My Wife and Kids, with Tisha Campbell being her most fantastic self. My weakness for 90s-early 00s R&B singers is still strong, kids.

We're in lovely Philadelphia, PA, and we're jumping right into the action on a less-than-live Rampage, with Shane "Swerve" Strickland and Darby Allen battling for entry into the Owen Hart Foundation Tournament. I have learned that this is actually a rematch of sorts, as Swerve, Darby, and ref Aubrey all came up in the Pacific Northwest wrestling scene. We have a several-man announce table of Excalibur, Taz, Chris Jericho, and Ricky Starks providing commentary, mostly about how they all hate both these performers but still respect their abilities. The match started off with lots of reversals and reversals of reversals, and the crowd was pretty evenly split in support of both guys. Three nasty looking bumps in a row taken by Darby, as his Coffin Drop was met with (whose knees?) Swerve's knees, followed by a spin kick to the back of Darby's head by Swerve. This was followed up by a suplex from the apron onto the floor, which just looked great slash terrible. Starks decided to intervene in the match, throwing off his headset and heading down the ramp, but Sting was there to intercept him. It was enough of a distraction to cause Swerve to get rolled up by Darby, resulting in a pinfall victory about twelve minutes in. I assume recency bias led to Starks deciding to mess with Swerve despite his admitted equal hatred of both men here. This match was fun and a great, high energy kickoff to what is usually a pretty high energy hour of wrestling.

Shawn Spears is in back, telling the camera and all of us a little more about the mysterious seven foot tall monster MJF has hired to take on Wardlow on Dynamite next week. I assume this is gonna be the former Big Cass, now W. Morrissey of Impact Wrestling. I dig the idea of Friedman calling in ever larger outside talent to take out his former employee/ current nemesis, although I do hope they kinda protect Morrissey in case they decide to use him in the future. W. Morrissey's run as Cass with Enzo Amore back in WWE was over like Rover, and if you're like me (and I know I am) you knew the whole entrance bit by heart. Good quick bit to put over the mystery man.

We're back at the announce table, as Excalibur leads us through highlights from the Jericho Appreciation Society's beating of Eddie Kingston, Santana, and Ortiz. Jericho repeatedly screaming "I AM A WIZARD!" as we see him throw a fireball into Eddie's face was great, although I do find his screamy announcing technique funny overall. Your mileage may vary.

We got a trios match next, as my queen Jade Cargill makes her entrance with Red Velvet and Kiera Hogan flanking her and brandishing little fans a la Kitana from Mortal Kombat. Their opponents are already in the ring. Skye Blue, Willow Nightingale, and Trish Adora will be representing the side of good here, which is gonna go about as well as Dark Helmet told us it would in Spaceballs. It's a squash, ending with Adora eating Jaded and the pin at about three minutes. Velvet speared Skye to ensure the pin held, and her spear is just the lightest looking thing, but I'm sure all my digestive tract would be destroyed if I had to take one so who am I to judge? Also, in double checking the spelling of Trish Adora's name I learned that she spent eight years in the US Army, as a Signal Support Specialist and a Military Police Officer. She also uses a clothesline dubbed the Lariat Tubman. We applaud clever wordplay around here, so she gets a slow clap from me and Mrs. Pequeno.

Tony Schiavone is in the interview area with Swerve Strickland and Darby Allen. Darby apologizes for Starks interfering in their match, and is more than willing to go another five minutes. Swerve doesn't blame him, and is actually rooting for Darby to win the whole tournament to represent the Pacific Northwest. Looks like Swerve and his large friend Keith Lee still have work to do against Ricky Starks and Powerhouse Will Hobbs.

That provides a nice segue to the third match of the evening, Limitless Keith Lee versus Ass Boy (Gunn Club) representative Colton Gunn. A thing that has bothered me enough to finally Google Fu my way to an answer: Colton looks, to me, like actor Gregory Sporleder, probably best known for his role in The Rock but who I will always remember as Private Melvin in the Danny DeVito classic(?) Renaissance Man. I provide you nothing if not insight, gentle reader. Lee dominated most of this match, with Gunn's only real offense coming during the picture-in-picture commercial interlude that helped lengthen this from quick squash territory to long domination land. The ending spot was likely supposed to be Colton having the Fameasser finisher reversed into a Spirit Bomb, but the two wrestlers didn't quite time it right. Regardless, Lee won eight minutes in by pinfall.

Tony Schiavone joins Matt and Jeff Hardy for a quick interview, as Jeff tells us he's got a qualifier for the Owen tournament against Bobby Fish of the Undisputed Elite coming up on Dynamite. We then joined Adam Cole and the rest of the Elite for a rebuttal. My main takeaway here is that Bobby Fish should definitely switch his gimmick to include a bowler hat and monocle. Perhaps he turns into the Monopoly guy in a future episode?

Danhausen is on the microphone, heading down the entrance ramp. We walk and talk with him, as he calls out HOOK for being uncurseable and not getting any repercussions for his actions. HOOK heads down, his hair looking a little less calculated than normal but still dreamy. Danhausen reconsiders his challenge when met face to face with the cold hearted handsome devil, offering to put it off until later. HOOK speaks, telling Danhausen he "wants to do it now"! Does HOOK speak in all caps? A question for a later time. Smart Mark Sterling makes his presence on the ramp known, asking the audience if they really want to see these two fight? This provides enough of a distraction for one of Sterling's clients, Tony Neese, to attack both HOOK and Danhausen from behind. He gets a few shots in before HOOK tosses Neese from the ring, and Danhausen curses the both of them. Danhausen offers a handshake to HOOK amid chants of HOOKhausen from the crowd! HOOK grabs Danhausen by the shirt and shoves him into the turnbuckle before leaving. This pairing is gonna be great. 

An interview between Lexi Nair and the Gunns sans Billy is next. Colton is unhappy, but the Gunns don't consider that a loss as Colton did manage to keep up with Keith Lee the whole match. The just-offscreen Acclaimed step into frame, offering a team-up with the Ass Boys in the most disturbing way possible, "Do you wanna scissor with the Acclaimed?", offered via finger scissors. The Gunns aren't sure though, and need to go discuss it with Daddy. (Daddy?!) Anthony Bowens then offers the scissors to Lexi, who politely but definitely declines.

It's time for Excalibur's super fast rundown of the upcoming Dynamite card, featuring Mercedes Martinez and Deonna Purazzo of Ring of Honor fighting for the unified RoH Women's Championship. 

Mark Henry is here with Samoa Joe and Trent Baretta before their main event match. I feel like if Joe did these interviews before every match, he'd have a much smaller number of matches. People would just flee the arena in fear after speaking with this terrifying mountain of a man. I know I would. Anyway, we've gotten to the single best part of Rampage....

WELL IT LOOKS LIKE THERE'S BEEN ENOUGH TALK. IT'S TIME...FOR THE MAIN EVENT. Thank you for being Mark Henry, Mark Henry. Never change.

Our main event of the evening is for the Ring of Honor Television Championship. Samoa Joe is our reigning champ, as he won the title from Minoru Suzuki a couple weeks ago. Trent Baretta is joined by two of his Best Friends, Orange Cassidy and Kentucky Gentleman Chuck Taylor. Trent gets some offense in but, for the most part, this is Samoa Joe dominating the smaller man. Joe's signature Uranage is just one of my favorite moves to see, it flows as beautifully as a Dustin Rhodes powerslam. The (gorgeous) Uranage is followed by the Kokina Clutch, and Trent is disposed of after around eleven minutes. 

Joe has retained, and Tony Schiavone is in the ring to try and interview the exhausted champ. Jay Lethal's music hits before Joe can get a full sentence out, and Lethal heads down to the ring, accompanied by Sonjay Dutt and the very large Satnam Singh. Singh leads the way, removing his tarp-like blazer (credit to Jericho for that one) on his way down. Singh is stopped by the behemoth known as Orange Cassidy, who stands toe to toe with the big fella and puts his hands in his pockets. Cassidy proceeds to absolutely destroy Singh's shins with a series of vicious kicks (just go with it) until Jay Lethal attacks Cassidy and all hell breaks loose between the Best Friends and the Lethal Pals (I don't think they have a name yet, but you feel free to steal that Tony Kahn). Lethal and Joe end up in the ring, punch-fighting and getting pulled apart a couple times before Excalibur busts out the Schiavone classic line, "We are desperately out of time!" The Paramount Studios logo tells me that we are done here.

So, TL;DR. Some fun segments to move our collective soap opera along, highlighted by the HOOK/ Danhausen segment and the Gunns and Acclaimed teasing a team up. The opening match was really the only one I would consider competitive, but it was a hell of a fun one and the ending progressed the Team Taz vs Swerve and Lee storyline. The other three matches, won by Jade and the Baddies, Samoa Joe, and Keith Lee, all felt to me like varying degrees of squash. Still, Rampage is only an hour and it really never feels like more than that, and as a guy who has watched literally every episode of Raw that's refreshing. If you're short on time check out the Swerve vs Darby match and the HOOKhausen segment.