5 Ups & 4 Downs From AEW Rampage (Jan 5 - Results & Review)
Did AEW just turn Matt and Jeff Hardy heel right at the start of 2024?!
Attention, Tony Khan: ROH has its own platform, so it'd be best for everybody if you kept Ring Of Honor belts on there. A few will argue that Tony is only trying to grow a brand he owns by putting it on mainline AEW television, but all he's really achieving is diluting the core product when full focus should be going on other things.
This week's Rampage provided an excellent example of Honor-related tropes that don't work elsewhere. The main event was fairly well-worked technically, but it didn't click as a set piece and it's only a matter of time before everyone's sick of Wheeler Yuta's current 'cheat to win' gimmick.
That's especially true when the Pure Rules implemented don't seem to matter anyway.
Rampage also featured one of the least-likely teases in a while. The Hardys have been treading water for a long time in AEW, but it looks like they're headed for something remarkable at this stage in their careers. Can this work, or will it be another miserable misstep for one of the greatest tag-teams ever? Only time will tell on that.
Here's all the good and bad from a surprisingly-busy episode of the 'C' show.