10 Wrestling Matches Booked Out Of Spite
7. Tay Conti Vs Santana Garrett (AEW Rampage Pre-Show)
Friday 16th October 2021 brought about feelings that had laid dormant for the better part of two years.
The most tribal of the WWE/AEW fanbases were encouraged to engage in yet another ratings battle that - unlike most of Wednesday's encounters - might have actually scanned as a war. A super-sized SmackDown was front-loaded in an effort to throttle that Friday's Rampage during a rare half an hour overlap between the shows.
In response, All Elite Wrestling added a one-hour YouTube pre-show to their one hour TV show, resulting in 90 minutes of live head-to-head action between the streaming platform and Fox.
Both sides were magnificently petty - WWE utilised Brock Lesnar, Roman Reigns and a monster Sasha Banks/Becky Lynch match, while AEW chased random magic with Bryan Danielson Vs Minoru Suzuki and not-so-random spite with Tay Conti Vs Santana Garrett.
The latter clash had real spice - Garrett/Conti was the first thing that ever defeated AEW in a viewership quarter hour in the earliest days of NXT and Dynamite going head-to-head. With Conti now an AEW regular and Garrett available for the night, a throwback fight night saw one side land a remarkably sly jab.