3 Ups & 4 Downs From AEW Rampage (Sept 8)

2. “The Nastiest Is Yet To Come”

There was a bit of a tonal shift for Mike Santana this week compared to last.

He's gone from being emotional about his father's passing and injuries that wrecked his AEW career to promising he's about to do some bad sh*t people won't like. Santana's soft repackage job still has a lot of potential in it though, and the dude can talk - his promo style is believable, and his words have conviction.

That goes a long way, but fingers crossed AEW has an end goal in mind. Mike did say that he's leaving tag-team wrestling behind in favour of a singles run, which is interesting. In the short-term, assuming Tony Khan wants Santana to grab some spotlight, there are worse ideas than having him run through some squashes.

Nah, squash matches don't really do well on Rampage, but they would fit this new aggression Mike is bringing to TV. The way he said "the nastiest is yet to come" was rather ominous, so it wouldn't be a stretch to have him viciously hammer some enhancement workers en route to bigger and better things.