5 Ups & 4 Downs From AEW Rampage (Dec 16)
Jon Moxley = Rampage MVP; Eddie Guerrero tributes; Dana White ruins an AEW match?!
"Ladies and gentlemen, I mean this. This may be the most powerful Rampage we've ever done!".
Those were the words of one Jim Ross right at the top of this week's episode. Was the iconic announcer correct? That's up for debate, but this was one of the stronger hours AEW has put on in a while. Rampage had some star power (Jon Moxley, Sammy Guevara, Britt Baker, FTR, Wardlow etc), and Tony Khan did book a few cracking matches.
It won't surprise anyone who reads these reports regularly to find out that those pesky picture-in-picture ad breaks reared their ugly head at the worst times on Friday night. Seriously, someone backstage needs to have a look at that - if they're unavoidable for financial reasons, then at least time the breaks for moments in matches when there's some actual downtime.
On the plus side, the opener and main event provided bags of entertainment, and AEW busily set up some marquee bouts for coming editions of Dynamite. That's what Rampage should be for, so it was nice to see more focus on the general AEW product rather than ROH or one-off debut/cameo overload.
Here's all the good and bad!