At Friday’s AEW Rampage, two titles will be defended in addition to the trios title tournament.
AEW Tag Team Champions Swerve In Our Glory (Keith Lee & Swerve Strickland) will defend against Private Party, who are seeking their first-ever AEW Title reign.
FTW Champion Hook will defend his newfound gold against Zack Clayton, an AEW Dark and Dark: Elevation regular who is also on Jersey Shore: Family Vacation.
The tournament to crown the first AEW Trios Champions pits the Trustbusters (Ari Daivari, Slim J & Parker Boudreaux) against Best Friends (Orange Cassidy, Trent Beretta & Chuck Taylor) in an opening round match.
Athena will look to continue her impressive run as she takes on Penelope Ford en route to what she hopes will be a TBS title match against Jade Cargill.
Also, ROH World Champion Claudio Castagnoli will talk about what’s on his mind and what could be next.
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We’re going with action captured last Wednesday in Charleston, West Virginia. Jim Ross, Excalibur, Tony Schiavone and Chris Jericho are on standby.
Claudio Castagnoli promo
Castagnoli called out Ricky Steamboat, one of his former trainers and influences, to the crowd. He said he felt weird not wrestling, so he posted an open challenge for next week and the result was the returning Dustin Rhodes.
Rhodes said they have a long history with some hard fought matches (while they were both in WWE). He said he dreamed of holding the world heavyweight title and if Castagnoli accepts the challenge he will bring “The Natural” and his best to the match.
No wonder Castagnoli accepted. It’s our turn next week.
– Ruby Soho and Ortiz were reminded by Lexy Nair that they still have work to do with Sammy Guevara and Tay Melo. Both backed that statement with fiery words and it seems that the same will hold true for next week.
AEW Tag Team Champions Swerve In Our Glory def. Private Party to retain the titles
Keith Lee and Isiah Kassidy have history as Kassidy was Lee’s first victim in his AEW debut. A Big Biel was teased by the bat, but Kassidy managed to escape.
Kassidy and Marq Quen have an interesting history at AEW. They won the Young Bucks in the first tag team title tournament, but due to injuries and being stuck in the various incarnations of the Hardy/Andrade family office, they’re not as far along as I thought they were a few years earlier.
The challengers held their own early as Kassidy Swerve knocked Strickland down outside the ring with a tornillo jump into the break.
Lee’s strength showed after getting the hot tag as he just threw Quen and Kassidy through the ring. They did a good job of highlighting how strong he is, which hopefully will translate into a good individual run at some point. He nearly impaled Quen with a leap that propelled Quen into the ropes and back.
After a flush sidekick to Quen’s head, Strickland hit him with what he calls a JML driver for the clean win. Both teams showed it after the game as a sign of respect.
– Lexy Nair was with The Factory playing dominoes. Powerhouse Hobbs walked in out of nowhere and turned the table over. He was pissed that The Factory hadn’t knocked out Ricky Starks, but QT Marshall promised he would, “thank god”. All right then.
FTW Champion Hook def. Zack Clayton to retain the title
Clayton, who has won a match in 13 games on AEW Dark and Dark: Elevation, came out last Friday to face Hook’s open-ended challenge. See Clayton (aka “The Reality”) is in a Jersey Shore spinoff because he’s married or dating J-Woww? I find?
He ran through West Virginia, played through New Jersey and got hit with the red drum in about 15 to 20 seconds.
After that, Matt Menard and Angelo Parker were backstage. In short, they wondered what if the FTW title was held by a sports entertainer. Given Menard’s various injuries from Blood & Guts, Mr. Parker appears to be next.
I look forward to when we get longer hook matches. It’s time. Please.
– Lexy Nair asked Billy Gunn about the attack by, um, his sons last Wednesday. Gunn said he’s going to bring some friends – The Acclaimed – to Dynamite next week and that he’s going to spank their butts… or something like that.
I’m not sure about you, but two sons not only turning on their father but hitting him just doesn’t seem good, I don’t know?
– They re-enacted the show closing angle (and by that I mean the last 30 seconds or so) where Andrade and Rush decide to turn on Dragon Lee and unmask him. I’ll have more to say about that another time, but AEW has a problem with not letting moments breathe easily. Kenny Omega’s triumphant return was the moment. The turn could have been pushed back to tonight during a promo.
Pal Matthews defeated Serpentico
We got a standby match because the hook match was so short. Who could have thought?
They are also selling a CM Punk hockey jersey to commemorate his one year anniversary with the company. The timing is pretty good for this, isn’t it?
This was a pumpkin that Matthews won with a pump handle suplex of sorts. Time to get this guy up and running.
Miro then walked out with Malakai Black’s mask and he and Matthews got into a big brawl. Miro glared at Julia Hart before stepping into the ring to continue the brawl, which looks like it’s a strong premonition for CJ Perry/Lana to show up anytime soon. Miro killed Matthews for a few minutes and stood upright. Poor buddy.
– Very busy Lexy Nair dated Britt Baker, Jamie Hayter and Reba. Reba pushed Nair out of the way and Baker said she can’t wait to see the Sh*tstorm ThunderStorm implode. I have a feeling this Thunder Rosa/Baker/Storm/Hayter thing is past its sell by date. Can’t we dig up another interesting story for Baker for a while?
Athena defeated Penelope Ford
Ford is fresh back from a long injury layoff. Ford rolled early, they went into a commercial break and Athena won seconds later after hitting the Eclipse. The Baddies (Leila Gray & Kiera Hogan) then attacked and out came TBS Champion Jade Cargill with a sledgehammer. Let the Triple H gifs begin!
Cargill smashed Cargill’s wing with the hammer and Athena struggled out of Gray and Hogan’s grasp. Cargill entered the ring, hit her in the stomach with a sledgehammer and laid her down while The Baddies stood upright.
I can’t remember where I saw this, but I saw an observation that the whole baddies thing made Cargill feel like it wasn’t such a big star. Every time this number is out there I can’t help but think the same thing.
Also, I feel bad for Ford. She just came back and was pretty much treated as an afterthought. The wrapped Kip Sabian was also shown in the crowd.
– New additions to Dynamite: a Ricky Starks promo, Billy Gunn vs. Colten Gunn (announced as the first-ever father-son match), and Britt Baker vs. Kilynn King. I guess?
– New to Rampage: House of Black vs. Dark Order in the Trios Title Tournament. That’s it!
Best Friends defeated The Trustbusters to advance in the AEW Trios Title Tournament
I will do my best to remain neutral even though I was recruited into the Trustbusters by Ari Daivari today. Serious! (Also, I’ve been told I have a nice smile.)
This is a very strange tournament when you have Daivari, Slim J and Parker Boudreaux in an eight team tournament when FTR & Wardlow vs Jay Lethal, Satnam Singh & Sonjay Dutt at All Out. Why shouldn’t this just be a tournament match?
The heels controlled most of the game. Daivari was there most of the time, and Slim J got some ring time too. I’ll say this for him: He takes good bumps.
Orange Cassidy got the hot day and ran wildly at Daivari and Slim J before Boudreaux got in there. He brought Cassidy down and then downed Chuck Taylor and Beretta with double clotheslines and corner splashes. He missed one and all three best friends caught Keller dropkicks in the corner.
The Trustbusters got rolling thanks to Slim J. on Cassidy. Action spilled out and all three took out Boudreaux, interrupted by an orange punch.
As Cassidy climbed up to finish Daivari, Sonny Kiss pushed Cassidy while the referee was distracted. This led to Slim J hitting a top rope reverse clothesline on Cassidy and a close near fall.
Danhausen seemed to curse Kiss and Slim J. He then converted to a double chokeslam while Cassidy knocked out Daivari with an Orange Punch. Beretta and Taylor simultaneously pinned Slim J while Cassidy got on her shoulders and splashed off them to claim the pin. That was a great looking move.
Best Friends now meets the winner of Dark Order vs. House of Black, with the winner of that match moving on to All Out to compete for the titles.
Final Thoughts:
This was a nice episode of Rampage with the usual amount of stuff packed into it. I still don’t understand the logic of not loading the trios title tournament or having a 15 second hook match, but that ship has sailed.