Stiva

They need to finally give me the Sonny Kiss/Dustin Rhodes team they hinted at continuing about 2 years ago. Kiss is finished with Janela, Rhodes has been Malakai’d, make it happen, Tony. Give me Kiss/Rhodes vs Bear Country. Dustin could get every single Sonny Kiss spot over like a motherfucker in 6 weeks

Enjoyed the show and thought it was a perfectly good follow on from a hot PPV but why did Pillman cut a promo on MJF? He should have been storming to the ring to kick his head in. A minor point, I suppose but MJF is out there calling his mother a meth-head and he comes out, amps the crowd up and cuts a promo about how awesome Cincinnati is. It felt like he was responding to a completely different MJF promo. Pretty hyped for Varsity Blondes vs MJF/Wardlow though, that could be a sneakily good match. Dug Danielson just taking the mic from Omega and throwing shit in his face. That’s the king right there

Corbin feels like someone along the lines of The Miz. Not sure he’d work anywhere else or really fit in anywhere but he seems tailor made to WWE and will often make the most of the shit he’s given. Not sure you can discount that attribute considering how many people fail at it.

Gable having a killer indie/Japan run and then landing hot in AEW for a hot run of Dynamite matches seems like it would be the ideal scenario for him. Could see Gulak getting in as a midcard guy who wins on Elevation while he does stints at QTs school

My main gripe is that Chavo isn’t channeling his dads 2004 WWE run anywhere nearly enough for my money.

Watched the show with a, I’d hesitate to say casual, but definitely someone with little knowledge of AEW and I thought they knocked it out of the park in that sense. To the point where he completely bit on Adam Cole being the only debut (he had heard that Danielson was coming in). I thought they worked that about as well as they ever could have done and got an amazing moment out of it. He’s fully invested in Dynamite now so well done TK. Thought the Miro/Kingston didn’t come off quite as effective as planned but I really can’t have any complaints about any other match. Darby looked excellent working around Punk and MJF worked a minor miracle with Jericho. Hope they both move into major programs but fuck me, Danielson is here! I would say they should run Danielson/Omega immediately but Hangman Page’s return takes priority for me. The show had a great catharsis with the Bucks finally losing and Danielson usurping Cole. Though, fair play to Adam Cole for basically invalidating his own return within 2 minutes; luckily he didn’t learn too much from Michaels and Hunter

I am beyond ready for The Elite to be shuffled out of the title scenes so I’m desperately pulling for Lucha Bros in the cage. Everything else should be good, at the least. Even QT/Wight will probably work for setting up what’s coming next for Wight

Didn’t the dude in charge of all that get fired for it recently? Sounds like his head rolled for the contract situation but it doesn’t really help much to fire him AFTER the main NXT draw has walked out. Talk about locking the door after the horse has bolted

There’s also Moxley/Kingston/Darby vs The Wingmen which should be fun at the very least. Mostly because it confirms the former as an official trios team and also because the idea of them all being friends is great.

I was thinking that Archer feels like a guy who is coming to the end of his AEW run, especially after he lost the IWGP US Title as quickly as he did. Intrigued to see where this is going with Dan Lambert but at best, Archer feels like he could be a Gatekeeper for guys to beat on the way up. A modern day Meng but with far worse hair.

I was flabbergasted at the Becky return angle and the Bianca squash. Whenever they’re booked into a corner, they seem to think that the right move is to burrow even further and take the most damaging way out possible. It’s like they’re booking a Rube Goldberg machine

Wyatt as AEWs Raven makes some amount of sense when you consider Tony Khan is a huge ECW fan. I guess The Dark Order was originally supposed to be a collection of oddballs and outcasts until they morphed into the “Friendship is Power” collective. Wyatt as Raven also makes sense when you consider they both love cutting rambling, nonsensical promos

The Punk pop and entrance was everything you’d ever hope for, topped with a good return promo and hype for Darby/Punk which should be incredible if the rumours of Punk looking at his best in training are true. Thought that hour flew by; Cargill is green as grass and looks to the hard camera far too much but get her in there with Emi Sakura and she’ll be golden. Really dug the main; told a nice little compact story with a good body part focus and a nice little go-home crowd pleasing end. I like the duelling promos hosted by Mark Henry that they did this week and last. Both Moxley and Matt Lee popped me with the pregnancy line and “This arena has waited 20 years for a main event like this!” Obviously not every Rampage will have something like Punk’s return but give me a good tag match, a semi-squash, a good angle and a competitive main event every week and it’ll be a great formula.

Tony Khan has said the whole show is going to be formatted differently to normal so I’m intrigued to see what that means, especially since they’re dealing with just an hour.

AKA CM Punk’s “surprise” debut. Moxley takes on Daniel Garcia, Jurassic Express have Private Party in that thrown together tag tournament and Cargill will flex her way through Kiera Hogan. Hopefully, we hear Eddie Kingston’s response to Miro too but this is really a one angle show so let’s hope they stick the landing.

I think it’s pretty incredible that they’ve had the restraint. I suppose it helps that all the shows are pretty much sold out anyway but has anyone ever built to a debut in such a fashion? Fun show, all in all but I’m definitely ready for the Bucks to lose their belts now and I’m leaning toward Jurassic Express being the ones to do it since the cage seems designed to book a title change. Wight/QT seems a thrown together match for his return but I’d bet money on Shaq showing up to run it at Full Gear. Miro/Kingston promo battles should be all that program needs to heat it up. Finally, I’m loving the focus on Daniel Garcia and 2.0 recently; just a fantastic way to debut them, feature them and make them TV acts within a month. Great stuff and the fantasy Booker in me is wondering if they’re positioning Garcia for a showcase match with one Bryan Danielson in the future.

Yeah, I like how AEW doesn’t beat you over the head with things and trusts your memory but even then, expecting me to remember Jamie Hayter after 2 years is a bit much. Fun show though; If Rampage is going to be three matches of a similar ilk every week, it’ll be a really fun watch. Would be perfect for the trios titles too.

I suppose the reason she’s still straddling the heel line is because there’s a raft of babyface challengers but no real heels other than Nyla or Cargill. You’d need to open the door to Impact to get Baker some heels to beat.

I do wonder if they’re heading towards Omega/Christian/Jungle Boy in a triple threat at All Out because it feels bizarre to run your PPV main event 2 weeks beforehand for a different title. Then again, another part of me still thinks this is all smoke and mirrors and Hangman will still get the shot, his wife’s due date be damned. The real worry is that they still don’t know what to do with Miro or who to position with him. Jungle Boy feels like the obvious challenger but he’s involved with the Elite at the moment. You also have to think that the Big Show angle is leading to Shaq coming back in, possibly for something at All Out. Would pop for a training montage of Shaq throwing Solow all around the gym. Now that I think, Ogogo has been missing a while and Big Show had that knockout punch finish, maybe it’s leading to that.

In its current incarnation at a trim 40 minutes, Dark: Elevation is finally the perfect AEW tribute to WCW C-Shows. They even have their own programs like the Janela and Kiss break-up. Good stuff

I also wonder where they were going with the Colt Cabana/Brodie story before The Dark Order became the fun loving guys they are now. Seems crazy to think how they changed after Brodie died.

MJF sits and reads Fozzy album reviews to him for 15 minutes.

Hyped for 2.0 debuting. Great personalities and nobody was watching 205 Live but they were good hands on there. Despite having something like 20 teams, it still feels like they could do with another team on top of them though so get that Forbidden Door open. Or give us that Dustin/Sonny Kiss team they teased for like a week. What are we guessing for Jericho’s fourth Labour? At this point, I wouldn’t be surprised if Nick Patrick showed up.

Every time you’d get a random Steiners/Faces of Fear match on a 1996/97 Nitro, it was always a joy. Probably not up there with the Heavenly Bodies match but just four big bastards throwing each other around

Is there a definitive list of who was booking WWE ECW over its years? Was it Dusty who took over from Heyman and how long did he last? As a self-contained (more or less) show that did such a good job of building to TV main events and utilising everyone very well for the last two and a half years of it’s run, it has a lot of parallels with Dusty booked NXT so I was wondering how long he was booking it for.