St-Pierre’s AEW Rampage Review 4.8.22

Everyone said how awesome Wheeler vs. Moxley was, so I sat down and had a go of it. I don’t watch AEW Rampage enough anyway.

We are TAPED from the Agganis Arena in Boston, MA.

Your hosts are Excalibur, Taz, and Ricky Starks with William Regal as a special guest for the Danielson match. I’m never ready for how unbelievably great that man is at commentary.

Trent Beretta vs. Bryan Danielson
I mean, it’s a Bryan Danielson match that goes 14 minutes. Did you expect it to not be fun? I won’t tell you it’s on the same level as his matches with say, Adam Page or Minoru Suzuki, but in a way, this match still gives you an idea of the magic Bryan Danielson possesses. No matter where you put the man on the card, he is going to have the best match for where he is. He wasn’t supposed to tear the house down here, but he still fought a cerebral match filled with his usual personality flourishes and story bits. I don’t mean to degrade the match whatsoever, but you get the sense that this is the type of match Bryan could wrestle in his sleep. And that’s not indicative of his opponent’s quality.

In fact, I think Trent Beretta made a better account of himself here… at least in a vacuum. Not that I think he’s better than Dragon, but he’s one of those guys that’s been injured so much these last couple of years that I think people forget that he’s one of the more interesting guys AEW has when it comes to pure work. He bumps like his life depends on it and his babyface fire has a lot of pep to it. I really liked his demeanor going into this, because you can tell he’s pissed that Blackpool Combat Club is courting Wheeler Yuta. He feels insulted and pushed aside, so he wants to take it to this Danielson fucker and give him a hard time. And yeah, he got his ass kicked a little bit, but you never got the sense that he was a chump.

That’s the beauty of Bryan Danielson; he has such an unbelievable talent for making himself look like a million dollars without ever hurting his opponent. Heck, I think Beretta got a little bit of a rub here all things considered. He displayed a grit he rarely gets the chance to show, and it made for a significant match rather than filler. It worked for the storyline, the crowd, and the two men’s arsenals. Was it Match of the Night? Not really, but it filled almost 15 minutes with logical, smart, interesting wrestling and that’s all ya need sometimes. ***1/2

They try to get HOOK to cut a promo, but he just eats chips and listens to music. Danhausen tries to curse him, but he can’t do it this time either. He does get a free bag of chips, which may be “where he gets his powers from.” Poor Danhausen’s gotta get fuckedhausen by this guy, isn’t he?

Scorpio Sky cuts a promo and doesn’t get too far into pausing every other word before he’s interrupted by Sammy Guevara. Dan Lambert hilariously admits to being a sexist, but his FATHERLY INSTINCTS say Sammy needs to be more into talking about wrestling than who he’s boinking. I know it’s low-hanging fruit but Jesus Christ, I cannot get enough of Dan Lambert just saying “yeah I really think women suck and your woman sucks the most, buddy.” It never doesn’t make me laugh and I recognize that it’s not exactly something you’d want to relate to. But hey I don’t know, if I had carte blanche to tell everyone I had Tay Conti sleeping next to me, I can’t say I’d be likable either. Ethan Page cuts his usual decent promo while Tay and Sammy come off as the best heel tandem of 2022. Only problem is, they’re babyfaces and it doesn’t appear their booking is going to shift any time soon. I thought Cody left! And while I’m getting my snark in, you really gotta love how the TNT champ was the least focused on of this entire segment. Not that I’m complaining since Sky has the personality of street tar and hasn’t evolved as a wrestler since 2007, but if you’re gonna make him look like the 4th wheel in his own stable, you should at least give the belt to Ethan Page. He can at least get the crowd to emote, ya know?

Chris Jericho’s Sports Entertainer of the week is QT Marshall. Cool.

Swerve Strickland vs. QT Marshall
Nothing to really report on this one. It was a showcase for Swerve, but considering QT took most of the match and didn’t feed super well for the comeback, it didn’t really do anything for Swerve either. It was one of those styles clashes that wasn’t exactly ugly as everything was well executed and flowed, but I don’t think QT doing his Create a Wrestler #2 match is a good canvas for a dynamic guy like Strickland unless he’s just getting battered like the HOOK match. I do understand the desire for Swerve to fight an outward heel like this, but it didn’t really work as anything more than an inoffensive filler match. *3/4

Ricky Starks cuts a small promo to keep the Swerve feud going.

Owen Hart Tournament Qualifier: Willow Nightingale vs. Red Velvet
If I was as committed to anything as AEW is to try to make Red Velvet a thing, I think I’d be a billionaire by now. And far be it from me to make fun of a wrestler given I got winded dragging three totes around at work earlier today, but you also kind of have to know when to fish and cut bait here on national television. I’m not saying Willow is the finished product, but this crowd was BEHIND her here and I thought she looked pretty explosive and exciting until whatever that finish was. Is this match really so significant that ya can’t just call an audible on this taped show? You could probably send that message to the ref in the pauses Velvet takes before she hits the ropes. This really felt like a WWE match where they just kind of wrestle in a bubble without real-world contact, and the crowd reaction to the bungled finish and the result should give you an idea of that. I like to think AEW has a better quality control than this, but I’ve been watching Red Velvet botch finishes for like three years at this point. I’m likely being harsh here, I know, and you can’t hit home runs every time out. At least they didn’t ask her to hit a standing moonsault this time, eh? Okay, I’m done now. *

Smart Mark Sterling pitches his services to Tony Nese, which is as good an idea as any I guess.

Mark Henry does his main event segment with Yoots and Moxley. Yuta knows he’s gotten his ass kicked by Mox before, but he’s a better wrestler than he was then and now, he’s the ROH Pure Champ. He ain’t scared of Moxley anymore. Moxley doesn’t care about any of that shit and just wants to beat him up. Seems about right. Yuta had a good promo here, all things considered, and Moxley’s character consistency is always something to behold.

Wheeler Yuta vs. Jon Moxley
AEW has consistently great wrestling. I think most people with good taste can agree with that. However, in their three-year history, I can count on one hand the amount of matches they’ve had that really, truly earn my adoration. Of course, the Bucks vs. Page/Omega match is on top of that list. I haven’t seen a match better than that since it happened. The Bucks vs. FTR 1 was damn close. Bryan Danielson’s matches with Adam Page and Minoru Suzuki are nothin’ to sneeze at either. They’re all matches I will remember until I am the old-timer wrestling fan yelling at clouds.

Throughout that entire time, I did not think in a million years that a match on AEW’s B-show between Wheeler Yuta and Jon Moxley would be as good – and in some cases better – than any of the matches I just listed. Not only is this bout easily my Match of the Year so far for 2022, but I will gladly go so far as to say that it’s one of the best free TV matches in the entire history of pro wrestling.

This match had everything. If you were looking for something with top-notch psychology, you’re in the right place. Wheeler Yuta has been on a quest to prove himself. The first time he faced Jon Moxley, he got dropped on his head in two seconds and pinned. He looked like a dork and rightfully so for where he was on the totem pole. The second time he wrestled Moxley, he did it as a short-notice replacement and made a decent account of himself. Since then, we’ve seen a slow burn of Wheeler Yuta getting better chances to show what he can do. He’s wracking up wins. And then William Regal shows up and forms the Blackpool Combat Club.

It’s an elite stable based on respect, toughness, grit, and being the best at your craft. And it’s not as though Moxley and Danielson had this happy-go-lucky friendship. Danielson saw an opportunity, and Moxley wasn’t sure about it until he could truly respect Bryan as a competitive equal. Only when William Regal made his presence known did they understand their new purpose, and the BCC was formed, and now Yuta sees his chance. He’s been a dork hanging around the Best Friends for a year. It’s gotten his foot in the door, but he doesn’t see that as his future. He didn’t come to AEW to watch his buddies on Dark… he came to be the best. So he broke away from the pack and stepped up to William Regal when no one else had the balls to. And holy Christ, did Regal, Danielson, and Moxley all make him pay for it.

And despite alienating his friends in the process, Wheeler Yuta took shit-kicking after shit-kicking to earn the respect of the three toughest men in wrestling. He literally paid for entry into this faction with his blood. If there was ever a story of a man rising to the occasion and earning his paycheck, it was Wheeler Yuta on this night. From cutting off Wild Thing before the chorus to defiantly kicking out at 1 to taking outlandish risks, Wheeler Yuta literally did everything he possibly could to earn the validation he so craved. He kicked out of two Paradigm Shift DDTs, perhaps one of the most protected finishers in wrestling, and did it with a pool of blood collecting on any flat surface he happened to be around. It took a beating the likes of which Jon Moxley has dished out on very few foes to put this guy away. And mind you, Wheeler Yuta lost badly to that same DDT in three seconds just a few months ago.

I cannot recall a match in recent memory that has so beautifully created a star this emphatically. Jon Moxley deserves a trillion dollars for the service he performed for Mr. Yuta here. Not that Wheeler didn’t wrestle the match of his LIFE and look like a trillion bucks himself, but Moxley was the key to sticking the landing so expertly. His timing on when, what, and how to sell was extraordinary and I cannot truly put into words how brilliant it was that HE was the one to have this match with Yoots. He’s been built as the tough guy to end all tough guys, someone who very very very very rarely has been truly defeated in an AEW ring. He doesn’t fight like this often. So when Wheeler Yuta put on the performance he did in this match, against a guy like Moxley, it was so memorable and significant that I think we just saw a wrestler level up right before our very eyes. Moxley had to fight so hard that he had to turn Wheeler’s lights out to even get his hand raised. It was evident Yuta wasn’t getting pinned and there’s not a chance in the world he was going to tap. So Moxley had to remove him from consciousness just to get a respite, a win that came within a margin that was frighteningly thin.

This is pro wrestling at its finest. It’s pro wrestling at its most simple. A young man fighting for honor and respect in the face of odds that once embarrassed and humiliated him on national TV. And now, with time and patience, this same man has grown to give one of the top wrestlers on Earth the fight of his life in a main event, in one of the most heart-stopping matches the promotion has ever produced. It was a story told perfectly and a match wrestled on the same level of flawlessness. It’s as close to wrestling nirvana as I’ll probably ever see, and I’d shout it from the rooftops if I had the capacity. *****

Danielson and Regal join the fray and a frazzled Yuta STILL won’t back down. After a testy moment, William Regal extends the hand for the big shake, and the show ends after Yuta PAINTS BCC ON HIS CHEST IN BLOOD. I love pro wrestling so much.

8.0

The final score: review Very Good

The 411

In truth, you could put Heroes of Wrestling before the main event here and still get a thumbs up from me. But luckily, this was AEW's usually fun streamlined hour of Friday night rasslin'. The Danielson vs. Beretta match was heaps of fun and despite a pretty noticeable gap in the middle featuring one of the weaker matches I've seen so far in 2022, it's still buoyed by a legitimate all-time classic main event and a match that I implore anyone with eyes to seek out for themselves. And if we're being honest, the dip in the middle felt so short that I can't say sitting through it was a waste of my time. That's the advantage of Rampage only being an hour. And I'd happily sit through a thousand Red Velvet matches if I got something as special as Yuta vs. Moxley at the end.