The SmarK Rant for AEW Rampage – 08.20.21
The First Dance
OH YEAH HERE WE GO.
Live from Chicago, IL, with AEW’s biggest ever crowd.
Your hosts are Excalibur, Mark Henry, Jim Ross & Taz
And just like that, it’s CM PUNK, complete with “Cult of Personality”, as they’re not even screwing around tonight. And the wrestling nerds are literally in tears of happiness and hugging him at ringside after nearly blowing the roof off the arena. Really the last reaction that even compares is Flair returning to Nitro in 1998, and now hopefully the crowds can get the chants out of their system. So we take a break and return with Punk winging it, feeling like “Britt Baker in Pittsburgh”. He’s heard the chants for 7 years, but he doesn’t have time to cover it all tonight, but he’s got a lot of Wednesdays to get to it eventually and he’s not going anywhere. First up, although people might have been disappointed with his choices, he was never going to get healthy “staying in the same place that got him sick in the first place”. So he unveils his new t-shirt and tells us a story about leaving Ring of Honor with tears in his eyes because he knew he was going somewhere that wasn’t going to be easy for him. So in 2005, he left pro wrestling, and in 2021, he’s back. He’s got young talent he wants to work with, and he’s got a couple of scores to settle. This leads us to Sting and Darby in the rafters checking things out, and Punk points out that there’s nothing more dangerous that Darby can do besides wrestling CM Punk…in Chicago. At All Out, live on Pay Per View! Also, everyone gets free ice cream bars tonight!
Well good luck to everyone following THAT tonight. But really people would have been chanting for him all night if they hadn’t put him out there first.
Meanwhile, Christian and his Jurassic buddies are coming for the Elite, regardless of the Bucks hiring all their friends who “they used to jump around on the trampoline with”. They’re giving it the ol’ college try with Christian, I’ll give them that.
Private Party v. Jungle Boy & Luchasaurus
The Bucks have a seat at the ramp to observe this one. JB trades takedowns with Kassidy and they do a double kip up, but Quen comes in and Jungle Boy runs them into each other and goes up with a flying wristlock takedown before cleaning house with dropkicks. But then Private Party double-teams JB and stomps him down to take over. They fight to the floor and JB gets sent into the railing for a Poetry in Motion from Private Party, and back in for more double-teaming in the corner and Quen elbows him down to set up another Poetry in Motion, but Jungle Boy makes the comeback to escape and hits them with clotheslines to set up the hot tag to Luchasaurus. He throws them around and hits them with a double clothesline, and they take Kassidy to the top for the assisted superplex, but Kassidy turns it into a top rope Canadian Destroyer on Jungle Boy, off Luchasaurus’ shoulders, instead. Private Party manages to get rid of the dinosaur and Quen hits him with a shooting star press to the floor, although “hit” is relative in this case. Kassidy tries to come in with the Silly String, but the Express counters with the double team flapjack for two. Marko goes after Matt and gets beat up, which allows Kassidy to roll up Jungle Boy for two with a handful of tights. PP tries the Gin N Juice, but JB reverses that into a DDT and Quen gets flipped into the powerbomb and pinned at 10:14 to put the Jurassics in the finals. A hot match with a few missed spots but lots of fun. ***1/4
Meanwhile, Don Callis and Kenny Omega are gonna retire Christian for another seven years at All Out.
Jade Cargill v. Kiera Hogan
Wasn’t Kiera half of the Impact tag champions just a few weeks ago? Things change fast I guess. I think she was dating Diamante so maybe that’s why AEW appealed to her. Kiera attacks and gets laid out immediately, and the Glam Slam finishes at 1:01. Maybe they’ll do something with Jade this time, I dunno. They had the big Shaq debut and then she’s just been doing promos from hotels ever since.
Meanwhile, Daniel Garcia and 2.0 do a split screen interview with Jon Moxley, where they promise to choke him out and Jon quips that “Daniel Garcia has a better chance of getting me pregnant than choking me out.” Man, how could WWE not have figured out ANYTHING to do with 2.0 in all the time they were around the NXT system? AEW’s had them for a month and they’re already a thousand times more entertaining.
Jon Moxley v. Daniel Garcia
Moxley boots him down and throws the kicks to poor Daniel, but Daniel dropkicks the knee and takes him down to work on it, after taking out the knee on Dynamite originally. “At least we know Garcia isn’t a TOTAL idiot” notes JR. High praise. Moxley tries to reverse to a cross armbreaker, but Garcia slugs out of that, only for Mox to drop him with a pair of german suplexes. But then Garcia picks the ankle and takes him down to the mat again, before Moxley makes the ropes. Moxley comes back with a lariat out of the corner, hits a drop suplex, and goes for the DDT, but Garcia picks the ankle again and takes him down with a leglock this time. Moxley reverses that into the bulldog choke, however, and Garcia taps at 4:15. Moxley gave him a ton of offense and this was good. **1/2 And then Garcia takes out the knee AGAIN before Moxley can even celebrate, and the heel beatdown is on until Sting and Darby make the save, and Sting kicks 2.0’s ass AGAIN. You’d think they’d be getting tired of it by now, but here they are again. And all the babyfaces hang out and party and we’re out for the week.
Well that was an easy show to watch. That hour flew by and made me even more excited to watch All Out now. And hey, if you’re ordering via Fite.TV and want to help out the blog, hit my link: