Here’s where we landed with this week’s Rampage from Indianapolis. Curious how we rank matches? We’ve got a rubric for that.

Show Highlight—

Heel Athena. In what’s now typical AEW fashion, the first iteration of a debuting character didn’t stick, but this version of Athena, an awesome ass-kicker, is a winner. She’ll most likely take the ROH Women’s title this Saturday and perhaps get some great matches with Shida down the line. Another convincing squash, as Athena stands out by being someone who clearly isn’t wrestling soft and pulling everything in a transparent cooperation.

What Worked—

Darby vs. Cole Karter. At least they showed the video package explaining their feud..? That’s something…don’t understand why it took them this long to wrestle, though. Just a match.
Max Caster’s freestyle. Glenn Jacobs is in the news again so of course he’s going to get shit on by Caster here.

What Didn’t Work—

Shane Taylor/Keith Lee/Swerve segment. This felt so out of left field. I get time is always going to be an issue so you can’t always show footage and clips of indie guys and need the audience to do a little research themselves, but if he was in ROH, why not show him on the monitor backstage? That’s a somewhat organic thing to do with all the ROH footage that never gets shown on TV and is uploaded to YouTube as frequently as classic content is to Peacock. And why would Keith Lee trust Swerve after he already walked out on Swerve? Keith Lee is supposed to be smart. Unless there’s some elaborate reverse-Horsemen swerve on Swerve, this is Vince-booking-a-babyface-like-an-idiot-schlock.

Show Cringe—

Rampage doesn’t matter. I hate writing that, by the way. Almost as much as I loathed having this article sit around for days from little motivation to finish it.
There’s charm in an hour show, by the way. I have happy memories of watching syndicated shows on Saturday mornings when there didn’t need to be 5 star matches every week, just progression of storylines and stars featured. But at least you could count on something happening. Rampage doesn’t need to have the same element of surprise as Dynamite, but you’ll be damned if SmackDown or Raw nowadays feels like one show is clearly the B show that’s being treated like a D show. If that’s what your competition is doing, the expectation ought to be that the value of all your televised assets values should be increased and Rampage has to be greater than a slightly elevated Dark Elevation. Especially when it was promised that it would pick up and be a better show. Especially when a plush, increase in TV rights is being sought after. There’s all the potential in the world for this to be more compelling or at least more innovative in its attempts to do something outside the box.
And that PPV lineup for Final Battle isn’t even special for an episode of Dynamite.

AEW Rampage 12/2/2022 Match Ratings and Commentary

AEW Dynamite 12/7/2022 Match Ratings and Commentary