RAMPAGE

January 27, 2023 (Taped 1/25/23)

Adam Page . . . has a better match with young Wheeler Yuta than the former three-time AEW World Champion.

Jeff Jarrett . . . shows that there’s no substitute for experience by getting a watchable match out of the resident comedy group of AEW.

Emi Sakura . . . looks like the best female worker that you haven’t seen enough of.

ADAM PAGE vs. WHEELER YUTA

I’ll admit to not being the most well-versed consumer of Wheeler’s work; I haven’t seen much of anything outside of his AEW TV matches, and this is far and away the best match I’ve seen from him. It easily tops his singles matches with Moxley and any of his ROH Pure Title matches. Although he’s a former World Champion, Page certainly isn’t a top guy in the mold of Jumbo or Hansen, but he’s pretty good about putting Wheeler through the ringer and giving him sympathy. However, this isn’t Hangman’s match to make, it’s Wheeler’s and he does a much better job here than he did the previous April when he “earned Moxley’s respect” by being his tackling dummy.

The only time that this tends to drag is in the middle portion, with both of them being a little too reliant on the punch and chop routine. They each take control of the match by getting whipped into the corner and getting a boot up to prevent the charge. It works on some level with Page showing his disdain for Wheeler and Wheeler fighting back to show that he’s not going to just curl up and die, but it just goes on for too long. They also get a bit crazy with the German suplex routine. It starts off well enough, with Hangman getting frustrated that Wheeler keeps avoiding the Buckshot Lariat and deciding to suplex him into oblivion, but Wheeler takes two Germans and reverses course and starts dumping Hangman with them, and despite the fact that it shows Wheeler’s toughness and tenacity, all it really does is devalue the move. It doesn’t say much about the effectiveness of it if Wheeler can take two of them and then start fighting back. And they follow that with a great spot where Wheeler ducks a lariat and hits another German on the apron. As a standalone spot it comes off fine, but it would have been so much better (and meaningful) if we hadn’t just seen half a dozen Germans between the two of them.

But for the most part, this is worked pretty damn smartly. Wheeler gets the jump on Page the same way that he did Moxley and then presses his advantage by using his technical wrestling and wearing him down with submissions. When Page takes over the match, Wheeler is great about selling the pain that Page is putting him through, but until the finish, it never seems completely hopeless for him. Considering the bumps that he takes; it would have been nice to see some more emphasis on body part selling. One of Hangman’s smarter moments was planting Wheeler with a superplex and instead of getting a heatless near fall, he grabs him in a waistlock, as though he wanted a bearhug. Not to mention that one of Wheeler’s last near falls was the splash off the top rope, and Wheeler’s body being worn down makes a much better explanation for why Hangman kicks out. The real fun parts to this are Wheeler stopping Page from hitting the Buckshot. Whenever it seems like Page is ready to finish him off, Wheeler will cut him off or pull out a surprise counter, and even takes a page out of the Bryan Danielson book and ties up Hangman in the ropes and starts dropping elbows on him. And Page can only hit it after he outsmarts Wheeler the same way and gets him into a position where he can’t stop it, and then Page plants him with Moxley’s Death Rider finisher to send a message to Moxley ahead of their upcoming match and to add the proverbial exclamation point to the finish.

It probably shouldn’t be too much of a surprise that Wheeler puts on such a good performance here, since he’s spent the previous nine months presumably training with Regal, Moxley, Danielson and Claudio. But it’s more than a bit remarkable that he and Page could put on such a smart and engaging match, whereas Moxley (who’s always been ranked higher than Page) was content to just chew him up and spit him out. With the feud between Moxley and Page transforming into a full-blown feud between the Combat Club and Dark Order, it’ll be interesting to see if these two have a rematch down the line and if Wheeler can push Page any further, or if Wheeler can take the next step and have matches like this with someone ranked beneath him. ***1/2

JAY LETHAL/JEFF JARRETT/SATNAM SINGH vs. TRENT BERETTA/CHUCK TAYLOR/DANHAUSEN

From strictly a work standpoint this isn’t anything special, which isn’t much of a surprise. However, if one is a fan of heat mongering and the general dog-and-pony-show stuff that is typically associated with Memphis, then this is a lot of fun. The babyfaces do some crowd-pleasing comedy (Taylor avoiding Lethal’s elbow while Jarrett was trapped in the figure four was an especially nice moment), and the heels cut them off and do what they can to draw heat, including Dutt interfering on the floor, and Lethal and Jarrett showing off their strutting just to stick it to the fans. The babyface team makes a comeback and it seems like they’re finally going to get over on Singh when all three (plus Orange Cassidy on the floor) start snapping his neck over the top rope, but the ref catches Danhausen with the guitar and Jarrett takes advantage and KO’s him behind the ref’s back with his own foreign object and Satnam pins him with one foot. Chuck Taylor being a sort of hometown guy certainly helped, but it’s remarkable that this was as heated as it was, and it’s nice to see that Jarrett putting on such a surprisingly good performance in GCW of all places wasn’t a total fluke.

POWERHOUSE HOBBS vs. TONY MUDD

Tony has a fitting last name, since going against Hobbs pretty much ensures that his name is mud. Hobbs hits a lariat and doesn’t stop until Tony stays down for good. They may seem like a relic from before the Attitude Era, but even squashes have their place.

JAMIE HAYTER vs. EMI SAKURA

It seems weird to think that this is pretty much a one-woman show, and the one putting on the show isn’t the one with the women’s title around her waist. But Emi puts on such a good performance that it honestly doesn’t matter too much (aside from Jamie blowing off the backdrop suplex toward the end). Between Emi’s intensity, inventiveness, personality, and her selling when Jamie fires back on her, it makes one wonder why AEW hasn’t seen fit to use her in a more prominent role on TV and PPV. The chop exchanges between Emi and Jamie harken back to the days of Ric Flair and Ronnie Garvin. Emi singles out the midsection early by ping ponging Jamie between the apron and guardrail and she busts out quite a few good spots that always keep the midsection in focus, like the Ice Driver and the moonsault. Emi’s counters to Jamie’s lariat are another welcome sight, and with the title not being at stake here, it seems that much more plausible that Emi will pull off the upset and earn a title shot.

Compared with Emi, Jamie’s performance seems wildly unfocused. Her gameplan for the match doesn’t seem to be much more than ‘wait for the opening and hit the lariat.’ The bulk of her offense is returning fire on Emi’s chops and various attempts at the lariat, and when she does do some other stuff it never feels like she’s using it for a specific reason. One of her first big offensive runs is when she hits a series of Exploders and then does a backbreaker. Emi’s selling is great, even after the first suplex which comes after Jamie had done hardly anything, but Jamie doesn’t do anything to follow up and give the idea that she’s trying to take the match somewhere with it. Despite the fact that Emi controls the bulk of the match, and keeps a solid focus on Jamie’s midsection throughout, Jamie doesn’t do much of anything to sell and give the idea that Emi is having any marked success with it. Hell, Emi’s two best near falls are from surprise counters rather than being a result of the body work or her connecting with a big spot or a finisher.

The finishing stretch might have been good, if only Jamie hadn’t blown off the backdrop. It starts out well enough, with Emi planting her feet for a superkick and Jamie hitting a quick lariat when Emi wasn’t in position to block or counter it. But Emi gives Jamie the backdrop and Jamie just jumps to her feet and does another lariat and kills any sense of flow or momentum. And it wasn’t like they had no other options; Jamie could have kicked her feet to block it, she could have come up with some clever counter (such as shifting her weight and taking Emi over in a sunset flip), or she could have done the full backflip and landed on her feet. All of those ideas get them where they need to go and make Jamie look strong, without no-selling the biggest spot of the entire match. Sure, the crowd cheers when Jamie gets up and does the lariat, but it’s hard to imagine that they wouldn’t have reacted similarly to any of the above scenarios. The lariat dazes Emi enough for Jamie to finally connect with her ripcord lariat to win the match. On some level it’s a disappointment to see Jamie go over and deny everyone a rematch. But, on the other hand, it doesn’t say much about the top woman in the company if she loses a one-off singles match to someone who hasn’t been featured on any of the main AEW shows since the early days of the company. ***1/4

Conclusion: Between the hot opening match and a damn fun main event, this is definitely one of the better Rampage episodes.