AEW Rampage Review - January 7, 2022

By Graham "GSM" Matthews

Adam Cole def. Jake Atlas

I never understood why WWE never did more with Atlas when he was in NXT. He wasn't the best they had, but surely he could have been utilized at a level above 205 Live (which is primarily where he was relegated to). Thankfully, in his first major match for AEW, he shined and had a terrific performance. This was a very enjoyable opener with Cole continuing to kill it as well. It's a bummer Atlas was legitimately injured, but hopefully he won't be out for long. The feud between Best Friends and the trio of Cole and reDRagon was furthered afterward.

Hook def. Aaron Solo

While I'm not the biggest "Hooker" in the world, there's no denying how popular he is with the AEW audience right now. He's probably one of the most over guys on the roster and that's not an exaggeration. These people love them some Hook and the kid is certainly impressive. Solo does nothing for me personally, so he was the perfect person for Hook to steamroll through. This was exactly what it needed to be. Hook vs. QT Marshall might be next based on their post-match interaction.

Riho and Ruby Soho def. AEW Women's World Champion Britt Baker and Jamie Hayter

I'm genuinely curious where Soho goes following her loss to Jade Cargill on Dynamite. She's now failed to become champion twice in the span of four months in AEW, so who do you pair her with next? What does she strive for? Just something to keep an eye on. As for this match, it was solid and served as a preview of Baker vs. Riho for the AEW Women's World Championship at Battle of the Belts tomorrow night. There's no way Riho is winning the belt back, so her team picking up the victory here made sense.

Eddie Kingston, Santana and Ortiz def. Daniel Garcia and 2point0 in a No DQ, No Rules, No Holds Barred Match

That stipulation is just a fancy, longer way of calling it a Street Fight. We just got one of those from the women last week on Rampage, but this was a bit different yet also all over the place. They utilized the extreme environment well and the crowd ate it up. I hope this is the end of this feud, but I'm also not super high on Kingston transitioning into a storyline with Chris Jericho. Anything Jericho is involved in at this point interests me very little.

Overall Show

Rampage has already turned into a secondary show where nothing too major seems to happen most weeks, but it's not like you're wasting your time by tuning in. Rather, this was an entertaining hour of wrestling with everything serving a purpose. Hook's squash was short and sweet, the main event was a fun hardcore war, Cole vs. Atlas was very well wrestled, and the women's match accomplished what it needed to. We also found out that it will be Sammy Guevara vs. Dustin Rhodes for an interim AEW TNT Championship at Battle of the Belts due to Cody Rhodes not being medically cleared. This was an easy thumbs-up show.

SEE MORE: Rampage Reviews