AEW Rampage Review - September 1, 2023

By Graham "GSM" Matthews

The Dark Order (John Silver and Alex Reynolds) Won an ROH World Tag Team Championship No. 1 Contender's Battle Royal

AEW has done so many Battle Royals lately (specifically on Rampage) that this blended in with the rest. I didn't care to see a rematch between MJF and Adam Cole and Aussie Open, but why not Best Friends? They just won Stadium Stampede at All In, whereas Dark Order won one televised match on Collision last week. Does anyone honestly care about Dark Order at this point? I know MJF and Cole are winning regardless, but it would have been nice if they had higher-profile opponents like The Hardys or Best Friends.

AAA Mega Champion El Hijo del Vikingo and Nick Wayne def. Gringo Loco and Kip Sabian

What a random match. Wayne has only been aligned with Darby Allin up to this point in his AEW point and there was no explanation for why he was with Viking here or why Loco and Sabian were their opponents. I guess I'm not supposed to complain because it was a well-wrestled match, but I wish this stuff made more sense and had a reason for existing. If Viking is going to make appearances, it'd be nice if they had him doing something more significant than taking part in random television matches. We see enough spot-fests in AEW to where this didn't do as much for me as it did for the crowd seemingly.

"Hangman" Adam Page def. Bryan Keith

Page has taken a backseat as part of The Elite's reunion this summer, and now they're done feuding with Blackpool Combat Club and did their thing at All In, it's time for Page to be pushed on his own again. He was gaining real momentum in his feud with Jon Moxley earlier this year before it became faction warfare. I'm hoping this was a sign of what's to come for him. There wasn't much to the match and there didn't need to be, but I'd like to see more of Keith, who had a cool aura about him. I've heard nothing but positive things about his work online.

Skye Blue and Willow Nightingale def. Anna Jay and Taya Valkyrie

Much like the men's match earlier in this episode, there was zero setup for this and the crowd had no reason to care beyond Blue being the hometown hero and Nightingale already being over. It served as a showcase for the women and I'm glad they got the main event spotlight, but there really needs to be more storylines in the women's division. That becomes clear when you see that there are only two women's matches across All In and All Out and both are title matches. This was decent, but basically, these ladies had a match for the sake of having a match.

Overall Show

On a weekend with so much wrestling, this edition of Rampage is not worth seeking out. New number one contenders to the ROH World Tag Team Championship were crowned, but the Battle Royal itself was quite forgettable and none of the other matches served a storyline purpose. Even Renee Paquette's sit-down interview with Roderick Strong in the back was cut short. AEW has a long weekend in Chicago and I realize this was taped after Dynamite, so this was designed to be filler. There was some quality wrestling, but it was not an important hour of television by any means.

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