AEW Rampage 8/13/2021 Episode #1
I thought they should have had a different stage to give the show its own theme. I'm really surprised they didn't.
4 man booths generally suck. There's just too many people and everyone has to fight to get a word in. Mark Henry was the big loser in that battle.
Christian beating Omega was the wrong call from an Impact perspective. One of Impact's wrestlers should have been the one to beat Omega. Yeah, Omega will probably get it back and eventually someone from Impact will beat him, but it hurts the whole angle. Christian has had a very odd run in AEW as he was initially supposed to be a challenger for Omega, then he lost the battle royale to Jungle Boy, then feuded with Matt Hardy's crew and Team Taz and now he's back to fighting Omega.
The whole Fuego del Sol thing was poorly done. He has never appeared on Dynamite and few would know who he is unless they watched Dark or Elevation. Blowing off his contract storyline was also a poor choice as since many people watching this likely never saw him, it wouldn't resonate to them.
I haven't seen that much of Dynamite lately but unless both Britt Baker and Red Velvet did double turns recently, this match hurt Red. How was Red supposed to come out looking good here? The best way to deal with Britt being the hometown star as heel here would have been to put Britt against another heel. Then the heel can get booed and everyone wins.
Bringing back Jamie Hayter for this was also a poor idea. She last appeared in AEW in November 2019. I don't remember her and I doubt anyone else does either.
Overall thoughts: Typical AEW. They focused too much on the hardcore fan tonight and focused too much on whether they could instead of if they should.
