AEW Rampage

Rampage is live from St. Louis on Friday night! Red Velvet and The Bunny face off in a first round match in the TBS Championship Tournament. Plus, The Elite’s Adam Cole takes on Dark Order’s John Silver.




– Commentators Excalibur, Taz & FTW Champion Ricky Starks welcome fans to a Rampage! We kick things off with “The American Dragon” Bryan Danielson in action!

Bryan Danielson vs. Anthony Bowens (w/Max Caster)

From there, we hear the familiar sounds of the theme music of Bryan Danielson and out comes "The American Dragon" for our opening match of the evening.

Danielson settles inside the squared circle and his music fades off. After that, we hear The Acclaimed theme music and out comes Anthony Bowens, accompanied by Max Caster.

Bowens does a freestyle rap on his way to the ring, dissing Danielson on a personal level and drawing big "oohs" and "ahhs" from the crowd. He gets in the ring and his music cuts off.

The bell sounds and we're off-and-running with our first bout of the show. Early on, we see Bowens jump off to a surprisingly good start, as he takes it to Danielson. Danielson eventually takes Bowens off off his feet with a high round kick to the dome of The Acclaimed member.

Danielson controls the wrist of Bowens and now he goes to work on his arm. He backs Bowens into a corner and peppers him with chops and kicks. Bowens turns him and blasts him with a couple of chops of his own.

Now we see Bowens connecting with some punches, but when he goes to suplex Danielson, "The American Dragon" counters and gets Bowens down to the mat for a close armbar attempt. Bowens gets to the ropes to get the ref to separate them. Danielson gets up, runs and hits the ropes and then charges towards Bowens and blasts him with a kick to the back that sends him through the ropes and out to the floor.

From there, Danielson heads out to the ringside area as well to capitalize on his momentum. Instead, Bowens trips him up on the ring apron and Danielson crashes down to the floor, bashing his head on the apron on the way down. As he was getting up, Caster charges at him from behind and blasts him with a big shot just as Excalibur talks us into a mid-match commercial break.

As we settle back in from the break we see Bowens still in control of the action, as he is working over Danielson back inside the ring. A few minutes later, Danielson begins fighting back into competitive form. He gets Bowens down and grabs both hands while putting his boot on his back and pulling up on his arms. He then gets him in the LeBelle Lock and forces the tap to pick up the victory in this week's opener.

Winner: Bryan Danielson

– Tony Schiavone speaks with Andrade El Idolo, MJF and the AAA World Tag Team Champions, FTR. It looks like their partnership is growing each week. FTR calls out Death Triangle before they face the Lucha Brothers next Saturday at Full Gear.

– After we see footage from last week of the backstage interview segment showing the deal struck between MJF to let Andrade El Idolo and FTR have some help from The Pinnacle in exchange for dinero, we head back inside the arena and hear "Cult of Personality" playing.

CM Punk makes his way out and soaks in the crowd before eventually heading down to the ring for his advertised face-to-face segment with Eddie Kingston. As he nears the ring, Excalibur talks us into another commercial break.

We return from the break and Punk jokes about walking in circles for four minutes in the ring to wait for the commercials to end. He then brings up what happened on last week's show when Eddie Kingston interrupted him. He says he demands an apology and then tells him to come on down to "his" ring.

The theme music for "The Mad King" begins playing but no one comes out. The music eventually cuts off and Punk questions where Kingston is. He says he wasn't here on Wednesday for Dynamite, so maybe he's not here tonight either. He says he was definitely here when he rudely interrupted him on last week's show. He says maybe he needs to talk more and he'll come out to interrupt him again.

That's exactly what happens. Kingston comes out without any music and power-walks down to the ring. He gets in the ring and grabs a mic. Punk backs into one corner of the ring while he stands in the opposite corner. Punk says he demands an apology. Kingston isn't having it. He mocks Punk, playing the world's smallest violen for him.

Kingston gets closer and closer into Punk's face in the corner on the other side of the ring as he gets worked up talking about how Punk is a selfish, spoiled guy, whereas he has never had anything easy and earned everything he's got. He brings up Samoa Joe, Homicide, Bryan Danielson and others judging him back in the day. Punk surprisingly agrees.

"The Best in the World" says everyone he just named did judge him, because he didn't make the cut back then. He says 15 years ago he wasn't ready and he says he shouldn't have expected anything different from him present-day, because he's a bum. Kingston questions what a bum is, bringing up some of the things he's had to go through. He says he's proud to be in the only wrestling company in the game. He says that's a real shot.

Eddie gets in Punk's face again and says he's the only one who has the balls to tell him this, even though everyone in the locker room feels the same way -- he then proceeds to tell Punk that nobody wanted him to come to AEW. He says get out. He says no one wants you here. He then challenges him to a fight at the upcoming Full Gear pay-per-view.

Punk doesn't accept. Kingston gets in his face again and calls him a coward. Punk goes to touch Kingston and Kingston brushes his hand away and says "don't." He then keeps repeating "fight me" as he gets super close in Punk's face. Punk finally accepts and the match is on. Kingston tells Punk to do him a favor, when he beats his ass at Full Gear, leave AEW and go away for another seven years like he did before.

That was one-too many for "The Best in the World" to take, as Punk blasts Kingston between the eyes with a sudden headbutt. This leads to a wild brawl between Punk and Kingston as the crowd goes nuts. A ton of officials hit the ring to break them up, and eventually do, but then Punk busts away and leaps over them to brawl with Kingston some more. They get separated and then Kingston breaks free and the brawl is on again. They finally separate them for good to end the segment.

– We shoot backstage where we see Tony Schiavone standing by with Jurassic Express (Luchasaurus and Jungle Boy) and Christian Cage. Cage talks about The Super Kliq (The Young Bucks and Adam Cole) claiming to be tough guys. He says they might be good at flippy moves but he doesn't see them as tough guys. He says they certainly didn't look like tough guys when they left them laying like the pieces of sh*t they are on Dynamite this past Wednesday night.

Cage asks what Luchasaurus and Jungle Boy think. They both agree. Jungle Boy then extends a challenge to The Super Kliq for a Falls Count Anywhere match at the upcoming Full Gear pay-per-view.

Final Opening-Round Match of the TBS Women’s Championship Tournament: The Bunny vs. Red Velvet

Now we head back inside the arena where it's time to head back down to the ring for our second match of the evening here on this week's Rampage.

On that note, one of the competitors in our latest opening round match in the ongoing TBS Women's Championship tournament designed to crown the inaugural champion for the new title coming to AEW, The Bunny, makes her way down to the ring as we head to a pre-match commercial break.

As we settle back in from the break, Red Velvet's theme hits and out she comes in a hurry, charging down to the ring and immediately going after The Bunny as the commentators remind us about The Bunny hitting her with brass knucks in the past.

The bell sounds and we're off-and-running with this first round tourney bout. We see Velvet working over Bunny after the fast start to this contest, but then Bunny takes over. She sends Velvet out to the floor and beats her down in front of Jade Cargill, who is watching this action from the front row.

Bunny brings Velvet back in the ring and continues to work her over as Excalibur promotes the Countdown To AEW Full Gear premiering on TNT next Friday night immediately after AEW Rampage. As he wraps up the plug, Velvet starts to fire up for a big comeback in the ring. She takes it to Bunny and then drops her with a cutter for a close near fall.

Velvet starts launching an assortment of kicks in Bunny's direction, however Bunny avoids them and then begins beating Velvet down again as the offensive momentum shifts once more. Bunny hits a nice thrust kick that drops Velvet to one knee.

Now she looks to hit Velvet with her finisher. Instead, Velvet counters and hits her own finisher to score the pin fall victory and advance to the next round of the tourney, where she will meet Jade Cargill in the quarterfinals of the TBS Women's Championship tournament.

After the match, Velvet and Cargill jaw back-and-forth as the commentators show us an updated look at the brackets for the tourney. After the match, we head to another commercial break with our main event between Adam Cole and John Silver waiting for us on the other side of the break.

Winner: Red Velvet

– Now it's time for our weekly pre-main event split-screen interview hosted by Mark Henry. We see John Silver on one side of the screen and Adam Cole on the other.

"The World's Strongest Man" brings up their match this evening and the two begin talking. Silver talks about his "nudge" nickname for Cole.

From there, he proceeds to mock him when he mentions being hit with a con-chair-to by Christian Cage and Jurassic Express on Dynamite earlier this week. Silver sarcastically replied, "I bet that hurt, too."

Eventually Henry wraps up the interview and now all that's left is our main event of the evening.

John Silver vs. Adam Cole

We head back inside the arena and we hear the familiar sounds of The Dark Order theme song. John Silver makes his way down to the ring for our final match of this week's Rampage.

Silver settles into the ring and his theme music dies down. We then hear the extremely popular entrance music of The Super Kliq's own Adam Cole ... Bay-Bay!

Cole makes his way down to the ring accompanied by The Young Bucks -- Nick and Matt Jackson. The crowd gives him a superstar reaction coming out and does the "Adam Cole Bay-Bay!" chant with him when the right part of his music hits.

Now we see Silver and Cole staring each other down and ready for battle. On that note the bell sounds to get our featured match of the evening off-and-running. Early on we see Silver faring well, using great speed and quickness to keep Cole mostly on the defensive coming out of the gate.

Cole starts to shift the offensive momentum in his favor. The action spills out to the floor at ringside and Cole beats Silver down. The Young Bucks then come over to Cole and the three do their triple-kiss spot on Silver as Excalibur talks us into a mid-match, picture-in-picture commercial break as the action returns back inside the ring.

When we return from our final break of the evening, we see the intensity in the action pick up, as both guys are actively looking to finish off the other. We see Matt Jackson get involved, which brings out two of the members of The Dark Order to even up the odds. The two teams stare each other down and then the rest of The Dark Order comes out.

Meanwhile, back in the ring, we see Cole look to hit Silver with a low-blow while the referee is distracted. Instead, Silver blocks it and blatantly kicks Cole with a low blow. Taz flips out on commentary calling Silver a cheater and then he hits a tornado seated power bomb into a pin attempt. Cole ends up kicking out.

They head up to the top-rope but things don't go as planned for Silver. We see an enormous high spot that elicits a "holy sh*t" chant from the crowd, followed by a "this is awesome!" chant. Cole takes over and ends up hitting his finisher on Silver and scoring the pin fall victory.

Winner: Adam Cole

– He celebrates his win in the ring as the commentators run down the lineup for next week's Rampage and then take this week's show off the air.