AEW Rampage: The fallout from Revolution continues

We are five days out from AEW Revolution and the fallout continued on Rampage. It was the first pay-per-view of the year for the company and it will set up and also continue storylines for the rest of the year.

The opening match saw Sammy Guevara defeat Action Andretti with the help of Daniel Garcia. The Acclaimed got an easy victory over Starboy Charlie and Jack Cartwheel. After their match, Daddy Magic and “Cool Hand” Ang came out to once again recruit the former tag team champions to join the Jericho Appreciation Society.

Konosuke Takeshita had a great match against LFI’s Preston Vance. It also saw Jose The Assistant get involved. Takeshita got a well-earned victory. Did he take the advice of Don Callis?

In the main event, RIHO faced her old nemesis, Nyla Rose. This is the third time this year that the women closed Rampage. Rose was looking for her 92nd win. Both women are former AEW Women’s World Champions. Rose was accompanied by Marina Shafir but not Vickie Guerrero. This has been the case for a few weeks (if you watch the YouTube shows, you know this). Shafir attempted to help her mentor win a couple of times, but it backfired.

After RIHO got the win, Rose and Shafir attacked her. They left her laid out in the ring and passed The Outcasts as they went up the ramp. Rose, who is an AEW Original, didn’t do anything to stop them from attacking another Original. Perhaps this is a babyface build and Nyla will eventually join Britt Baker and Jamie Hayter.

Outside the ring, we got two backstage promos that seem to be potentially setting up a Fatal Four-way between the four men’s pillars of AEW.

Darby Allin said that he’s who he is “seven days a week.” He pondered what the point of becoming a World Champion and having accolades is “if, at the end of the day, you’re not really you? I don’t believe anybody here. I guess my problem is I’m a little too real and just a little too crazy. I said I wanted to go out in a blaze of glory and I meant every word of that. There’s a few things before my time in AEW is done that I want to accomplish. Maybe next week, I’ll make that a little more clear.”

Jungle Boy talked about how beating Christian Cage is closing one chapter. He said Cage taught him how to pick his shot. “…Momentum is hard to come by and even harder to keep. And I will be damned if everything I did was for nothing. So every man with a championship around your waist, I’m watching you very closely. I’ll be seeing one of you very soon.”

Before Rampage began, MJF tweeted an image from Revolution with the caption, “the devil is in the details.” It may not mean anything, but perhaps he was foreshadowing a story between the four pillars.

Revolution highlighted the future talent that will carry the company forward. AEW’s next pay-per-view is Double or Nothing over Memorial Day weekend. Rampage got us moving closer to new stories while advancing current storylines. It seems that AEW has a lot of momentum toward not only the next pay-per-view but the rest of the year. It seems like the focus will be on the younger talent.