AEW Rampage Grand Slam: The Elite make a statement

The annual Grand Slam shows extended to Friday night’s Rampage in a two-hour episode. We got Mike Santana’s 2023 singles debut along with progression of a feud with Santana and his former tag team partner, Ortiz. Better Than You, BayBay have number one contenders in The Righteous.

After being Jericho’s real-life Judas, Sammy Guevara officially joined The Don Callis Family. After four years with Inner Circle and Jericho Appreciation Society, Guevara finally found his real family. Callis said that Guevara was the real person he wanted.

Guevara said that Jericho was dead to him and right on cue, “Judas” hit. Guevara and Takeshita beat up Jericho and attacked him with a chair. Each man held Jericho’s arms while Callis held a screwdriver to his head. Like Commissioner Gordon sending the Bat Signal, Kenny Omega was summonsed. He chased them away with a pipe.

Backstage, Alex Marvez asked if they were on the same side. Omega explained, “This is more than about Chris Jericho, okay? What this is about is about me taking care of Don.” Jericho interrupted Omega to say he knew why he came out there. He says Callis never expected them to team up together. Jericho proposed that they team up against Guevara and Takeshita at WrestleDream.

Omega addressed Callis directly. “You stabbed me in the back, you betrayed your best friend, you threatened the ones that I love, Kota Ibushi. That little scar on your head that you blame on me…by the time we’re through with you, we’ll make you look like Freddie Krueger. WrestleDream will be more like Wrestle Nightmare.” Jericho asked who Guevara and Takeshita will have on their team.

In the main event, Mogul Embassy put their ROH World Six-Man Championships on the line against The Elite (Young Bucks and Hangman Page; side note: due to a storyline on Being the Elite “Long” John Silver now owns the Hung Bucks trademark). The champs came into the match 17-0.

Both trios were well-prepared and fairly evenly matched. That is until Prince Nana and Swerve Strickland arrived. They came out just as Brian Cage was about to take a BTE Trigger. Hangman confronted Swerve and Gates of Agony took advantage of the distractions.

In a somewhat surprising move, The Elite ended the Mogul Embassy’s run of domination and are the new champions. Hangman stood eye-to-eye with Swerve after the match, but Swerve walked away without taking any swings. The Elite are now two-time Six-Man champions. They last won the titles in 2017 and held them for 201 days.

This title change comes on the heels of Eddie Kingston winning the ROH World Championship on Dynamite. It seems as though there are big plans in place for ROH. They just hit 30 episodes, but the promotion has had a lot of ups and downs. Besides ATHENA, most of the champions spend more time in AEW than ROH.

It’s been a glaring problem and having two championships go on four wrestlers who are primarily AEW mainstays is concerning. How often will The Elite actually defend their titles or be on ROH programming? Is meaningful change coming to ROH or is it more of the same?