Bullet Club's Kidd makes AEW debut on Rampage on TSN+
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Bullet Club's Gabe Kidd makes his AEW debut, teaming with Roderick Strong. Plus, Vancouver's El Phantasmo meets AR Fox in a TNT Championship qualifying match and Shingo Takagi and Orange Cassidy are in action. You can catch AEW Rampage on Friday at 10pm et/7pm pt streaming on TSN+.
New Japan Strong Openweight Champion Gabe Kidd and Roderick Strong (w/ Mike Bennett and Matt Taven) vs. The Infantry (Capt. Shawn Dean and Carlie Bravo) - Perhaps the most vicious and psychotic member of Bullet Club's War Dogs, the New Japan Strong Openweight Champion Gabe Kidd, touches down in AEW on Friday night as he teams with the Undisputed Kingdom's Roderick Strong to take on the Infantry of Capt. Shawn Dean and Carlie Bravo. Profane, disrespectful and, above all else, violent, Kidd epitomizes the new era of Bullet Club under its leader, "The Rebel" David Finlay. As much of a whirling dervish of violence that Kidd might be, he's also very, very good in the ring. There's a reason why he's the New Japan Strong champ after a vicious blood feud with former champion Eddie Kingston. Kingston is currently on the shelf until next spring after breaking his leg against Kidd in May after taking an insane suplex from the apron across the metal barricade at NJPW Strong Resurgence in Ontario, CA. Whether Kidd and Strong can actually get along remains to be seen, but if they were to click, they would be a formidable team. Still, Dean and Bravo are a regular team, so there will be no questions about chemistry there and that gives them a major edge in that department. Can Kidd make his AEW debut a successful one alongside Strong or will the Infantry spoil the party?
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TNT Championship Ladder Match qualifying match: El Phantasmo vs. AR Fox - One more person will join "The Alpha" Konosuke Takeshita, ROH World Champion Mark Briscoe, Lio Rush, "The Scapegoat" Jack Perry and Dante Martin in Sunday night's ladder match for the vacant TBS Championship at Forbidden Door and we will find out his identity on Friday night as Vancouver's El Phantasmo returns to an AEW ring to take on AR Fox. The former IWGP World Tag Team Champion and IWGP Junior Heavyweight Tag Team Champion is at a crossroads right now in New Japan Pro-Wrestling. His stable, the Guerrillas of Destiny, is no more with all of Tama Tonga, Tanga Loa and Hikuleo departing the company, leaving ELP to once again strike out on his own. More than capable of doing that, ELP can earn himself a shot at a title if he can get by a first-time opponent in AR Fox. Fox is coming off of a loss to Shingo Takagi on last week's Rampage and will hope to bounce back and get himself into Sunday night's match. A champion in places like Lucha Underground, EVOLVE and Combat Zone Wrestling, Fox is no stranger to gold and is still looking for his first title in AEW after having previously failed to capture the TNT Championship, AEW International Championship and AEW World Trios Championships. Which of these two men will advance to the ladder match?
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2-on-1 match: "Freshly Squeezed" Orange Cassidy vs. The Outrunners (Truth Magnum and Turbo Floyd) - Orange Cassidy is going solo on Friday night when he takes on both of "The Speedboat Dreamboats," Truth Magnum and Turbo Floyd, the Outrunners. The match came about when Cassidy issued an open challenge for Rampage ahead of his match at Forbidden Door against Zack Sabre Jr. Meeting backstage with Ian Riccaboni, Magnum and Floyd answered the call and were asked which of the two men planned on taking the match. When told that both men intended to take the match, Cassidy offered up zero resistance whatsoever and a 2-on-1 encounter was agreed to very easily to the surprise of Riccaboni. While 2-on-1 matches aren't unheard of in AEW, they are rarities. Over the course of the company's five-year history, there have only been 13 of them. The last one also featured Magnum and Floyd and it didn't go well for them. On the Feb. 10 edition of Collision, the duo was defeated handily by "The Machine" Brian Cage. Maybe Friday night will be better? Will Cassidy use Friday as a tune-up for what should be an incredible encounter with ZSJ or will "The Youngest Men Alive" pick up a big victory?
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"The Dragon" Shingo Takagi vs. Dalton Castle (w/ The Boys) - On Sunday night, former IWGP World Champion Shingo Takagi meets "The American Dragon" Bryan Danielson in the most anticipated first-round match of the Owen Hart Foundation Cup at Forbidden Door, but before that, he must contend with another former world champion in the form of Dalton Castle. Arguably the most powerful member of Los Ingobernables de Japon, Takagi was in action on Rampage last week and defeated AR Fox with Made in Japan. Then, this past Wednesday night on Dynamite, Takagi teamed with LIJ stablemates Titan and Hiromu Takahashi to take on Danielson's stablemates, IWGP Heavyweight Champion Jon Moxley, Claudio Castagnoli and ROH Pure Champion Wheeler YUTA, the Blackpool Combat Club. With Hiromu seemingly having the match won, Moxley laid him out with a chair. The match devolved into a pier-six brawl with LIJ's leader, Tetsuya Naito, joining the fray. Castle, a former ROH World Champion, won't offer the same kind of challenge that Danielson will, but he's the calibre of opponent that Takagi can test his mettle against ahead of his high-stakes match with Danielson. Sleeping on Castle would be at Shingo's peril. Will Takagi head into Forbidden Door victorious or will Castle offer a rude awakening?
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PLUS:
- Queen Aminata meets former training partner Skye Blue