AEW Rampage Results: Winners, Live Grades, Reaction and Highlights from June 23 (2024)

Welcome to Bleacher Report's live coverage and recap of AEW Rampage on June 23 in Chicago.

AEW and NJPW are preparing for the Forbidden Door pay-per-view on Sunday, so Friday's show was one of the last chances to sell the major storylines heading into this weekend.

The Owen Hart Cup Tournament continued this week with a match from the women's bracket when Anna Jay battled Skye Blue.

The show also included an eight-man tag match, Jack Perry vs. Douki and MJF's first appearance on Rampage.

Let's take a look at what happened on the final episode of Rampage before Sunday's Forbidden Door PPV.

Rampage opened with all right men already in the ring and prepared to start the match. The action got going almost immediately with both teams attacking each other.

Swerve Strickland teamed up with Will Ospreay, Kyle Fletcher and Jeff Cobb to take on Trent Baretta, Chuck Taylor, Yoh and Rocky Romero.

Neither team seemed to have a clear advantage for an extended period of time. They traded control back and forth several times with both sides hitting several double and triple-team moves along the way.

There was a lot of enjoyable action in this bout, but it was just like a lot of other multi-man matches we see in AEW. It was a series of spots and sequences without much story to it, which is not unusual for this kind of bout.

Ospreay got the win for his team by pinning Yoh with a running elbow strike to the face. The crowd was hot for this one.

Winners: Swerve Strickland and United Empire

Grade: B

Notable Moments and Observations

Adam Cole came out to deliver a promo but before he could speak, MJF came out for his first appearance on Rampage ever. The AEW champion revealed he got Cole a match at Forbidden Door against Tom Lawlor.

This brought out Lawlor and Royce Isaacs from the crowd to attack Cole. Lawlor and Isaacs pretended to be scared of MJF when he acted like he would make the save. Cole was left angry and hurt as MJF left the ring. This was short and sweet, which is all it needed to be to set up the match between Cole and Lawlor.

Grade: B-

The next match saw Max Caster, Anthony Bowens and Daddy Ass squash three jobbers. This was the definition of a squash match. The local talents didn't hit a single offensive maneuver.

The QTV crew showed up on the stage and Harley Cameron tried to sing a song. The crowd gave her a ton of heat and barely let her speak.

This was almost painful to watch. After QT Marshall distracted The Acclaimed, Johnny TV (fka Johnny Morrison/Nitro/Impact/Elite/Wrestling/Mundo/Hennigan) attacked Daddy Ass. He posed with the QTV crew to end the segment.

Winners: The Acclaimed and Daddy Ass

Grade: Incomplete

Notable Moments and Observations

Anna Jay took on Skye Blue in a first-round match from the women's bracket of the Owen Hart Cup Tournament.

Daddy Magic and Cool Hand Ang distracted Blue and made her chase them around the ring so Jay could get the upper hand, but it didn't really work.

The former Dark Order member took control and began Dominating Blue as the show went to a break. We returned right as Anna spiked Skye with a DDT.

The second half of this bout was definitely better than the first. It felt like it took them some time to find their groove but once they did, they were moving at a good pace.

Skye was able to score the win with the Code Blue to advance to the next round of the Owen Hart Cup Tournament.

Winner: Skye Blue

Grade: C

Notable Moments and Observations

New Japan Pro-Wrestling's Douki made an appearance in the main event of this week's show when he took on "Jungle Boy" Jack Perry.

Douki had someone in his corner while Perry was flying solo this week since Hook was nowhere to be found.

Perry had a rare size advantage over his opponent, so he made sure to use it whenever he could. Douki used his speed and agility to take control and send Jungle Boy out of the ring.

Perry began to show some more aggression as the match progressed, and the crowd seemed to notice. Even though he was cheered during his entrance, the crowd began to boo him and chant for Douki.

Both of these men are fast on their feet and like to utilize a lot of high-flying offense, so this ended up easily being the most exciting match of the night. Douki was especially impressive and immediately won over the Chicago crowd with his unique offense.

Despite having the crowd behind him, Douki was unable to score the win. Jungle Boy hit him with a poison rana and a clothesline to the back of the head before locking him in a dragon sleeper for the win, which the announcers identified as Sanada's Skull End finisher.

The IWGP heavyweight champion showed up to confront Perry to end the show.

Winner: Jack Perry

Grade: B+

Notable Moments and Observations

This was a pretty standard episode of Rampage. Other than the debut of Johnny TV as the newest member of QT Marshall's group, nothing too noteworthy happened.

The opening eight-man tag match was a bit of entertaining mayhem, the squash with The Acclaimed only served to set up the attack that took place after, Blue advancing in the Owen Hart tourney was the right call, and Douki becoming a fan-favorite in the main event was a pleasant surprise.

Jungle Boy is going to turn heel eventually. The signs are there, and he did a good job reacting to the crowd turning on him tonight without acting like an outright villain.

The main event is probably the only match you should take the time to watch if you didn't see the show live, but the program as a whole was decent.

Grade: C+