AEW Rampage

AEW Rampage, also known simply as Rampage, is a professional wrestling television program. It is produced by the American promotion All Elite Wrestling (AEW) and airs every Friday at 10pm ET on TNT in the United States. It is AEW's second weekly television show, positioned behind their flagship show, AEW Dynamite. In January 2022, Rampage will move to TNT's sister channel TBS.

All Elite Wrestling (AEW) launched in January 2019 and their flagship television program, Dynamite, began airing on TNT that October. On January 15, 2020, TNT's parent company WarnerMedia and AEW announced a US$175 million contract extension for Dynamite through 2023. As part of the new deal, it was also announced that AEW would be launching a second weekly television show.

In May 2021, AEW revealed their second weekly television show, and fourth program overall, as AEW Rampage, which would begin airing on TNT on August 13 as a one-hour show on Fridays at 10pm Eastern Time (ET). It was also announced that both Dynamite and Rampage would be moving to TNT's sister channel TBS, also owned by WarnerMedia, in January 2022. During AEW's marquee event Double or Nothing on May 30, former WWE wrestler Mark Henry was announced to be a part of the Rampage commentary team as an analyst. On August 4, Dynamite and Dark's commentators Excalibur and Taz and wrestler Chris Jericho, who has served as a guest commentator several times on Dynamite, were announced to join Henry as Rampage's four-man commentary team. AEW President and Chief Executive Officer Tony Khan said that the commentary team would not always be all four men, as Henry would also have other roles on the show, such as doing interviews.

In an interview with PWInsider, Khan stated that while Rampage would air live for most episodes, some episodes they would pre-tape, depending on the city that the preceding episode of Dynamite was held in. He also said that Rampage would serve as the go-home show for AEW's pay-per-views (PPV), due to the show airing two days before those events, in turn replacing Dark, as although Dark normally airs on Tuesdays, it would instead air on Fridays during the week of a PPV to serve as the go-home show. Khan also said that WarnerMedia had asked him if he would rather expand Wednesday's Dynamite to three hours, but he rejected the notion, stating that he did not want to run Dynamite for that length as he really wanted that third hour as a separate show on a different night. He also claimed that Rampage would not be a secondary show to Dynamite, and that it would be its partner or its equivalent. He further said that Dynamite and Rampage would be AEW's core properties, while their YouTube shows, Dark and Elevation, would be their peripheral properties, essentially their developmental shows.

Rampage airs immediately following WWE's own Friday television program, SmackDown, which airs on Fox. Although Dynamite had ran against WWE's NXT from October 2019 to April 2021, it is expected that there will be no overlap between Rampage and SmackDown in nearly the entire country unless the latter were to run over its scheduled time, which ends at 10pm ET, when Rampage begins broadcasting.

See Also

All Elite Wrestling -- 2021 Results