AEW Championship Match Set For AEW Rampage: Holiday Bash

By Connor Casey

AEW taped this week's edition of AEW Rampage, still operating under the Holiday Bash banner and set to air on Saturday, on Wednesday night at the Greensboro Coliseum following AEW Dynamite. The show's headlining match featured Sammy Guevara vs. Cody Rhodes for the TNT Championship. According to reports from those in attendance, it was revealed that Rhodes defeated Guevara to become the first three-time TNT Champion in AEW's history. Rhodes won after hitting two Cross Rhodes and a Tiger Driver. 

The loss brings an unceremonious end to Guevara's time with the TNT title. While his victory over Miro for the gold and his defense against Ethan Page were both excellent, he only held the title for just under three months and he spent most of that time in the background of the Inner Circle vs. American Top Team feud. He finished his run with four successful defenses, beating Bobby Fish, Page, Jay Lethal and Tony Nese. 

Meanwhile, the victory once again puts Rhodes in an interesting situation. "The American Nightmare" has stated both in interviews and on TV that he won't turn heel, despite the fact that fans have soured on him over the past year. 

"If you're a wrestler in the ring, you can hear and if you don't hear [reactions], you're doing yourself a disservice. You're doing the whole company a disservice, you're doing the match you're in a disservice. I can hear but I also play chess, not checkers," Rhodes recently said on Busted Open Radio. "So I think it's fun to speculate and there's so much that we've seen in the past, 'That's how this went and that's how this could go.' The challenge I'm facing in the direction I'm going is something that has never been done in wrestling before. There's tons of just old plays that we could run here, 'Oh, kick this guy in the balls and abuse my EVP power.' Very soap opera bullshit. I don't mean to say that harsh, but the challenge for me now is to go in a direction that perhaps no wrestler has gone before. I don't come out of either tunnel, if that's probably the best way to put it, and I'm looking forward to it as the most fun I've ever had in my career has been navigating some of these new spaces. For example, in New York, we had 25,000 people and that reaction's a little different. Last week, I'm in the concourse doing a book drive for community outreach and it's the opposite of that reaction in Philly. That beautiful feeling of, 'Alright, these are my people,' depends [on the setting]. Some places I go, they'll be my people. Other places I go, they won't, but that's your right as the fan to do what you want."

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