Well, you have to give All Elite Wrestling credit… they live up to their moniker.
I only got around to seeing the Blood & Guts edition of Dynamite recently since I wanted something to wash down the horrid taste left in my mouth by the rather abysmal Survivor Series PPV I watched this past Saturday (musings on that show to come) and… you know what, WWE may have the WarGames name, but AEW has the spirit of the original match format… even if you have to get past all the excessive bloodletting to witness it. (But then again, The Match Beyond has always been a messy situation, so this almost fits the bill.)
This year’s event is notable for being the first time women participated in the Blood & Guts format and whatever you want to say about the content, you can’t say that they didn’t get you invested in the story in short order. I haven’t been watching much AEW lately, but I got the barebones points down. Yes, having to type out the MASSIVE list of names (Heel team comprising Skye Blue, Julia Hart, Megan Bayne, Mercedes Mone, Marina Shafir & Thekla and the Face Team comprising Willow Nightingale, Mina Shirakawa, Jamie Hayter, Harley Cameron, Kris Statlander & Timeless Toni Storm) is a bit of a chore, but there’s a general idea of what’s going on. Mercedes has her billion belts, Marina is the Death Rider beater person, Toni and Mina are lovers in arms, and Willow is just to take a beating and smile through the whole thing. Yeah, most of the women are just there to fill spaces, but they all serve a function and when the end comes, it feels like some sort of story progression. There’s no wasted movement, there’s no silly flying trash can spot, and the ending made sense; the heels are beating the shit out of Mina with glass kicks and baseball bats while Timeless Toni is forced to watch and eventually surrender to save her partner from further beatings. Is it a good finish? Probably not, but it makes sense given the characters involved and I can accept that. And I’m somewhat invested in the story despite coming in relatively cold because the announcers did such a good job keeping me up to speed on what’s going on, which is a nice thing to have.
The Men’s BAG match closes out the show, seeing the Face Team of Darby Allin, Orange Cassidy, Mark Briscoe, Roderick Strong, Kyle O’Reilly killing the Heel Death Riding Team of THAT NO-GOOD MOTHERFUCKING ASSHOLE BASTARD PAC, future CMLL champion Claudio Castagnoli, Jon Moxley, Wheeler Yuta & Daniel Garcia, O’Reilly tapping out Moxley after a hefty 50+ minutes of bloody action. Between the two matches, the Men’s match definitely started to feel a bit long in the tooth after a while, but at the very least, it was a fun ride and just when it started to feel draggy, the faces isolate Mox and take out the other death people so that Kyle can finish the former AEW champion off via submission. Yeah, your mileage is going to vary on the violence level of these things, but I’ll take Blood & Guts over WWE’s version any day of the week. It’s a bit more old-school and it offers exactly what’s on the tin.
Oh, and Hangman Page retains his AEW title over Powerhouse Hobbs before challenging Samoa Joe to a cage match at the Full Gear PPV… which saw Hangman lose the title to Joe after interference from HOOK. Oops.
All in all, a bloody great show from AEW. Probably my favorite of the Blood & Guts offerings if I’m being honest and I haven’t fully enjoyed a Blood & Guts show since the early days when I was still a regular AEW viewer. I almost considered giving that Full Gear PPV a shot, but an associate told me not to bother since it wasn’t one of AEW’s strongest efforts and therefore, I shall take a pass on that. In a way, I kind of regret not doing that. Then I wouldn’t have compelled myself to watch this Survivor Series show.
dtm666 