AEW’s annual spectacle returns on Dynamite with two Blood & Guts matches for the first time ever. Plus, AEW World Champion “Hangman” Adam Page meets Powerhouse Hobbs in a falls-count-anywhere match. You can catch AEW Dynamite LIVE on Wednesday night at 8 p.m. ET/ 5 p.m. PT on TSN2, the TSN App, and TSN.ca.
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Blood & Guts match: Death Riders (Jon Moxley, Claudio Castagnoli, “The Bastard” PAC, Wheeler YUTA and Daniel Garcia) vs. Darby Allin, Roderick Strong and The Conglomeration (Mark Briscoe, “Freshly Squeezed” Orange Cassidy and Kyle O’Reilly)
The most brutal and violent match that AEW has to offer returns on Wednesday night as the blood feud between the Death Riders and Darby Allin, backed by Roderick Strong and The Conglomeration, enters a dangerous new phase. For the uninitiated, Blood & Guts operates like the classic Jim Crockett Promotions’ WarGames matches devised by the late, great Dusty Rhodes. Instead of one ring, there are two rings set up side by side. Covering both rings is a giant roofed cage. There is a door on the cage and competitors are permitted to leave it. As we’ve seen in the past, climbing the cage is also an option (for some reason). The match can be one in two manners: a standard submission or surrender. The match will begin with two men in the middle of the ring and an additional competitor will enter in intervals. Wednesday night’s match will be a first for some, but old hat for others. This will be the third time in five years that the Death Riders find themselves in the Blood & Guts cage with the first two coming under their previous incarnation as the Blackpool Combat Club. It’s also a second such match for Daniel Garcia, who was a participant in the 2022 edition as a member of the Jericho Appreciation Society. On the other side of the ring, Allin and Mark Briscoe enter the match for the second straight year, while it’s a first-time entry for Strong, Orange Cassidy and Kyle O’Reilly. Perhaps there is some pride to be had in winning a Blood & Guts match, yet for most of the men in this edition, the violence itself is the point. As sadistic and brutal Jon Moxley is, he’s never not guided by common sense. He retreats when he knows he’s beaten. He submits if the situation calls for it. Moxley always lives to fight another day. He could very well submit or surrender on Wednesday night, but not before he doles out a beating to his opponents. And the men on the other side of the ring will be up for it. Nobody will question the toughness of Allin or Briscoe, two of the most fearless men in the history of the business. Strong and O’Reilly have also been through their share of wars in the past and the fortitude of Cassidy is a defining feature of his, even if it might be overlooked. One thing that’s for certain is Wednesday night’s match won’t be for the faint of heart. Because of Moxley getting counted out against Strong on this past Saturday night’s Collision, Allin’s team won the Advantage Battle Match series, 2-1, which hands them the advantage in Wednesday night’s match, meaning that they will have an extra competitor at every interval. Which of these two teams can survive Blood & Guts?
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Blood & Guts match: TBS Champion “Ultimo Moné” Mercedes Moné, “Megasus” Megan Bayne, “The Problem” Marina Shafir and Triangle of Madness (Julia Hart, Skye Blue and “The Toxic Spider” Thekla) vs. AEW Women’s World Champion Kris Statlander, “Timeless” Toni Storm, Mina Shirakawa, Harley Cameron, Willow Nightingale and Jamie Hayter
For the first time in AEW history, there will be a women’s Blood & Guts match on Wednesday night’s Dynamite. And just as the men’s match has bad blood coursing through it, the women’s match is knee-deep in rancor. While the 12 women involved in the match will undoubtedly take great pleasure in beating the holy hell out of one another, questions remain about the buy-in on one side. From a distance, there does not appear to be much daylight between Kris Statlander, Toni Storm, Mina Shirakawa (subbing in for the injured Queen Aminata), Harley Cameron, Willow Nightingale and Jamie Hayter. These six women seem to be committed to the common goal of enacting vengeance on the sextet of competitors across the ring who’ve been thorns in their sides (or worse) for months. The same cannot be said about the other team. Rest assured, Mercedes Moné, Megan Bayne, Marina Shafir, Julia Hart, Skye Blue and Thekla can all easily get on the same page and unite towards a common goal, but will they? On last week’s Dynamite when a Pier 6 brawl broke out in the ring among many of the Blood & Guts competitors, Moné made her way down to ringside, yet stopped short of actually getting into the ring. The current holder of 13 title belts clearly got cold feet. It wasn’t necessarily out of fear, either. The look on Moné’s face said “How does this really benefit me?” It’s a fair question. She has an AEW Women’s World Championship match against Statlander at Full Gear on Nov. 22. The last thing she needs is to potentially jeopardize that by picking up an injury in Blood & Guts. Moné’s apparent reticence to really get her hands dirty might be just the opening that Statlander’s team needs to exploit to pick up a victory. Still, the question of just how far you’re willing to go shouldn’t be asked of Moné alone. There is a lot at play for the other women in the match. Statlander, of course, has her title match against Moné on the horizon. There is also the matter of the AEW Women’s World Tag Team Championship Tournament to crown the promotion’s inaugural champs with the teams of Sisters of Sin (Hart and Blue), Babes of Wrath (Nightingale and Cameron) and Bayne and Shafir all still alive in the bracket. Surely those upcoming matches will factor into the thinking of these competitors on Wednesday night. In a match where cohesiveness is the name of the game, which of these two teams can stick together long enough for a victory?
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Falls count anywhere match: AEW World Champion “Hangman” Adam Page vs. AEW World Trios Champion Powerhouse Hobbs
In the lead-up to their AEW World Championship match at All In this past August, much was made of the parallels between Jon Moxley and Adam Page. While Moxley is more sadistic and dogmatic in his beliefs, Page possesses the same kind of pain tolerance and willingness to put himself through physical hell to get a job done. Where the two differ, though, is in their emotional state. Moxley’s cool detachment means that he rarely finds himself in a situation born out of rashness. The Cowboy wears his heart on his sleeve, for better or for worse, and that can lead to unintended consequences. Look no further than Page’s current enmity with Samoa Joe. At WrestleDream, Page beat Joe to retain the AEW World Championship only to see Joe and the rest of The Opps (Will Hobbs and Katsuyori Shibata) turn on Page and deliver a vicious beating. Incensed, Page vowed to ruin Joe’s life and the two will once again meet in a title match at Full Gear later this month. With Page on the warpath, he’s also placed a target on the backs of Hobbs and Shibata. And though his indignation is righteous, it’s also potentially ruinous. On Wednesday night, Page meets Hobbs in a falls count anywhere match. With his title match with Joe only weeks away, is it wise for the Hangman to step into the ring with an opponent as imposing as Hobbs in a match where almost anything goes? Page saw just what Hobbs is capable of last week on Dynamite. In a match for The Opps’ AEW World Trios Championships, Hobbs earned a victory for his team over Page, Eddie Kingston and HOOK when he submitted the latter with an absolutely brutal-looking torture rack, wrenching HOOK’s side and back until he could take no more. Hobbs will gladly soften up Page for Joe on Wednesday night, but he wants more than that. He wants to prove that he belongs in the ring with the world champion and, not only that, he wants to hand him a loss. The two have met in singles competition just once before with Page picking up a victory on the June 26, 2021 edition of Dynamite. Will Page use Wednesday night’s match to send a message to Joe or will Hobbs show the AEW World Champion he’s bitten off more than he can chew?
