With AEW Dynamite: Blood and Guts set for November 4, the participants have been revealed, along with a World Championship contender.
The October 21 episode of AEW Dynamite saw the return of Steven Borden return having been sidelined through injury.
The return came after Kyle Fletcher & Kevin Knight defeated Cope and Will Ospreay thanks to Kazuchika Okada, with the Don Callis Family laying a beatdown on the veteran and the AEW World Champion after the match.
The new AEW World Champion contender
In a match that saw Will Ospreay share the ring with Cope, a star who wanted a shot at the World Championship having come up short at WrestleDream, and Fletcher, the Don Callis Family member who is destined for the top title, it was obvious that a challenger to the Aerial Assassin would emerge.
It was Fletcher who would emerge as the frontrunner after Ospreay was levelled by Wardlow in the post-match attack. For Cope, it looks like he could have a score to settle with Okada, who used the International Championship to great effect, securing the win for Fletcher & Knight.
Blood and Guts
The Don Callis Family may have got the upper hand with their post-match beatdown on Ospreay and Cope, but Darby Allin, The Young Bucks and the returning Steven Borden would storm the ring to take control of proceedings.
It would be Borden who would declare that he’s “back for Blood and Guts”, with the son of Sting.
Allin, The Young Bucks, Okada are no strangers to Blood and Guts, having appeared in two past instances of the stipulation.
A better option would later emerge
Last night’s AEW Dynamite offered a better option for Blood and Guts, arguably with a similar amount of build on the show.
With The Dogs and Bang Bang Gang united, and given the bitter feud that will no doubt build out of the rivalry with Death Riders and The Conglomeration, there was a perfect opportunity to have the first match between both factions in a Blood and Guts cage.
Sure, there’s more story to tell for the warring factions in the future, but setting the stage in Blood and Guts would have shaped what fans expected from the feud, something that the individual stars would have no doubt risen to.
Coming out of Dynamite, fans are likely to see Okada vs. Cope for the International Championship and Fletcher vs. Ospreay for the World Championship, so it’s not as if Blood and Guts is going to bring the rivalry to an end.
That said, Blood and Guts featuring the likes of Cope (in his retirement story), Ospreay and The Young Bucks offers its own draw when it comes to star power.
A match born of a Vince McMahon comment
Introduced in 2021 and a variation of the WarGames match, the Blood and Guts name came from a Vince McMahon comment during a WWE conference call in 2019 in which the then Chairman and CEO reflected:
“We’re not going to do ‘blood and guts’ and things of that nature, such as (is) being done on perhaps a new potential competitor.”
Addressing the name ahead of the debut of the match (which had seen the concept delayed due to COVID-19), Tony Khan would describe it as “wrestling-centric“.
It could have been a one-off, a way to prod at the WWE beast, but Blood and Guts has become a regular feature of AEW programming since 2021.
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