AEW fans were already excited for this year’s Blood and Guts match in Greensboro for the first-ever women’s version. Finally! The depth and talent in the division have not been stronger. Their collective momentum has made an AEW Women’s Tag Team championship a reality. It’s taken time. Time remains a constant, contentious issue for the women’s division. More on that later.
Months of build-up have seen all combinations of matchups, feuds intersecting, and ferocity reaching a boiling point. Ultimately, Jamie Hayter challenged The Triangle of Madness on 27 September. Since then, feuds and disputes have continued to weave in and out and around each other.
After watching this week’s Dynamite, with many of the men’s singles and tag division feuds continuing and escalating, could we also get a men’s blood and guts match? The Don Callis Family has the numbers. An Elite reunion has been teased, and a boy and his dinosaur could join that party.
Given the Conglomeration’s recent war with the Death Riders and the lack of blood at WrestleDream in the I Quit match, does Jon Moxley’s faction experience a paradigm shift inside the double steel cage? It would be fitting for Darby Allin to unite with Orange Cassidy. They stood together in the aftermath of WrestleDream 2024.
These feuds are building to a big payoff. Yet as the title suggests, would this be too much?
More Than the Violence
Cyclical discord emerges every time AEW pushes the envelope with violence. Often, reactions are overblown, part of our current social media climate of outrage as a currency. Much of the criticism of violence in AEW ignores context, like there’s a reason no one is thinking about the children or casuals.
The violence is plainly advertised. AEW doesn’t try to slip a deathmatch on Dynamite like a razor blade into an apple. Mothers had time to decide whether they would allow their children to watch Darby Allin drown. And if they did, it’s the parents’ responsibility to explain why dropping a toaster into the water is a no-no.
There is some valid criticism of specific aspects of violence and safety in AEW, including how excess results in desensitisation. Yet this isn’t an AEW problem with repetition or plunder matches, but a wrestling issue generally.
WWE has held PLEs built around plunder-oriented/stipulation matches. Often with a men’s and women’s counterpart. Sometimes, the feuds artificially and conveniently accommodate the stipulation. Rather than violence, the issue becomes sameness.
If Not Now, Some Point
While annual, Blood and Guts has progressively been held later in the year. If there is a men’s Blood and Guts match, the builds felt more natural than functional compared to past years.
It might be a false dawn and not the first. I remember fantasy booking a potential Blood and Guts match based on the increasing intersecting feuds and relationships surrounding Kenny Omega and Jon Moxley post-Winter is Coming 2020.
If not this year, two Blood and Guts matches are likely to occur. At the WrestleDream media call, Tony Khan said when discussing Blood and Guts:
“I will say, we’ve always had great success, and there are some rivalries in the men’s locker room that are bubbling and getting very interesting. But the women’s locker room is the most intense & competitive that we’ve ever seen this year. I think we’ll see a situation where we will see both divisions pay off at Blood and Guts. I do think this is something we could aspire to, having men’s & women’s Blood and Guts, which everyone in AEW would be very excited to have.” Tony Khan, WrestleDream media call, transcript from WrestleJoy’s Amy Nemmity.
My biggest concern about two Blood and Guts matches on the same night is context. Does the first Blood and Guts event to have two double-cage matches overshadow another first for the women’s division? Could the women’s hard work be overshadowed or minimised by their male counterparts?
Comparison is the Thief of Joy
Making comparisons seems part of the human condition. We are constantly judging and measuring who did it better. At its worst, wrestling tribalism yuck some fans yum. It’s often subjective, but sometimes objective, measurable evidence of long-term systematic issues; it’s hard not to notice.
The women get less than the men. Having multiple women’s matches on Dynamite is still not the norm. WrestleDream was the first PPV since Double or Nothing 2024 to feature a non-title women’s match.
Progressively, the women have been given more time for PPV matches. Looking at WrestleDream alone, the time allocated jumps from 8 minutes in 2023 to 10 minutes in 2024 to 16 minutes for the two women’s title matches in 2025.
However, the top men’s matches get significantly more. The AEW TNT Championship match is 24 minutes, the AEW World Tag Team is 27 minutes, and the I Quit match is 25 minutes. On Title Tuesday, a 2.5-hour episode, the women got 9 minutes. A deep-rooted spotlight issue might have seen more women featured through piecemeal expansion, but the gap between divisions remains chasm-like.
AEW’s youth, recency, and commitment to listening to fans have historically created an expectation for some of us to expect progression. It’s not unfounded or misguided. AEW’s history is embedded with change and self-improvement. The problem has been assuming that increased fan investment in the division will mean that growth will be rewarded with equal growth. That’s waiting for a false dawn.
I’ve analysed the women’s division’s history of revolutions; each advancement was glacial. Bites rather than platefuls of progress have been achieved.
The Best Outcome
A potential men’s Blood and Guts match could have an inherent and bigger storyline payoff than the women’s. A reunion of The Elite or the end of the Death Riders would eclipse the – if we’re truthful- more traditional, functional, and superficial “we got beef” story of the women’s match. Although that doesn’t diminish the women’s match, their hard work and efforts. Conversing with WrestleJoy’s Amy Nemmity highlighted that despite the creative, the women are up for this match. They are going to give fans their money’s worth.
At the time of writing, there are two more Dynamites and three Collisions until Greensboro. The build towards the women’s Blood and Guts match has been implicit. The focus has been more on wheel-spinning and setting up the AEW Women’s Tag Team Championship tournament than escalating the conflict for Blood and Guts. Although maybe AEW could build both over the next few weeks rather than juggling them.
If a men’s and women’s Blood and Guts match happens this or next year, the best outcome to diffuse comparison is differentiation. Make each match distinct in terms of story and action. An apparent effort to distinguish what happens in the ring and subsequently with individual character arcs would lessen the desensitisation by making the stipulation impactful with meaning.
The women, with their performance, intensity, and brutality, could outshine the men. The women have a rich history of overachieving in violent situations. It’s never caused seismic systemic change, but every milestone takes the division further than where it was before.
More From LWOS Pro Wrestling
Header photo – AEW – Stay tuned to the Last Word on Pro Wrestling for more on AEW Blood and Guts and other stories from around the world of wrestling, as they develop. You can always count on LWOPW to be on top of the major news in the wrestling world. As well as to provide you with analysis, previews, videos, interviews, and editorials on the wrestling world. You can catch AEW Dynamite on Wednesday nights at 8 PM ET on TBS. AEW Collision airs Saturday at 8 pm Eastern on TNT. More AEW content available on their YouTube
