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<\/a>. Much of the criticism of violence in AEW ignores context, like there\u2019s a reason no one is thinking about the children or casuals<\/a>.<\/p>\n The violence is plainly advertised. AEW doesn\u2019t 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\u2019s the parents\u2019 responsibility to explain why dropping a toaster into the water is a no-no.<\/p>\n There is some valid criticism of specific aspects of violence and safety in AEW,<\/a> including how excess results in desensitisation. Yet this isn\u2019t an AEW problem with repetition or plunder matches, but a wrestling issue generally.<\/p>\n WWE has held PLEs built around plunder-oriented\/stipulation matches. Often with a men\u2019s and women\u2019s counterpart. Sometimes, the feuds artificially and conveniently accommodate the stipulation. Rather than violence, the issue becomes sameness.<\/p>\n While annual, Blood and Guts has progressively been held later in the year. If there is a men\u2019s Blood and Guts match, the builds felt more natural than functional compared to past years.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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:<\/p>\n \u201cI 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.<\/em>\u201d Tony Khan, WrestleDream media call, transcript from WrestleJoy\u2019s Amy Nemmity<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n 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\u2019s division? Could the women\u2019s hard work be overshadowed or minimised by their male counterparts?<\/p>\n 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\u2019s often subjective, but sometimes objective, measurable evidence of long-term systematic issues; it\u2019s hard not to notice.<\/p>\n The women get less than the men. Having multiple women\u2019s matches on Dynamite is still not the norm. WrestleDream was the first PPV since Double or Nothing 2024 to feature a non-title women\u2019s match.<\/p>\n 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\u2019s title matches in 2025.<\/p>\n However, the top men\u2019s 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<\/a> might have seen more women featured through piecemeal expansion, but the gap between divisions remains chasm-like.<\/p>\n AEW\u2019s youth, recency, and commitment to listening to fans have historically created an expectation for some of us to expect progression. It\u2019s not unfounded or misguided. AEW\u2019s 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\u2019s waiting for a false dawn.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve analysed the women\u2019s division’s history of revolutions<\/a>; each advancement was glacial. Bites rather than platefuls of progress have been achieved.<\/p>\n A potential men\u2019s Blood and Guts match could have an inherent and bigger storyline payoff than the women\u2019s. A reunion of The Elite or the end of the Death Riders would eclipse the – if we\u2019re truthful- more traditional, functional, and superficial \u201cwe got beef\u201d story of the women\u2019s match. Although that doesn’t diminish the women’s match, their hard work and efforts. Conversing with\u00a0WrestleJoy’s<\/a> Amy Nemmity highlighted that despite the creative, the women are up for this match. They are going to give fans their money’s worth.<\/p>\n At the time of writing, there are two more Dynamites and three Collisions until Greensboro. The build towards the women\u2019s Blood and Guts match has been implicit. The focus has been more on wheel-spinning and setting up the AEW Women\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n If a men\u2019s and women\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n The women, with their performance, intensity, and brutality, could outshine the men. The women have a rich history of overachieving in violent situations. It\u2019s never caused seismic systemic change, but every milestone takes the division further than where it was before.<\/p>\n More From LWOS Pro Wrestling<\/strong><\/p>\n Header photo \u2013 AEW \u2013 Stay tun<\/em>ed to the\u00a0Last Word on Pro Wrestling<\/a> for more on AEW Blood and Guts and other stories from around the world of wrestling, as they develop. <\/em>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.\u00a0 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\u00a0YouTube<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" AEW fans were already excited for this year\u2019s Blood and Guts match in Greensboro for the first-ever women\u2019s version. Finally! The depth and talent in the division have not been stronger. Their collective momentum has made an AEW Women\u2019s Tag Team championship a reality. It\u2019s taken time. Time remains a constant, contentious issue for the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4960,"featured_media":144742,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4677,6,2192],"tags":[8971],"class_list":["post-144705","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-aew","category-north-america","category-wrestling","tag-blood-and-guts"],"modified_by":"Michael Joseph Sugue, Manager","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144705","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4960"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=144705"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144705\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":144744,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144705\/revisions\/144744"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/144742"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=144705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=144705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=144705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}If Not Now, Some Point<\/strong><\/h2>\n
\n
Comparison is the Thief of Joy<\/strong><\/h2>\n
The Best Outcome<\/strong><\/h2>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/2025\/10\/22-46-1024x1024.jpg\")