By Colin McGuire, ProWrestling.net Staffer
The most antiquated thing you can do in pro wrestling media in 2026 is write about pro wrestling once a month. The landscape changes by the tweet (or … um … X post). Everyone and their best friend’s best friend’s aunt’s nephew has a podcast ready to dissect the latest rumor, angle, program, television show, and passive-aggressive social media post that just happened 30 seconds from now. Offering something up at the beginning of each month is an exercise in idiocy, a lesson in pointlessness, and an assurance that your *thoughts* will quickly be forgotten.
So, all right. Let’s write about pro wrestling once a month.
WARGAMES (ISH)!
“It’s an amazing coincidence that the babyfaces want to face the Callis Family in a Blood & Guts match, and AEW just happens to have a Blood & Guts match advertised for November 4!”
Leave it to Jason Powell in his live review for the October 21 edition of AEW’s Dynamite to put things so succinctly as the teams came together for the company’s Blood & Guts match later this month. As it goes, the Don Callis Family (all 4,983 of them) will suit up against … well, a gaggle of babyfaces that includes the Young Bucks, Sting’s kid, and yada yada, so on and so forth.
I miss stakes in professional wrestling. And for the past few autumns, this has become the time of year that I am reminded of as much more than any other season. While this will mark the second year in a row that AEW is running its two-ring spectacular in November, WWE’s version, beginning in the modern era in 2017 in NXT, has been running in November for the last nine years, save for two first-weekend-of-December events.
And at the end of the day, the WarGames/Blood & Guts trope could have decided to take a year or three off, and I wouldn’t have batted an eye. Quick: What was last year’s men’s Blood & Guts match? More so, who won? Give up? The Conglomeration and Darby Allin beat the Death Riders. How about across the aisle and WWE’s version in 2024? Does The Bloodline vs. The Bloodline ring a bell? Indeed, Roman Reigns teamed with the Usos, Sami Zayn, and CM Punk to beat Solo Sikoa, Jacob Fatu, Tama Tonga, Tonga Loa, and Bronson Reed.
Unforgettable, all of them.
Except not. The Conglomeration vs. Death Riders program has seemingly been in motion for as long as both groups have been in existence, and the Blood & Guts match last year didn’t really put a period on it. Meanwhile, WWE’s Decision Makers get in a room a couple of months before November, establish its biggest stars, and find a way to throw them inside two rings and a cage to moonlight as a WarGames facsimile. There hasn’t been a single personal issue between eight to 10 wrestlers that I can find that justifies these matches anymore.
Which, of course, speaks to the larger problem in 2026 pro wrestling: Nothing feels creative. Even Will Ospreay/AEW’s attempt to freshen things up with their Clockwork Carnage match last month felt … overly complicated? Change for change’s sake? Uninspired? You could use any of those words, and I wouldn’t argue with you. Plus, the similarities between that and NXT’s Iron Survivor gimmick felt just a bit too on the nose for this viewer.
Now, to WWE’s credit, they’ve been trying to heat up a program between the latest incarnation of the Bloodline and Royce Keys’ 946 faction, and it’s kind of/sort of worked. Hell. Jacob Fatu was run over by a car, for God’s sake. The feud doesn’t feel red hot, but it does feel a little more inspired than anything else that’s been thrown together this time of year for the last bunch of autumns. Plus – and most importantly – 946 still feels kind of fresh, which is an anomaly in pro wrestling anymore.
But even with all of that in mind, would it really be too hard to keep something like the WarGames concept special? Some ideas can be bastardized in a fine-enough way – think Money In The Bank or anything with the words “casino” or “gauntlet” in AEW – but I’m old enough to remember when WarGames was such a violent, serious thing that you couldn’t help but be intrigued whenever one of those matches was put together. I miss it.
I miss the personal touches. I miss the hate. I miss the authenticity. I miss the commitment to the feud. I miss the drama.
I miss all of it.
And so, as we gear up for another round of Blood & Guts/WarGames matches, let’s pour one out for a time when these things mattered, when they forced us fans to believe that something special and personal was happening right in front of our eyes. There are a lot of examples of the difference between a match needing a stipulation rather than a stipulation that needs a match in today’s pro wrestling landscape; can we please lay off the unique equity that WarGames matches built and earned once upon a time? It’s been bastardized enough.
Maybe take 2027 off? Please?
AND YOU CAN’T TEACH THAT
Nobody learns how to be seven-feet tall, but I’ll be damned if anyone working on WWE’s writing team can figure out how to book Big Cass.
In case you missed it – and at this point, you truly may have missed it – Mr. Cass has been back in WWE since July. It’s now November. And instead of using him as a monster heel that could dominate the mid-card and maybe even flirt with the upper portions of the food chain, we have him losing to … pretty much everyone half his size.
Save for him being part of the winning team on last week’s Raw (and even then, his partner Ethan Page scored the pinfall), Cass hasn’t just not been booked to look strong; he’s been booked to look like a non-starter. I don’t get it. Say what you want about his AEW run as a whole, but I kind of liked the way Tony Khan used him as a menacing presence and someone who, in a weird way, was even kind of protected.
That type of success did not follow Cass back to WWE, all pre-arrival vignettes be damned. Is it an Ezno Amore thing? For this viewer, it shouldn’t be; Cass can live and thrive on his own as long as the creative forces are behind him in a meaningful way. I was excited when word got out that he’d be heading back to TKO Land. This is a guy who turned his life around after some rough patches; he’s easy to root for, and his AEW work exceeded my expectations.
So … um … what’s going on?
THE MAESTRO IS HERE
Speaking of wrestlers hopping between WWE and AEW, Ilja Dragunov showed up on Dynamite (and, well, WrestleDream, of course) last month, and it reminded me of the crap shoot it truly is to bounce back and forth between the two major American companies. Remember when Andrade became All Elite, it didn’t click, he went back to WWE, that didn’t click, and now … it’s clicking … but in AEW?
He’s the exception; not the rule (see: those Big Cass thoughts). Think of Rusev/Miro. Tommy End. Ricky Starks/Saints. Even Tommaso Ciampa has been hit-or-miss for me during his current AEW stint. It’s fascinating to watch these guys succeed, fail, or fade away altogether as a result of switching sides. If only one thing has been proven in the flip-flop diagram, it’s that nothing is proven at all. Sometimes, it works, and sometimes, it doesn’t.
Dragunov, for his part, got off to a hot start with his match against Speedball Mike Bailey. Keep in mind, however, that he’s not the first (and surely won’t be the last) wrestler to come over and be unleashed in AEW after toiling away in mid-card WWE hell. Can he break through? Can he become the next Continental Digital National 24/7 Champion of the World while being Elite? Shoot. Can he at least make sure a pair of pants doesn’t kick out of one of his pin attempts?
Only time has the answers.
PREDICTIONS ARE LIKE WHAT AGAIN?
We offered no predictions for October as we mourned the death of Pac in this tiny corner of the internet. That said, September turned out to be our best month yet as we finished it 9-4. That brought our overall record to 45-35. Let’s see how November shapes up as we try to end the year strong.
– WWE’s Crown Jewel will indeed move forward in Riyadh despite all the controversy surrounding a trip like that.
– Speaking of Crown Jewel, let’s go with Randy Orton, Breakker/Theory, Chelsea Green, and Sami Zayn to get the wins.
– For AEW’s Full Gear, I’ll pick Hangman Page, Bandido, and Brody King to retain their trios titles. I also like Doyle and Davis to beat the Bucks for the tag titles.
– Robbie Eagles and Kosei Fujita will win NJPW’s Super Junior Tag League.
– However the 946 ends up being represented in the men’s WarGames match, they will stand tall over whatever team they face.
