Powel’s AEW Dynamite Hit List: Thoughts on the Blood & Guts matches, and Hangman Page vs. Powerhouse Hobbs in a Falls Count Anywhere match

By Jason Powell, ProWrestling.net Editor (@prowrestlingnet)

AEW Dynamite Hits

Darby Allin, Mark Briscoe, Orange Cassidy, Roderick Strong, and Kyle O’Reilly vs. “The Death Riders” Jon Moxley, Pac, Wheeler Yuta, Daniel Garcia, and Claudio Castagnoli in a Blood & Guts match: AEW paid off O’Reilly coming close to forcing Moxley to submit durng their recent singles matches by having him get the job done to win the match for his team. This should lead to the end of Moxley’s run with the Death Riders (will he finally take that fishing trip?). While it’s definitely time for Moxley to do something new, the idea of him feuding with Pac, Yuta, Garcia, or Castagnoli does not excite me. Gabe Kidd attacking Allin was fine and hopefully it will lead to a Full Gear match between the two. The fire spot was one of many stunts in the Blood & Guts matches that felt needlessly over the top, and I’m always disappointed by unprotected chair shots to the head. As good as O’Reilly is in the ring, he has struggled for years to connect with the fans as a personality. Does AEW have a plan to change that, or will we look back on this and question why they didn’t have someone with more potential beat Moxley?

AEW World Champion Hangman Page vs. Powerhouse Hobbs in a Falls Count Anywhere non-title match: It was a strange move to put a hardcore style brawl in between the two Blood & Guts matches as opposed to going with a more traditional match to break things up. Nevertheless, Page and Hobbs came through with a good fight. The pyro that shot off when Page put Hobbs through the table covered in electrical equipment got a rise out of the live crowd. It looked a little campy, though not nearly as bad as similar stunts have gone in the past. The post-match angle with Samoa Joe and Katsuyori Shibata attacking Page seemed like it was going to put big heat on the heels, but Joe’s plan was foiled by a cage that took an eternity to lower around the rings, and Eddie Kingston and Hook running out to make the save. Joe is the underdog going into his second title match with Page. As such, it would have been better to go with a heavy heat angle on any other night. But with all of the over-the-top violence in the Blood & Guts matches, nothing short of Joe dropping Page an airplane and then running him over with a steamroller was going to stand out on this show.

Mercedes Mone, Megan Bayne, Marina Shafir, Thekla, Julia Hart, and Sky Blue vs. Kris Statlander, Toni Storm, Willow Nightingale, Mina Shirakawa, Jamie Hayter, and Harley Cameron in a Blood & Guts match: The hard work for the wrestlers made this match a Hit, but the finish of the match did nothing for me. Sure, we’ve seen Storm and Shirakawa be flirty with one another, but I never felt like the Storm character was in love with Shirakawa, so watching her surrender to save Shirakawa felt like a reach. What would the finish have been had Shirakawa not replaced the injured Queen Aminata in the match? I didn’t care for the glass spots or the excessive blade jobs. But anyone complaining about the female wrestlers bleeding in this match falls into the category that Storm mocked when she came out clutching her pearls. What did you expect from a match named Blood & Guts? Anyway, Mone can’t drop all of the non-AEW title belts soon enough. It’s not that I want to see her character get her comeuppance, it’s that I don’t think I’m alone in simply not caring about her other titles.

Ricky Steamboat, Stokely Hathaway, and “FTR” Dax Harwood and Cash Wheeler: It’s always nice to see Steamboat, even though he was shaky on the mic. I normally enjoy Hathaway’s mic work, but comparing himself to Denzel Washington and then asking where Randy Savage was felt generic. Fortunately, Harwood did a good job of insulting Steamboat and getting under the skin of fans. The big save by Bandido and Brody King got over big with the live crowd and tied in nicely with the Brodido vs. FTR tag team title match at Full Gear. More than anything, this segment helped give the live crowd and fans at home a needed change of pace before the main event.

AEW Dynamite Misses

Blood & Guts flaws: I enjoyed the matches overall, but there were definitely aspects that were turnoffs. The WarGames-style match is more than enough for me. I don’t need all of the weapons, glass, or fire. And the idea of wrestlers escaping the cage really goes against the spirit of the match. I rolled my eyes when Hart and Thekla escaped through holes in the structure, and the annual spot with wrestlers fighting on top of the cage during the men’s match feels routine at this point. I continue to hope that just one of the many companies that hold a variation of the WarGames match will take an old-school approach by ditching the weapons and big stunts in favor of a good old-fashioned, gritty WarGames brawl that stays inside the cage. With WWE and AEW both holding men’s and women’s versions of the match, why not take this approach with one of the matches to help the two matches stand out from one another?

(Jason Powell, founder and editor of ProWrestling.net, has covered pro wrestling full-time dating back to 1997. He hosts a weekly podcast, Pro Wrestling Boom, and also appears regularly on the Wade Keller Pro Wrestling Podcast. Reach him via email at dotnetjason@gmail.com and on social media via @prowrestlingnet.bsky.social or x.com/prowrestlingnet. For his full bio and information on this website, click here.)