Tonight, All Elite Wrestling is LIVE from VyStar Veterans Memorial Arena in Jacksonville, Florida, for a special edition of Wednesday Night Dynamite! Tonight’s episode is BLOOD & GUTS!
UPDATE: Now that AEW Dynamite Blood and Guts is over, you can check out our Dynamite Results here.
Tonight’s Dynamite is airing opposite WWE NXT, which has a rather stacked show. You can read all about what’s going to be happening on tonight’s NXT by clicking here.
Two matches have been announced for tonight’s show, and that’s about all they’ll have time for as both matches are Blood & Guts matches. If you’re new to AEW and don’t know what a Blood & Guts match is, it’s a WarGames match. And if you don’t know what that is, well it’s two rings surrounded by a big steel cage that sees two teams beat the hell out of each other.
The rules are rather simple. One person from each team enters the cage and for five minutes they fight. Once the five minutes have elapsed, one member from a team enters the cage and for the next few minutes that team has a two-on-one advantage. After that, additional members enter at timed intervals, alternating between teams until all twelve members are in the cage. The match officially begins (and by that I mean becomes eligible to end) once all members of both teams have entered the cage. The only way to win is via submission, verbally quitting, or referee stoppage.
AEW Dynamite 11/4/26 Blood & Guts Preview At A Glance
Tonight’s AEW Dynamite features two Blood & Guts matches:
- Men’s Blood & Guts Match: Team Ospreay (Will Ospreay, Adam Copeland, Darby Allin, Steven Borden, Matt Jackson and Nick Jackson) take on The Don Callis Family (Kazuchika Okada, Kyle Fletcher, Wardlow, Kevin Knight, Mark Davis and Jake Doyle)
- Women’s Blood & Guts Match: Willow Nightingale, Kris Statlander, Harley Cameron, Jamie Hayter, Alex Windsor and Queen Aminata battle Thekla, Julia Hart, Skye Blue, Megan Bayne, Lena Kross and Persephone
AEW Dynamite airs LIVE tonight at 7pm CT on TBS!
Men’s BLOOD & GUTS: Team Ospreay vs. The Don Callis Family
The Don Callis Family has become stronger and more dangerous than ever over the course of the past month or so. Kazuchika Okada is the reigning International Champion, and Don Callis wants to bring more gold into the Family. They’ll have their chance at Full Gear, when Kyle Fletcher challenges for Will Ospreay’s AEW World Championship and Mark Davis and Jake Doyle look to take the AEW Tag Team Championship from The Young Bucks.
Full Gear is November 14th, so the mission for The Don Callis Family in Blood & Guts isn’t to simply win the match, it’s to inflict as much damage and cause as many injuries to Ospreay and the Bucks as they can leading into the championship matches at the PPV.
Will Ospreay and The Young Bucks are joined in Blood & Guts by Adam Copeland, Darby Allin and Steven Borden. With the exception of the young Steven Borden, it’s a team of some of AEW’s most established and decorated talent. We’ve seen Adam Copeland do some crazy stuff in his career, and Darby Allin damn near kills himself every time he competes, so things are bound to get chaotic when these two teams collide in the double cage.
This is largely a match predicated on The Don Callis Family’s championship ambition and a way to weaken their opponents. The match didn’t come about because these twelve men have been engaged in a months-long blood feud where it all led to Blood & Guts. Some rivalries were there, sure, but this match kind of just came together. I’m not necessarily the biggest fan of that, simply because it screams, “well we need something for Blood & Guts coming up, let’s announce the match two weeks before the event.”
Still, whether it’s been building for five months or one week, Blood & Guts always delivers and this one will be no exception. It’s a loaded roster on both sides, though I’m not sure why we needed to up the count to six instead of five.
For this one, I’m going with The Don Callis Family to get the win. That’s partly because this is the best the group has ever looked and they need the win, and also because I don’t think either Fletcher or Davis and Doyle capture the gold at Full Gear. Regardless of who wins, we’re in for a bloody spectacle and we can only hope Darby Allin doesn’t do something completely stupid and get himself hurt.
Women’s BLOOD & GUTS: Team Willow vs. Team Divine Madness
It’s funny to see the lineup for this match and then think back to last year’s match and realize that it’s largely the same. Last year, Willow, Statlander, Hayter and Harley teamed with Toni Storm and Mina Shirakawa to take on Triangle of Madness and Megan Bayne, who were joined by Mercedes Moné and Marina Shafir. So in a match that involves 12 women, eight are returning from last year’s match and on the same teams.
This match also came together over the past few weeks, but there’s established conflict and rivalries here dating back a long time (as stated above). I’m not going to harp on it, it is what it is.
There’s an interesting element to the women’s match that’s the opposite of what we’ll see in the men’s. While they will be teammates tonight in the big cage, The Brawling Birds (Hayter and Windsor) will defend their AEW Women’s World Tag Team Championship against Wrathlander (Statlander and Cameron) at Full Gear. Will that come into play? Probably not, but you never know. It’ll definitely be something to keep an eye on, though.
Last year, Triangle of Madness got the victory. Because of that, and because I’m predicting the Don Callis Family to win the men’s, I’m leaning towards Team Willow to pick up the win. That is again assuming that things don’t fall apart between the Birds and Wrathlander.
The women set a pretty high bar last year, putting on a violent and brutal spectacle that gave us the memorable image of a really bloody Skye Blue. With largely the same teams and a hunger among the women, I imagine the women will go all out this year in an attempt to top the fantastic Blood & Guts match that they put on last year. And yes, it’s safe to say, that Skye Blue will probably bleed buckets again and she likely won’t be the only one.
Stinger’s View: A Bloody Good Night
I will always be a sucker for this match type. It’s really a hard match to mess up, although WCW found a way to do it a couple of times near the end of the promotion. AEW has generally delivered excellent Blood & Guts matches, so there’s no reason to expect anything less than balls-to-the-wall tonight.
Normally I’d say which one I’m more looking forward to, but this time around it really is a toss-up. I’d probably default to saying the women’s match, but that’s simply because it’s a bunch of hot women and that’s more fun to watch, but both should be great.
In this war, if you want to call it that, between AEW Dynamite and NXT, I will be watching Dynamite live. I think it’ll be the better wrestling show. NXT looks great, they have a stacked card with some big name talent, and I am looking forward to watching it. But when it comes to sitting down and watching one live, I’m going with the Blood & Guts.
It should be a chaotic, fun night. Well fun for us anyway, probably not real fun for the people in the structure.
AEW Dynamite: Blood & Guts airs LIVE tonight at 7pm CT on TBS!
Until next time, this has been Stinger reporting from the rafters of Titanquisitor Hall where the blood will be flowing, we have two matches and will probably still run long, and NXT’s gonna have to wait.
And remember, though it may be shit at times, though probably not tonight, wrestling matters.
