Tonight, All Elite Wrestling was LIVE from VyStar Veterans Memorial Arena in Jacksonville, Florida, for a special edition of Wednesday Night Dynamite. It was time for BLOOD & GUTS, which saw twenty-four wrestlers competing in two massive cage matches where there was no shortage of violence and blood.
This was AEW’s contribution to the “Wednesday night wrestling war”, if you want to call it that, going head-to-head with a stacked episode of WWF NXT on The CW. I watched Blood and Guts over NXT, and I was happy with that decision.
Blood and Guts gave us the usual violent version of the WarGames match in typical AEW fashion. We had blood by the buckets (especially in the women’s match), barbed wire, broken glass, thumbtacks, legos, chairs, tables, a leaf blower, and a whole lot more.
Let’s get to the results first, and then I’ll give my Stinger’s View breakdown of my thoughts afterwards.
AEW Dynamite 11/4/26 Blood & Guts Results At a Glance
- Women’s Blood & Guts: Team Willow (Willow Nightingale, Kris Statlander, Harley Cameron, Jamie Hayter, Alex Windsor and Queen Aminata) defeated Team Divine Madness (Thekla, Julia Hart, Skye Blue, Megan Bayne, Lena Kross and Persephone) when Julia Hart surrendered to a double submission from Wrathlander.
- Men’s Blood & Guts: The Don Callis Family (Kazuchika Okada, Kyle Fletcher, Wardlow, Kevin Knight, Mark Davis and Jake Doyle) defeated Team Ospreay (Will Ospreay, Adam Copeland, Darby Allin, Steven Borden and The Young Bucks) when Adam Copeland surrendered to prevent further injury to his teammates.
Women’s BLOOD & GUTS: Team Willow vs. Team Divine Madness
Winners: Team Willow via submission
Dynamite kicked off with the women’s Blood and Guts match which was started by Megan Bayne and Kris Statlander. Before a third competitor even hit the ring, Statlander ran Megan’s head into a steel chair that busted her open and saw Bayne bleeding buckets the rest of the night. It was classic “crimson mask.” Before it was all said and done, the majority of the women in the match were bleeding include Skye Blue (of course, and she played it up just like last year), Statlander, Willow, and others.
The finish was rather unique and a bit brutal as Harley Cameron trapped Julia Hart in a single-leg crab while Statlander wrapped barbed wire around Julia’s mouth and cranked on her neck. This forced a screaming Hart to submit, giving the faces the victory just as I predicted in the preview.
Stinger’s View: This match went for over 45 minutes, and I largely think it was great. The blood was a bit excessive though. I get it, it’s called Blood and Guts. Megan Bayne bled throughout the entire match with a super crimson mask from what was a routine spot of having her head rammed into a wedged chair. Skye Blue bled before she even got into the match after taking a rather sad little bump from the cage door. There’s delivering blood, and there’s going overboard with it just because the match has blood in the title.
Skye Blue went viral from the excessive bleeding last year, and a lot of this seemed to try and mimic that to a degree.
I thought last year that having the women’s match be six-on-six was too much, and I still think that. But this year they made the men’s match the same. These matches, and this is just my opinion, should be either eight-person or ten-person. Twelve is too much, it just pads the length of the match and adds to downtime where people are lying around waiting for their time to get up and do something.
I believe Taz said something about all of the women performed their asses off, or something to that effect. Call me old fashioned, but I don’t like hearing about how the wrestlers performed anything, especially in a match like this. There’s a better way to put over the effort in the match without calling it a performance.
Overall, I think the match was great and spoiler, the better of the two. We got a split second tease of Statlander and Hayter not getting along before that was dropped. Considering Wrathlander and the Brawling Birds will compete against each other at Full Gear, I would’ve liked to have seen a little bit more unease develop between the two teams. Even something subtle like Statlander or Cameron watching Hayter or Windsor (or vice versa) get brutalized with a weapon without immediately trying to help would’ve helped further build towards that match.
The women set a high bar.
Backstage Developments Before the Main Event
Andrade gave an interview that was ultimately rather pointless and would’ve saved about three minutes of time had it not aired.
Bandido attacked Kofi backstage then fought with both Austin Creed and Swerve, including banging Swerve’s head off the stage. Eventually Hangman and Brody King showed up to pull Bandido off. Backstage, Bandido gave a funny line about Swerve took his mask and his honor, and he would take his life. Calm down Bandido, there’s no reason to commit murder. Of course that was just the set up for Bandido to say that he wants to accept the Texas Death Match, Brody King nodded, and Hangman finally relented. At Full Gear, it’ll be a Trios Texas Death Match between Brodido and Hangman against Swerve and New Level.
We killed more time before the main event by having Mercedes Mone call out Marina Shafir. Mone told Shafir that no one paid attention to her until she became “Jon Moxley’s little bitch.” Shafir responded by saying she respected everything that Mone has done but not what she has become. She then told Mercedes that “you hit like a pussy-ass bitch,” which caused Mone to laugh and slap Shafir again. They really just like saying “pussy” on TV, as this is like the third straight week of doing it.
A ridiculous Nick Wayne video aired. I don’t like him, but I kind of like the gimmick and the overall stupidity of it, and I hate that I like it.
Men’s BLOOD & GUTS: Team Ospreay vs. The Don Callis Family
Winners: The Don Callis Family via surrender
Kyle Fletcher and Darby Allin kicked off the main event.
After spending last week talking about how none of them would surrender, the finish saw Adam Copeland being held with a chain through the fence around his neck watching as his teammates were in various positions of distress. Namely Kyle Fletcher holding a screwdriver to Will Ospreay and threatening to stab him with it. Copeland surrendered. Fletcher put down the screwdriver, and told Wardlow to “do it.” Wardlow was on top of the cage with Darby Allin, who he pushed off the top through two tables that were stacked on top of one another.
Stinger’s View: This was another correct prediction. And an easy one at that. It made sense from the storyline standpint, and considering the face women won, it only made sense that the heel men would win.
I thought the match was fine. It wasn’t great, we’ve seen far better Blood and Guts matches. Hell the women’s match was way more enjoyable than this one.
I didn’t care for the finish either. I thought the work to get to the finish was pretty good all around, although again I think you could have left Steven Borden and Kevin Knight out and not missed anything. We don’t need twelve people in this match type. But the finish was kinda lame, and not even the first time we’ve seen it. And if you’re going to have one of the faces surrender, after saying nothing would make them surrender the previous week, I feel like you should at least have the heels go ahead and do everything they were going to do anyway. It’s a bit laughable that the big bad guys would suddenly be nice and respectful to everyone because Copeland surrendered to save his buddies. Well nice to everyone but Darby.
Speaking of Darby, we all knew the second he climbed up the cage that he was going to be thrown from it. It became even more apparent when the tables were stacked up. I’m not really a fan of it because of how predictable it is. There’s no real reason to climb up there in the first place, and there’s especially no reason for Wardlow to follow him up there. Just get back in the ring and have the six-on-five advantage while Darby stands around on top. Or better yet, let’s stop having people fight outside the cage. The women fought outside the cage too.
Stinger’s View: A Bloody Good Night
I know you may read my complaints with both matches and think I wasn’t happy with the show. On the contrary, I very much enjoyed the show as a whole.
I have issues with both matches, of course, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy them. I thought both delivered, though the women put on the better match.
Now while I did think it was all around a great episode, I still think two of these types of matches on the same show is too much. I’ve thought since NXT started doing it and WWF continued. And now for the past two years, AEW does it.
These matches should exist when there’s a reason for it, not because it’s that time of the year. I don’t see why we can’t look at what’s going on and spend a couple of months building a rivalry or series of rivalries that makes sense would culminate in ONE Blood and Guts match. If it fits the women, let it be the women. If it’s a better fit for the men that year, then let the men have it. But shoehorning two matches into one night, when both just came together within the past two weeks, is a little absurd.
I also feel like one takes away from the other and they instantly get compared to one another. It would be better if they either just did one a year, or did the men’s and women’s at different times of the year, or hell even one on Dynamite and one Collision. Or one on Dynamite and one on a pay-per-view.
Overall, this was a good edition of Dynamite.
Let me know what you thought of Blood and Guts if you watched it.
Until next time, this has been Stinger reporting from the rafters of Titanquisitor Hall where there’s blood everywhere, we had two matches and still went 30 minutes over, and Marina Shafir really likes calling Mercedes Mone a pussy.
