Did AEW’s “Blood and Guts” Show Damage The Business?
All Elite Wrestling does things differently to World Wrestling Entertainment. It has to by default. The purpose of founding the company was to give fans a genuine alternative to WWE. It took AEW a few months to find its feet and its true identity after a shaky few months at the end of 2019, but it’s done so now. AEW (ironically enough) is the more “raw” of the two companies. It’s edgier, and it’s willing to take more risks. It showed that a week ago by staging a War Games-style “Blood and Guts” match on network television. Fans of the bloodier, more violent era of pro wrestling loved it. If reports are to be believed, WWE’s upper management hated it with a passion.
It’s unlikely that Vince McMahon watched the match himself, so we can only guess who the other names in WWE’s “upper management” who might have done so and voiced their opinion are. The sources for the story are anonymous but have spoken to Sean Ross Sapp, Dave Scherer of PWInsider, and Dave Meltzer. The specific criticism that appears in all three cases is a feeling that the match “set the business back thirty years.” That’s a very bold statement and isn’t borne out by the facts. This match was indeed a throwback, but not in the ways WWE would like you to believe it was.
The fact of the matter is that during the Attitude Era of the late 1990s and early 2000s, wrestlers bled all the time. “Stone Cold” Steve Austin may never have got over as big as he did had he not bled profusely in his WrestleMania match with Bret Hart, which solidified his face turn and led to the creation of the iconic “blood from a stone” t-shirt. The epic wars between John “Bradshaw” Layfield and Eddie Guerrero were defined by the buckets of blood that were split during them. McMahon himself bled during his WrestleMania matches with Hulk Hogan and Shawn Michaels. His son Shane McMahon is no stranger to a crimson mask either. Triple H – a long-time devotee of Ric Flair – bled in almost every pay-per-view match he was involved in during the peak years of his career. Attitudes to blood in WWE might have changed a lot given the company’s “PG” approach to programming and an increasing awareness of blood-borne diseases, but to suggest that their product wasn’t violent and bloody as recently as fifteen years ago is wide of the mark.
AEW probably didn’t need to go as far as it did with the blood in the “Blood & Guts” match. Even the name of the match itself was a joke, playing off the fact that McMahon referred to them as a “blood and guts” company during a media call more than a year ago. Blood is still most effective in pro wrestling when it means something, and it’s used sparingly, and that’s not the road that AEW took with it on this special edition of Dynamite. Every member of the Pinnacle and the Inner Circle bladed and bled whether there was any compelling reason for them to do so or not. Dax Harwood opened up a gusher within minutes of the match starting. Sammy Guevara started bleeding shortly after botching a springboard move from the ropes, again seemingly without much justification for doing so. Cash Wheeler appeared to attempt to outdo his tag partner by bleeding even more heavily than Harwood did. MJF’s face was pouring with blood by the time the match came to an end, although he did at least have the excuse of being stabbed with a fork by Ortiz. Not everybody needed to blade, but everybody did. The result was a gruesome, gory spectacle – but a gruesome, gory spectacle is exactly what AEW set out to give us with the match. It was shocking, but only because it’s been years since American audiences have seen this much blood on network television.
AEW is a company that prides itself on pushing the envelope and taking risks. So much of the company’s imagery – including its annual “Double or Nothing” pay per view – is focused on casinos and gambling. It even managed to release an online slots game before it’s released a pro wrestling video game. The AEW online slots game has been available for around two months now, whereas we still don’t have a release date for the “proper” game. That’s great news for customers at Rose Slots for New Zealand players but less good for PlayStation and Xbox owners. There’s a reason they go with so much casino and online slots imagery, though, and that’s because they’re never afraid to roll the dice. Company owner Tony Khan can’t have known whether this decidedly non-PG approach to the match would work, but he was happy to take a chance. Did it work? Only the long-term effect will tell us that, but the early indications are that it didn’t hurt.
Suggesting the standing of pro wrestling as a whole has been damaged by the match is absurd. If that had been the case, the audience would have tuned out in droves long before the match reached its (admittedly disappointing) conclusion. They didn’t. They stuck with it and gave AEW the number one spot on cable for the night – the first time that’s happened in the short history of the company. If the match really has taken us thirty years back in time, perhaps that’s what wrestling fans are looking for. The point has been made several times that long-term fans aren’t happy with the occasionally childish, cartoon-like presentation of WWE and its top stars, and they’d prefer something grittier. If they have to go back in time to find it, so be it. WWE’s top brass might not enjoy the direction of the company’s biggest rival, but they’re not supposed to. The point is to provide an alternative, and that’s what AEW is doing. In doing so, they’re growing their audience slowly but surely. AEW is indeed “the blood and guts company” – and it’s proud of it. Don’t expect that to change any time soon – especially when it’s proving to be a hit with viewers.
