AEW Blood and Guts
# AEW Blood and Guts

AEW Blood and Guts is an annual professional wrestling television special produced by the American promotion All Elite Wrestling (AEW). The event airs as a special episode of the promotion's flagship weekly television program, Wednesday Night Dynamite. The concept of the event comes from the Blood and Guts match, which is AEW's version of the classic WarGames match in which two teams fight inside a roofed cell structure that surrounds two rings placed side-by-side. Each main event match of the card is contested under the Blood and Guts stipulation.

The inaugural event was originally scheduled to occur in March 2020, but due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it was delayed and instead took place in May 2021. The event returned in 2022, which moved it back to June.

## History

On July 25, 2019, World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc. (WWE), as a publicly traded company, conducted a conference call to announce its second-quarter fiscal year 2019 results. During the call, Eric Katz of Wolfe Research, LLC, asked WWE Chairman and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Vince McMahon questions regarding naming Eric Bischoff and Paul Heyman as Executive Directors to WWE and its relationship to the future of WWE content, especially with stricter Broadcast Standards and Practices at the Fox network for SmackDown's upcoming move to broadcast television. McMahon responded to Katz's question:

   We're going to be a bit edgier, but still remain in the PG environment. We just haven't come anywhere close actually to going into another level. So that will be something we'll do in terms of direction of content, more controversy, better storylines, et cetera. But at the same time, we're not going to go back to the Attitude Era, and we're not going to do blood and guts and things of that nature such as being done on perhaps a new potential competitor. We're just not going to go back to that gory crap that we graduated from. And again, a more sophisticated product, again, attracting much better writers and attracting better management, and things of that nature. So again, as I said, I feel really good about it.

The term "blood and guts" used by McMahon was perceived as a reference to rival wrestling promotion All Elite Wrestling (AEW). On November 13, 2019, AEW filed a trademark for "Blood and Guts," a play on McMahon's term. During Revolution on February 29, 2020, AEW announced that the March 25 episode of Dynamite would be subtitled Blood and Guts, and feature the promotion's first WarGames match, billed as a "Blood and Guts match" since the WarGames trademark is owned by WWE. The WarGames match features two rings enclosed by a steel cage and was developed by wrestler Virgil Runnels, better known as "The American Dream" Dusty Rhodes, the father of former AEW executive vice president and in-ring talent Cody Rhodes.

The rules for the Blood and Guts match are based on the classic WarGames format from Jim Crockett Promotions, and not the modern WWE format. The notable format differences between the classic Crockett rules and the modern WWE rules are an enclosed cage with a roof (which was removed in modern versions) and the match can only be won with a submission or surrender. Like the classic Crockett format, a pin situation is not a win condition.

## Events

| # | Event | Date | City | Venue | Main Event |
| - | - | - | - | - | - |
| 1 | Blood and Guts (2021) | May 5, 2021 | Jacksonville, Florida | Daily's Place | The Inner Circle (Chris Jericho, Jake Hager, Sammy Guevara, Santana and Ortiz) vs. The Pinnacle (MJF, Wardlow, Shawn Spears, Cash Wheeler and Dax Harwood) (with Tully Blanchard) in a Blood and Guts match |
| 2 | Blood and Guts (2022) | June 29, 2022 | Detroit, Michigan | Little Caesars Arena | The Jericho Appreciation Society (Chris Jericho, Jake Hager, Sammy Guevara, Daniel Garcia, Matt Menard, and Angelo Parker) vs. Eddie Kingston, Santana, Ortiz, and Blackpool Combat Club (Jon Moxley, Claudio Castagnoli, and Wheeler Yuta) in a Blood and Guts match |
| 3 | Blood and Guts (2023) | July 19, 2023 | Boston, Massachusetts | TD Garden | The Golden Elite (Kenny Omega, Matt Jackson, Nick Jackson, "Hangman" Adam Page, and Kota Ibushi) vs. Blackpool Combat Club (Jon Moxley, Claudio Castagnoli, and Wheeler Yuta), Konosuke Takeshita, and Pac in a Blood and Guts match |
