After another week of action that saw MJF sneak away from DYNAMITE with the AEW International Championship, Darby Allin descend from the rafters to join Team AEW for Blood & Guts, Roderick Strong and Tomohiro Ishii chop the flesh off one another, the debut of Hologram, Thunder Rosa get frustrated yet again by Deonna Purrazzo in their Lumberjack Match, and a tremendous tag team bout between Private Party and The Lucha Brothers. It was a week that showcased the best of what All Elite Wrestling has to offer, but now we head into an example of the most violent thing AEW offers: Blood & Guts!
Tonight AEW returns to Nashville's Bridgestone Arena, the home of the Nashville Predators, to present the return of All Elite Wrestling's showcase of pain and suffering, the night when ten men are enclosed inside a Steel Cage, with two rings encased within the structure, and a plethora of weapons inevitably end up involved. It's The Elite –including “Hangman” Adam Page– facing Team AEW inside Blood & Guts, but that's not all we've got on-hand tonight; “The Learning Tree” Chris Jericho defends the FTW Championship against Minoru Suzuki and Dr. Britt Baker D.M.D renews an old rivalry when she meets Hikaru Shida in the squared circle!
The mayhem begins at 8pm ET/7pm CT on TBS so visit the official AEW YouTube channel to catch highlights from DYNAMITE, RAMPAGE, COLLISION, and Jimmy Jacobs joining RJ City on HEY (EW)! Then we return to Arlington, TX and the Esports Stadium as AEW continues to walk the PATH TO ALL IN: SUMMER SERIES! It kicks off Friday night with ROH's DEATH BEFORE DISHONOR 2024 presentation, rolls in COLLISION on Saturday, then a second day filled with Ring of Honor action on Sunday. It's all about ALL IN: LONDON 2024 and who will stand inside Wembley Stadium on August 25th!
BLOOD & GUTS...
Team AEW (AEW World Champion Swerve Strickland, ROH World Champion Mark Briscoe, The Acclaimed of Anthony Bowens & Max Caster, and Darby Allin)
vs.
The Elite (AEW Continental Champion Kazuchika Okada, TNT Champion Jack Perry, & AEW World Tag Team Champions The Young Bucks of Matthew & Nicholas Jackson) and “Hangman” Adam Page
*1st two wrestlers fight for 5 minutes before new competitors are introduced
*Advantage decided with pre-show coin flip
*Match can only end via submission or surrender after all participants have entered
It has been a winding road to get to Blood & Guts, especially as The Elite made concentrated efforts to remove individuals who could potentially stand up to them. We've watched them show up on a NJPW STRONG show to take out Eddie Kingston, we've watched them assault an already injured Kenny Omega, a man they called a brother, just to make sure there was no chance of him coming back any time soon. They even indefinitely suspended “Hangman” Adam Page several months ago, did their best to put Darby Allin down permanently during Anarchy in the Arena at DOUBLE OR NOTHING 2024, and it was their match with FTR at DYNASTY 2024 that caused the injury putting Dax Harwood on the shelf, which in turn put them on the outs for taking part in Blood & Guts to get their hands on The Young Bucks again.
What the actions of The Elite have resulted in is a very tenuous alliance of individuals who all have their own reasons for stepping into the B&G Cage; for a man like Darby it's a love for All Elite Wrestling and defending what it means to him against the individuals he feels have failed to represent the best of AEW whereas for Swerve, the AEW World Champion, it's as much evening the score for the attacks The Elite have perpetrated against him as it is being the face of Team AEW because he's the World Champion. As ROH World Champion, even before he knew he was fighting Roderick Strong, Mark Briscoe knew he'd have his hands full this week with ROH's DEATH BEFORE DISHONOR 2024 event, and yet was still the first one to officially put his name into the hat for Blood & Guts. He's a man who stands up for what's right because it's right, of course there's lengthy history he has with The Young Bucks that feeds into all of that, as well as the recent issues with Jack Perry stemming from the TNT Championship Ladder Match at FORBIDDEN DOOR 2024.
Then there is The Acclaimed, the men who FTR, as well as their very own mentor Billy Gunn, accused of not taking this entire thing seriously enough given the stakes involved and the violence that takes place inside Blood & Guts. Their focus is becoming the AEW World Tag Champions, an opportunity they earned by beating The Young Bucks in an Eliminator Match, and they seem to see this as another opportunity to get at them without taking in the full breadth of what it means. This Blood & Guts is bigger than the titles around the waist of the individuals involved, it's about power that's been abused, it's retribution for what The Elite have done since the moment they assaulted AEW CEO Tony Khan in Jacksonville, and that is why it's so important for the men of Team AEW to put aside their own tumultuous history and make it work. Darby and Swerve need to put aside the fact one man locked the other inside a coffin less than a year ago, Darby and The Acclaimed need to get past any lingering resentments from their 2022 tensions, any hard feelings about Mark and Swerve's Continental Classic clash, anything that may keep these five disparate individuals from functioning together needs to be cast aside. After all, The Elite are a group all on the same page, well...maybe not all of them...
“Hangman” Adam Page isn't necessarily on the same page as the rest of The Elite, despite his history with The Young Bucks, or perhaps it's because of that past that he's with them for the match but he's not with them. Despite what came before AEW, their shared past in NJPW and ROH, their time in All Elite Wrestling has not been the smoothest of situations. From the REVOLUTION 2020 clash over the AEW World Tag Titles, to the splintering of The Elite to how sides were chosen in the Hangman/Omega battles to their reunion for DOUBLE OR NOTHING 2023's Anarchy in the Arena and last year's Blood & Guts war against The BCC; the dynamic between The Young Bucks and Hangman Page has been chaotic pretty much from the beginning of DYNAMITE but, perhaps for the first time, it's Hangman Page in the driver's seat. The Elite need him tonight more than he needs them, after all Page could really choose to attack Swerve Strickland at any time, this is just a prime opportunity to get the AEW World Champion in a “match” where there is no escape from one another. That's all Hangman cares about, not about The Elite's power struggles or Team AEW's desire to fight against it, he just wants Swerve and everything else falls by the wayside. If there's a wild card in this fight, it's Hangman Page, and everyone on both teams best be wary of what he's willing to do in order to exact a pound of flesh from the AEW World Champion...
ONE-ON-ONE...
Dr. Britt Baker D.M.D vs. Hikaru Shida
April 8, 2020...the world in the midst of an unprecedented situation...All Elite Wrestling finds a way to continue presenting the best professional wrestling on the planet from the safety of the Daily's Place in Jacksonville, FL but also, for just a few weeks, from The Nightmare Factory in Norcross, GA. That's where the original TNT Championship tournament began, it's where Mr. Brodie Lee had some of his earliest matches in AEW, and where “The Murderhawk Monster” Lance Archer was first unleashed in combat. It's also where Dr. Britt Baker D.M.D faced Hikaru Shida in their second singles match, Shida having won the first a few months prior, and where Shida drew first blood.
Now Baker may have lost that match in Norcross but it marked a turning point in her career, and put her on a tremendous run of one-on-one victories, culminating in a rubber match with Shida at DOUBLE OR NOTHING 2021 with the AEW Women's World Championship at stake. Shida entered into this fight having won 27 consecutive singles matches, reigning as Women's World Champion for a (still-standing) record of 372 days with a record (also still-standing) eight title defenses, but it all ended that night when Baker finally shook the monkey off her back and defeated Hikaru Shida to claim the championship.
In the three-plus years since that singles encounter, the two women have met in Four Way Title bouts at ALL OUT 2022 and ALL IN: LONDON 2023, in tag team battles, and they've even stood on the same side of the ring in opposition to The Outcasts, but they've not battled one-on-one in 1,151 days. That changes tonight in Nashville, in the shadow of the Blood & Guts cage, when Dr. Britt Baker D.M.D aims to earn her way to a TBS Championship fight with Mercedes Moné at ALL IN: LONDON 2024. It's quite clear, just listening to Shida's challenge, that there's animosity towards the Good Doctor for believing she can just slide right back into being a championship contender after being absent from competition since her September 16th TBS Championship loss to Kris Statlander. No matter what Baker has meant to All Elite Wrestling over the last five years, there is still a feeling within the locker room that she's got to earn her way to a title fight, and the 3-Time former AEW Women's World Champion aims to make her start tonight on DYNAMITE!
How will The Good Doctor feel after being out of in-ring action for so long, especially when faced with a woman like Shida who has been in constant competition, and who just put Skye Blue on the shelf in their COLLISION match just a few days ago? Stepping into a fight with Shida is a rough way to shake off the ring rust, but that's the hand Dr. Britt Baker D.M.D has been dealt; will she be up to the challenge, or will Hikaru Shida go up 3-1 in their one-on-one series? No doubt the TBS Champion will be keeping a close eye on this fight!
FTW CHAMPIONSHIP MATCH...
“The Learning Tree” Chris Jericho(c) vs. Minoru Suzuki
Big Bill & Bryan Keith banned form ringside
Two years ago Chris Jericho opened the Forbidden Door to one of the most dangerous men in professional wrestling when he needed allies to face Eddie Kingston, Wheeler Yuta, and Shota Umino. That night Chicago, Minoru Suzuki stepped through with a vengeance to help Jericho and Sammy Guevara defeat their opponents. It wasn't MiSu's first fight in All Elite Wrestling, he'd been in wars with Jon Moxley, Bryan Danielson, and Samoa Joe prior to this, but it was his first AEW pay-per-view appearance, and quite the memorable one at that.
It would be a year before Suzuki returned to All Elite Wrestling, but once again it was at the behest of Chris Jericho, this time for a DYNAMITE fight against Top Flight and Action Andretti ahead of a bout with Darby Allin, Sting, and Tetsuya Naito at FORBIDDEN DOOR 2023. Unlike the year prior, Jericho's “Le Suzuki Gods” trio was defeated, this time when Naito pinned Suzuki to score the victory for his team.
With that history in mind it came as little surprise when, ahead of his FORBIDDEN DOOR 2024 bout with Samoa Joe, HOOK, and Katsuyori Shibata, Chris Jericho once again looked to Minoru Suzuki as a partner, this time with Big Bill as their third in lieu of “Bad Apple” Bryan Keith's injury. Much to the dismay of “The Learning Tree”, Suzuki turned him down flat and said the only interest he had was in fighting Jericho, not being his friend. Perhaps Jericho thought it would never come to pass, so he felt comfortable running his mouth about the potential bout, so suffice to say the FTW Champion was quite surprise last week when “The Murder Grandpa” crashed TV Time to inform Chris they had a date this week in Nashville with the FTW Title on the line and Jericho's two branches banned from ringside!
This may be the most dire situation Jericho has been placed in since defeating HOOK for the FTW Championship weeks ago, but the again, if Bryan Keith and Big Bill are only banned from ringside, what's to stop them from getting involved if the match ends up elsewhere? Just look at what the collective unit did during Jericho's Stampede Street Fight against Samoa Joe and where that's left the former AEW World Champion.
Does Jericho have a similar fate in mind for Minoru Suzuki tonight on DYNAMITE, or will we get to see someone choke the air out of the FTW Champion and rip the title away from his disingenuous grasp?
“THE GLAMOUR” DEBUTS...
So just who is Mariah May really? She came into All Elite Wrestling presenting as a total fangirl for “Timeless” Toni Storm, claiming that the AEW Women's World Champion was her inspiration in professional wrestling. With both women beginning their careers in countries other than the United States, Mariah May claimed to have used Toni's footsteps as her guiding path, following them to Japan's Stardom promotion before ultimately ending up here in AEW. Starting in November when she initially appeared on AEW TV, Mariah May has been willing to do anything she could to prove herself to Toni Storm, to show that she was worth Toni's time, and deserving of her approval. At first Toni couldn't even be bothered to watch Mariah's matches, totally dismissive of her first AEW bout on January 3rd, but eventually Storm softened to Mariah's fandom, ultimately embracing it as May proved willing to put herself in harm's way to protect “The Timeless One” and her AEW Women's World Title.
Even Mariah's pre-AEW life from Stardom wasn't enough to shatter the bond that had been cultivated between her and Toni Storm, the Mina Shirakawa of it all just seemed to add another ally to the mix when all was said and done after FORBIDDEN DOOR 2024. After worrying for weeks that she'd have to choose between the two, Mariah ended up being a bridge between them, just hours after advancing in The Owen with a win over Saraya. Mind you, Mariah only entered The Owen with the encouragement of Toni Storm, a curious push given that the prize at the end of the line was a AEW Women's World Title fight at ALL IN: LONDON 2024, but at that point where Storm encouraged May she was still fighting to make sure Mariah chose her over Mina.
Then she beat Hikaru Shida, then she beat Willow Nightingale, then she beat Toni Storm bloody in front of the whole world with a smile on her face. So who was Mariah May really during all this time? Who is she at her core? Apparently tonight on DYNAMITE we may find out that answer when “The Glamour” makes her debut for All Elite Wrestling!
MJF TALKS...AND TALKS...AND TALKS...
It's that time of the week again, the time when the AEW faithful are graced with the presence of Maxwell Jacob Friedman as he regales them with his brags, boasts, and BS for what feels like hours. There are few things MJF loves more than hearing himself talk, and we are all lucky enough to get to hear it again tonight on DYNAMITE when he no doubt rambles on about his AEW International Championship victory over “The Aerial Assassin” Will Ospreay. He will say it was easy, that he didn't break a sweat, but the reality played out on international television for all the world to see, and it absolutely involved Max using that Dynamite Diamond Ring to squeak out a win with just two seconds left on the clock.
The world saw MJF in need of an oxygen mask after the bout ended, saw him barely able to stand on his own power, but they also saw him with another title in his possession. He found a way to do it, it took him fifty-nine minutes and fifty-eight seconds to get that opening, but Max certainly made the most of it when he got it. So as a reward, we all get to hear him brag about his greatness, but as unfortunate as that may be for the rest of the world to have to hear MJF run his mouth, the reality is that it gets increasingly harder to argue with what he has to say.
He is the longest reigning AEW World Champion of all-time, he is the most successful World Champion of all-time, he is the only Dynamite Diamond Ring winner in AEW history, and he has beaten all of the individuals whose names he's rattled off ad nauseam. Maxwell Jacob Friedman is a good professional wrestler, actually he's one of the best of this generation as painful as it is to admit, but he's committed himself to being an utter scumbag as a result of the indignities he believes he was subjected to by the fans, and now we all get to be punished by his words tonight on DYNAMITE...
The night gets underway at 8pm ET/7pm CT on TBS so visit the official AEW YouTube channel to watch highlights from DYNAMITE, RAMPAGE, COLLISION, as well as Jimmy Jacobs appearing on HEY (EW) with RJ City! AEW then comes back to Arlington's Esports Stadium for the PATH TO ALL IN: SUMMER SERIES, starting with ROH's DEATH BEFORE DISHONOR 2024 on Friday, followed by COLLISION on Saturday, and wrapping the week with a second day of Ring of Honor action (www.rohtix.com) come Sunday! ALL IN: LONDON 2024 will be here before we know it, who will join Bryan Danielson, Swerve Strickland, Mariah May, and Toni Storm at Wembley Stadium on August 25th?
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