Welcome to another eWrestlingNews Question of the Day! Tonight, AEW Dynamite will feature one of its most brutal matches as Blood & Guts returns. The Elite’s Young Bucks, Jack Perry, Kazuchika Okada and “Hangman” Adam Page will battle it out with Team AEW’s Swerve Strickland, Mark Briscoe, Darby Allin and The Acclaimed.
My question for you today is “Who should win Blood & Guts?”
Remember to answer with your response in the comments below.
As far as my answer…
Normally, I would say this needs to be the feud-ender. I think Blood & Guts should mostly be used as that last-call, it can’t get any more hardcore than this, follow-up to things like Anarchy in the Arena. However, this just doesn’t feel like the storyline has peaked yet in my mind.
In many ways, I feel like The Elite are only now hitting their stride. They just got their full team, basically. Seeing as how nothing is on the line here, Tony Khan and Kenny Omega and others aren’t involved, and Adam Page is still being kept at a bit of an arm’s distance length…is this really the grand finale? I don’t think so.
Likewise, is this truly the be-all, end-all Team AEW that can be concocted? I love The Acclaimed—everybody does—but when I was mapping out the people who could be in a roster-wide Elite/AEW split, they didn’t come close to the top 5 most important people I’d have booked for Team AEW. Strickland and Allin, sure.
Briscoe doesn’t even rank that high to me. The guy’s the ROH champion, not an AEW champion, and while that’s splitting hairs, I do think of Briscoe as more of a Ring of Honor presence in comparison. Now, if this were Team AEW vs Team ROH, Briscoe would certainly be one of the biggest players. But that’s not the case.
This strikes me as more of a Phase Two start than a storyline-ending climax. I think we’re not only going to see The Elite win, but that they have to. Specifically, I think Page needs to pin Strickland. That way, after Swerve retains the AEW World Championship over Bryan Danielson at All In, Page can go on the attack and get a match booked for the title at All Out a few weeks later.
Ideally, at that point, Page wins the title from Swerve and can eventually drop it to Will Ospreay. In the meantime, The Acclaimed get their tag title shot and lose to The Young Bucks, Allin probably fights Perry for the TNT Championship at All In/Out, and Okada and Briscoe are off doing something else, likely not against each other in any way.
I don’t know how I would end the story of The Elite against AEW, but it would have to involve Omega and/or Khan in some fashion. This just isn’t going in that direction from what I’m seeing. Instead, it’ll just be a fun match to watch where 10 talented wrestlers beat the piss out of each other.
What do you think? Drop your thoughts below!
