BLOOD AND GUTS

May 5, 2022

Q. T. Marshall . . . shows himself to be a perfectly solid worker and very much deserving of a high-profile feud with Cody.

Jungle Boy . . . gives us a glimpse (however brief) of why he’s one of the very few “can’t miss” prospects to be a future star.

Maxwell Jacob Friedman . . . bleeds like crazy, but ultimately wins thanks to a combo of being smarter and more devious than the thirty-year veteran.

JON MOXLEY/EDDIE KINGSTON vs. KENNY OMEGA/MICHAEL NAKAZAWA

This isn’t anything amazing, but it’s fun to watch this play out. Nak doesn’t have a prayer against King or Mox when it comes to wrestling or brawling, so he sticks to cheap heat sort of things like the low blow that lets Omega work over King and the cheap shot from the apron when Omega whips him into the ropes. When he’s face-to-face with Mox, he (and everyone else) knows that he’s got no chance of winning. Considering the dick things that Nak had done when Omega had the match under control, Mox is actually pretty merciful in how quickly he ends it. Kenny and Eddie certainly aren’t ideal opponents for each other, but they do all right in the short time that they have. King does a fine job selling the beating that Kenny puts on him, along with the few things that Nak does to try to help out, and Kenny trying to light him up with chops was a good enough way to let Eddie make a comeback and tag in Mox to kick off the finish run. The match does its job of letting Mox and King get a win, without hurting Kenny or diminishing his heat, and gets out of the way.

CODY RHODES vs. Q. T. MARSHALL

If nothing else, one can point to this match as an example of Q. T. being a lot better than he’s typically booked to be. Cody wants to throw down and just throttle him, but Marshall remembers that it’s supposed to be a wrestling match and uses Cody’s anger and recklessness to get himself the advantage by wrestling Cody. Cody goes up to the top rope early on, and Q. T. is still relatively fresh and does a Kurt Angle-style suplex off the top to take over. He also smartly dodges Cody’s attempt at the Disaster Kick and when Cody goes for broke with the slingshot cutter, he counters him into the Cross Rhodes for a near fall. Cody counters the Diamond Cutter with a backslide, and Q. T. rolls through that into a buckle bomb. There are a couple of odd moments here, the main one being just after Arn Anderson gets ejected for running Q. T. into the post. Cody tries to pick up where Arn left off and Q. T. cuts him off with a standing dropkick, it makes sense for Q. T. sticking to wrestling, but it would have seemed more appropriate for him to use a foul, or even have one of his lackeys give an assist while the ref was tied up. The Tombstone reversal sequence that Cody wins and sets up the finish run is OK for the most part, Q. T. puts it over perfectly, and it’s a nice lead in for the Cross Rhodes near fall, but it wasn’t necessary to stretch it out for as long as they did.

The finish puts over Cody as strong as ever, and it doesn’t diminish what Q. T. accomplishes in the match, but it comes pretty close to it. After Q. T. kicks out of the Cross Rhodes, Cody does the figure four and taps him out without having done a single thing to work the leg over. It comes off like they’d decided that they’d done enough to give Q. T. some rub and went to a finish that would make the fans happy. But sending them home happy didn’t need to be amongst their intended goals since (A. This wasn’t the blowoff to the feud and, (B. They have the angle afterwards with Cody getting layed out. It’d have been just as easy for Cody to win in a more fluke manner, such as a flash cradle or a surprise reversal, and offer Q. T. a handshake or some sign of respect, and then have Ogogo lay him out. Cody still gets his win, Q. T. doesn’t come out looking bad at all, and the feud is pushed forward.

BRITT BAKER vs. JULIA HART

There’s really no reason for this to be on the main TV show, seeing as it’s a complete squash for the future women’s champion. The only thing that Julia gets to do is duck a lariat, and charge into Britt’s sling blade. Why even bother with a sub-two-minute squash like this? Nobody thinks Julia has a prayer against the top contender to Shida’s title, and there’s nothing that happens in the match that even gives her a glimmer of hope.

CHRISTOPHER DANIELS/FRANKIE KAZARIAN vs. JUNGLE BOY/LUCHASAURUS vs. BRIAN PILLMAN Jr./GRIFF GARRISON vs. MAX CASTER/ANTHONY BOWENS (#1 Contenders Match for the AEW World Tag Team Titles)

Aside from the opening wrestling sequence between Kazarian and Jungle Boy, and watching Luchasaurus clean house on the Acclaimed, there isn’t much to see here. It doesn’t go particularly long, and nobody really stands out as either a weak link or an obvious favorite. Caster and Bowens double team Daniels while Kazarian watches on the apron, but he’ll rush right in to break up a pinfall after even the most perfunctory move. There’s some nice timing to some of their spots, such as Pillman hitting Jungle Boy with the springboard lariat for a nice near fall. But as a whole the match is sorely lacking in story and in compelling work. The storyline is leading up to Daniels and Kazarian getting a title shot, which they achieve by winning this, but it would have been more effective for them to go over any one of these teams in a decent ten-minute-long TV match.

Blood and Guts: MAXWELL JACOB FRIEDMAN/WARDLOW/DAX HARWOOD/CASH WHEELER/SEAN SPEARS vs. CHRIS JERICHO/SAMMY GUEVARA/JAKE HAGER/SANTANA/ORTIZ

Although it’s not an intentional thing, it’s more than a little appropriate that this is taking place in Jacksonville, the same city where Sting’s Squadron went to war with the Dangerous Alliance. Despite AEW having to rename the match, and even more so with the goofy name they came up with, this is the best match of this sort from any promotion since that fateful night in May of 1992. It’s just a bloody and hateful affair, with enough smart touches and inventive spots to be entertaining the whole way through. Dax and Cash bleed buckets, Sammy makes the most out of having two rings to work with, Spears and Jericho bring the plunder in the form of chairs and a bat, and Wardlow and Hager do a nearly perfect job of building up to their eventual showdown. It starts with Wardlow easily handling Sammy, Ortiz, and Santana. Then Hager comes in on the other side and does the same to Dax, Cash, and Spears, leaving each team’s biggest man as the only ones left standing. FTR makes good use of the fact that the cage is a little bit larger than the ring by throwing Sammy, and later Santana, over the top and getting them stuck between the cage and the apron, to keep their one-person advantage.

This was clearly put together with the idea of paying respect to the history of the match, with there being plenty of references to previous matches. The spike piledriver is right out of the inaugural War Games from 1987. Spears taking apart the turnbuckle to use as a weapon is a direct homage to the finish of the 1992 match, and luckily for Spears, even though it backfires on him too, it doesn’t result in him getting arm barred and having to submit. The finish with the babyfaces surrendering in order to save Jericho from doom is a direct callback to the Horsemen doing the same thing in 1997 to save Flair, as well as MJF being just as much a man of his word as Curt Hennig was.

Some people won’t care for the execution of the finish and seeing Jericho land on an obvious crash pad certainly ends this with something of a bitter taste, but the actual setup to the finish is very well done. The Inner Circle could have won the match any number of times after Jericho enters the cage. At one point Max was completely on his own. Spears was out after Sammy’s coast to coast dropkick, FTR were both down after the spike piledrivers from Santana and Ortiz, and Wardlow was down after Jericho took the bat to him. But instead of winning the match, which would have been the ultimate humiliation for MJF and the exact revenge that the Inner Circle wanted, Jericho and friends decide to have fun with him first and gouge him open with a fork and then play to the fans. Hell, Hager had Spears tapping out from his ankle lock before the match even “officially” started. MJF retreating up to the roof of the cage seems on point for him, but he and Tully are both devious enough to have planned it out, knowing full well that Jericho would chase him up there. Jericho could have stayed inside the cage and kept his team at a one-man advantage and forced MJF to watch Spears or Dax submit and expose him as a sham “leader,” and kill the Pinnacle right out the gate. MJF’s foul to get out of the Walls of Jericho is another smart touch that seems to indicate that Tully had a hand in getting them ready for the match. MJF busts Jericho open with the ring, threatens to assist Jericho in taking a flying leap, and Sammy surrenders. But before going that route, MJF tries tapping him out to his Salt of the Earth armbar, and only resorts to blackmail when he can’t make Jericho submit. Despite the mediocre fallout (both from Jericho’s landing and also the follow up match at the PPV where Inner Circle gets revenge), the match proper is thirty-three minutes of hate, blood, and brutality that absolutely deserves to be called “War Games.” ***3/4

Conclusion: The main event is enough of a reason to seek this out, anyone who’s only seen Elimination Chamber matches or the NXT versions of the match definitely ought to watch this to see what a real War Games match is all about!