AEW Dynamite: Blood and Guts Review - June 29, 2022

By Graham "GSM" Matthews

Orange Cassidy def. "All Ego" Ethan Page

I was wondering why Page picked up a rare singles win on Elevation earlier this week and now we know why. At any rate, it was reported by Fightful last week that Cassidy was set to debut new entrance music soon and it happened here. However, it's not exactly "new" since he used it on the independent scene, which is pretty cool. The match itself was enjoyable and the crowd was hot for Cassidy. He had a hell of a performance in defeat against Will Ospreay at Forbidden Door, so this was a well-deserved win.

Christian Cage Addressed the Audience; Luchasaurus def. Serpentico

Heel Christian has quickly become one of the best things in all of AEW at the moment. His mic work is on another level and the fans are eating it up. He didn't explain what he said to Luchasaurus last week that caused Luchasaurus to walk to the back with him, but hopefully we'll find out in time. Instead, Luchasaurus came out with a new black mask and Kane-sounding music, making quick work of Serpentico once the bell rang. This is a heel pairing I can get behind and I'm intrigued to see where they'll go with this next.

Danhausen and ROH World Tag Team Champions/AAA World Tag Team Champions/IWGP Tag Team Champions FTR def. Max Caster and Gunn Club (Austin and Colten Gunn)

When was the last standard tag team match FTR had on AEW TV? They've had nothing but multi-man matches for the last month or two, so I'm ready for them to start facing tag teams again without all of the other nonsense. That said, this was fun while it lasted despite not being the smoothest encounter (there's plenty of room for improvement when it comes to Gunn Club's in-ring work). I hope the aftermath of the match leads to an Acclaimed babyface turn because they're incredibly over and don't need Gunn Club as their allies anymore (as if they ever needed them in the first place).

AEW TBS Champion Jade Cargill def. Leila Grey

Stokley Hathaway issued an open challenge for the AEW TBS Championship on Jade Cargill's last night on Twitter and apparently it was answered by Grey via email. I'm not sure if Grey has appeared on AEW TV before, but she has been a regular on Dark and Elevation for the last year or so. As expected, this was a total squash, but the post-match angle was interesting with Grey seemingly aligning with Cargill and Kiera Hogan to lay out Athena and Kris Statlander. I assume she'll be the newest "baddie" until Red Velvet returns from injury.

Eddie Kingston, Santana, Ortiz and Blackpool Combat Club (AEW Interim World Champion Jon Moxley, Claudio Castagnoli and ROH Pure Champion Wheeler Yuta) def. Jericho Appreciation Society (Chris Jericho, Sammy Guevara, Daniel Garcia, Jake Hager, "Daddy Magic" Matt Menard and "Cool Hand" Angelo Parker) in a Blood and Guts Match

I honestly didn't remember what I thought of last week's Blood and Guts main event until I looked back at my review of it, but I found this one to be a vast improvement. There was plenty of violence, entertaining action, memorable moments, and the crowd was electric from start to finish. It was slightly slow early on, but that's almost always the case with WarGames matches. Everything happening inside the cage once certain people starting climb to the top became irrelevant, but what we got on top was worthwhile and the finish was excellently executed with Claudio picking up the win for his team (robbing Kingston of that moment in the process). Claudio vs. Kingston has potential and seems like the direction to go in, but all I ask is that the babyfaces move away from the Jericho Appreciation Society stuff after this. Seeing is believing, though.

Overall Show

The first hour of this show was a random assortment of stuff to kill time before Blood and Guts, which they dedicated the entire second hour to again. Despite that, I thought this was a strong show because the crowd was hot for almost all of it and I had fun watching it. Obviously, Blood and Guts ended up delivering as well. You can't do this formula often (and they don't), but it worked for this week. My only gripe is that they moved on from Forbidden Door extremely quickly and hardly acknowledged anything that happened at the event, so maybe they shouldn't do Blood and Guts on a post-pay-per-view show in the future.

SEE MORE: Dynamite Reviews