AEW Blood & Guts is an annual professional wrestling television special produced by the American promotion All Elite Wrestling (AEW) since 2021. The event airs mid-year as a special episode of the promotion's flagship weekly television program, Wednesday Night Dynamite; it originally aired on TNT in 2021, but has aired on TBS since 2022. 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, with the 2023 event held in July. Beginning with the 2022 event, a special episode of Friday Night Rampage titled Royal Rampage has been taped in conjunction with the Blood & Guts special.
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 SmackDowns upcoming move to broadcast television. McMahon responded to Katz's question:
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 & Guts," a play on McMahon's term. During Revolution on February 29, 2020, AEW announced that the March 25 episode of Wednesday Night Dynamite would be subtitled Blood & 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 inaugural event was originally scheduled to take place on March 25, 2020, at the Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey, but was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Over a year later, Blood & Guts was officially rescheduled to air as the May 5, 2021, episode of Dynamite on TNT and be held at Daily's Place in Jacksonville, Florida due to the ongoing pandemic. The event returned in June 2022 and was held at the Little Caesars Arena in Detroit, Michigan due to AEW's resumption of live touring in July 2021. Instead of airing on TNT, the 2022 event aired on TBS as Dynamite moved to TBS in January 2022. The 2023 event was then held in July.
Beginning with the 2022 event, a special episode of Friday Night Rampage on TNT titled Royal Rampage has been taped in conjunction with the Blood & Guts special.
Concept
The concept of the event comes from the Blood and Guts match, and each main event match of the card is contested under the Blood and Guts stipulation. 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 match features two rings enclosed by a steel cage, which 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 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.