AEW Announces The Elite vs. Inner Circle WarGames Match for the ‘Blood & Guts’ AEW Dynamite Special

All Elite Wrestling announced during the AEW Revolution pay-per-view last week that the March 25 episode of AEW Dynamite would feature the first Blood & Guts match, the company’s version of the classic WarGames dual-ring bout. The match will see The Elite and The Inner Circle finally go all-out, as Cody Rhodes, Kenny Omega, Hangman Page and The Young Bucks will take on Chris Jericho, Sammy Guevara, Jake Hager, Santana & Ortiz. The official rules for the match will be listed out on this week’s Dynamite.

For those who don’t know, because WWE has the trademark for the WarGames name, AEW decided to name the match after a comment Vince McMahon made about the promotion during a financial investor’s call last August.

“There will be something we do in terms of a direction of content — more controversy, better storylines, etcetera,” McMahon said at the time. “But at the same time, we’re not gonna go back to the quote ‘Attitude Era,’ and we’re not gonna do blood and guts and things of that nature, such as being done on perhaps a new potential competitor.”

There’s already a bit of drama heading into the match on The Elite’s behalf. The issues between Page and The Bucks carries on past Revolution when, after chasing away Jericho’s faction on Dynamite, Page flipped off Matt Jackson and walked away. To make matters worse Page has to take on Jericho and Guevara (going by “Le Sex Gods”) on Dynamite this week, and will have to pick another partner while Omega is out healing from an injury.

Even though Rhodes’ father Dusty Rhodes was the creator of the WarGames match, WWE managed to get their hands on the trademark when the company purchased WCW back in 2001. The match was seemingly retired after WCW folded, but in 2017 NXT revived and altered the match for its NXT TakeOver: WarGames event. Since then four match have taken place, most recently at the TakeOver: WarGames show during Survivor Series weekend last November.