AEW Blood & Guts Proves to Be a Ratings Success

The ratings are in for last night’s AEW Dynamite, and it looks like plenty of fans tuned in to see the first-ever Blood & Guts Match as the main event. For the first time since Dynamite premiered the episode was the No. 1 overall show on cable, drawing a 0.42 rating with 1.09 million fans. It did not break the show’s ratings record — that still belongs to the Oct. 2, 2019 premiere with 0.68 — but it did get the show back up over a million viewers after dropping down to 889,000 last week.

The show culminated in The Pinnacle defeating The Inner Circle in the ultra-violent two-ringed steel cage match. MJF forced Sammy Guevara to surrender by threatening to throw Chris Jericho off the roof of the cage, then tossed the 50-year-old through the entrance ramp anyway.

Jericho spoke about his excitement for the match in an interview with ComicBook last week.

“Blood & Guts is a little bit different,” Jericho said when comparing it to WCW’s WarGames. “Even just in the way that it’s constructed. You’ll see that on Wednesday. I’ve been in a lot of first matches before. The first Elimination Chamber, the first Money in the Bank, the first Stadium Stampede, so I’m no stranger to that.

“And anytime you get a match that’s never happened before from a stipulation standpoint, it’s exciting because there’s really no rules,” he continued. “It’s a little bit of a detriment in as far as you can’t go back and watch old versions to get ideas from because there haven’t been any other versions. So I think all across the board, we’ve really built it up properly. The angle is very hot. It’s the perfect timing to have this type of match.”

Coming off that episode, AEW has announced a stacked card for next week’s edition of Dynamite including three title matches. You can see the card below:

• AEW TNT Championship: Darby Allin vs. Miro
• IWGP United States Championship: Jon Moxley vs. Yuji Nagata
• AEW World Tag Team Championships: The Young Bucks vs. SCU
• Orange Cassidy vs. PAC (AEW World Championship No. 1 contender’s match)
• Cody Rhodes Double or Nothing announcement

AEW will return to pay-per-view on May 30 with Double or Nothing at Daily’s Place in Jacksonville. The show will run with a capacity crowd for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic began.