AEW Dynamite Match Review: 22 July 2023
Warning: Graphic content.
Blood & Guts by name, blood and guts by nature
Discovery Channel’s iconic Shark Week starts this weekend, so AEW put on an epic Blood & Guts main event to celebrate the gory creatures. And it really didn’t skimp on the gore.
This week Dynamite was broadcast from TD Garden in Boston, Massachusetts, and the Boston crowd definitely lived up to their tough and enthusiastic reputation. It would be pretty hard not to get into what was happening in the main event, but the engagement of the crowd definitely added to the hype and intense vibe.
Image courtesy of All Elite Wrestling
As for the match itself, the best way you could describe it is utter chaos. Picture two rings side-by-side, covered by a cage, with ten wrestlers entering the ring one-by-one until the match descends into madness. It’s as crazy as it sounds.
The two teams going head-to-head were The Golden Elite (Kenny Omega, Kota Ibushi, Adam Page, and Matt & Nick Jackson aka Young Bucks) versus the Blackpool Combat Club (Jon Moxley, Wheeler Yuta, Claudio Castagnoli, Konosuke Takeshita and PAC). It wasn’t smooth sailing though, with PAC walking off at the eleventh hour after using bolt cutters to get himself out of the cage. He was followed by Takeshita, leaving their team to finish off the match two men down. In the end, it spelled defeat for the broken Blackpool Combat Club.
Image courtesy of All Elite Wrestling
One thing that made this match crazy was the use of props. Normally the use of weapons at this level is reserved for a GCW show. From memory, I can’t remember this many props being brought into the AEW ring, and it added an extra layer of goriness. Top of the list? A savage bed of nails, used to deliver pain on more than one occasion. But that wasn’t all. More weapons included thumbtacks, broken glass, a length of chain, a screwdriver, a metal trash can, a humble fork, and a soon-to-be-destroyed table. Thankfully PAC didn’t use the boltcutters on anything but the exit.
It started like a fairly normal match, but the more time went on, the more things turned violent. If everyone joined the ring at once, I think proceedings would have started and ended pretty quickly given how intense things were with all ten wrestlers in the ring. However, having a new wrestler added every five minutes meant the madness built up over the nearly hour-long match. The introduction of the nail bed really signalled a turning point for the violence. The first victim was Omega, who was slammed onto it by Moxley. You could see the blood coming out of his back, showing how savage the weapon is. Then Ibushi moonsaulted onto Moxley on the nail bed in revenge. Special mention to Ibushi for his AEW debut too.
Image courtesy of All Elite Wrestling
At one point, Young Bucks’ Matt ended up on top of the cage outside to get a bit of respite from the chaos. Once he’d caught his breath, he decided to rain down a shower of thumbstacks, with PAC and Claudio both then being slammed onto them by Nick and Page. That must have hurt. Same goes for the multiple suplexes thrown around throughout the match onto the broken glass shattered all over the other side of the ring.
The crowd then chanted for tables, and Nick delivered, pulling one out from under the ring. But this backfired for Young Bucks. Matt was laid out on the propped up table between the two rings, and PAC brutally launched from 20 feet in the air from the edge of the cage on to him. This was particularly savage.
The match culminated in all out scrappiness, blood everywhere, walk-outs and shoes flying off. In the end, it was Page choking out Yuta with a chain which delivered victory for The Golden Elite. This definitely felt like revenge for Page, given Yuta had taken out the pin against him during Double or Nothing earlier in the year.
Was this match pretty violent? Yes. Was it completely epic? Double yes. Not for the faint of heart, but well worth a watch if you can stomach it.
I give this match 5 out of 5 stars:
