I haven’t watched much WWE this year outside of most “premium live events,” but I’ve kept up, more or less, through YouTube highlights and such. I’m sure that means there’ll be a lot of stans for the TKO team telling me I’m a hater or some such nonsense after they’re done reading what I have to say.
I don’t care.
Any pay-per-view, PLE, Saturday Night’s Main Event, or three-hour special on TBS, whatever it may be, should feature the best matches. They should be the ones that stand out, that make fans jump to their feet, that make someone’s jaw drop, and the clips go viral online. This month is a particularly salient time to look at both major promotions and their women’s divisions, as they held their Wargames matches roughly two weeks apart. AEW, thanks to WWE’s copyright on the legendary Dusty Rhodes, named its event “Blood and Guts” to embrace the criticism the now-disgraced former WWE Chairman, Vince McMahon, made about AEW. WWE, of course, has used War Games and the Black Sabbath song “War Pigs” every year for developmental group NXT and, later, at Survivor Series.Â
The fact that War Pigs is an anti-war song flies over the heads of WWE executives the same way Ronald Reagan’s 1984 campaign team failed to comprehend what Bruce Springsteen meant with Born in the USA. Hardly shocking, I guess, considering right-wingers run WWE. Anyway, I digress.
Watching both matches from the female stars of each promotion, it’s almost impossible to believe they were competing in the same type of match. The dozen AEW wrestlers in the Blood and Guts match—Kris Statlander, Willow Nightingale, Harley Cameron, Mina Shirakawa, Toni Storm, and Jamie Hayter on the face side, Megan Bayne, Marina Shafir, Skye Blue, Julia Hart, Thekl,a and Mercedes Monè on the heel side—put together a nearly hour-long violent masterpiece. Each woman who entered the match did so with urgency, not taking time to perform a slow entrance or greet fans. Each woman who entered came in armed and with a plan. If there was any setup, it wasn’t done in such a ridiculous way that it looked like “flippy moves,” but instead as something meant to hurt.
War is violent. It’s not some sanitized, sterilized clash between two sides. Moments like the one above are just that: applied violence. Even when there was a bit of comedy, like Harley pulling out her Mini Monè puppet and Mercedes ripping it away, Harley’s fist revealed brass knuckles she used to deck the Ultimo Champion. “Blood and Guts” also follows the original rules of Wargames in that you can only submit or surrender. No pinfalls. It wasn’t supposed to be a regular match, whereas WWE’s stipulations make it look like a very big cage match. And when it came down to the crunch, how did the winning side get their victory in AEW’s Wargames? They forced a surrender by using the sort of tactics one would see in an action film. Shirakawa was held in the reverse sleeper known as “Mother’s Milk” by Shafir, while Bayne used the TBS championship belt to whip Mina. Meanwhile, Blue, Har,t and Thekla held Storm back, giving us this scene of Toni screaming and fighting as Mina was beaten and choked before Storm surrendered for their team to save her partner.
Many of the women were bloodied. They had endured some incredibly painful violence. And yet, after the match, even the losers gleefully posted photos of themselves getting stitched up by medical staff in the back. The smiles couldn’t be contained because they knew they had fought a masterpiece. The story was told, and the ending, as noted, was worthy of a film. They were given the chance to perform in the exact match that the men did, and they did it just as well, if not better (I honestly thought this one was, overall, a better match).
Fast forward to tonight, November 29th, and compare that match with the women’s War Games match at Survivor Series. A slow, plodding, unimaginative affair with little that could be called violence. It felt very paint-by-numbers, with even the high points overly teased for little payoff. Iyo Sky is putting a trash can on herself after a semi-ridiculous setup where Rhea Ripley lifted AJ Lee on her shoulders to hand Sky the trash can, only for her to do the most extended possible tease before putting it on and conveniently diving into the heel team like a bowling ball hitting a strike on the pins. It was cartoonish. Everyone looked like they did their best not to make anything even appear to hurt. Here you are, with some highly talented people (and Nia Jax) in the ring, and it was just powder puff games, not War Games.
I am not saying everyone needs to bleed, or that it has to look like The Sandman and Terry Funk had a hardcore match at the ECW Arena, but if this “dangerous match” is to have meaning, there has to be some impact. It just did not have any menace, danger, or anything that would remotely make a fan think there was a point, that any of these women hated the others. AEW had a lot of running feuds in that match, from four teams in the women’s tag team championship tournament all participating to Statlander and Mercedes, Harley and Mercedes, and Hayter and Thekla as well. WWE had two patched together teams with, as best as I can tell, little going on besides Charlotte/Alexa feuding with Asuka/Kairi, with a dash of Iyo and the Kabuki Warriors fighting as well. Becky and AJ have what is supposed to be a major feud, but I can’t think of a single thing either of them did to the other that could be considered violent. It’s bad storytelling, and either the WWE women were being kept from doing more to each other, or they were too worried about acting roles to risk any harm to their bodies.
Two years ago, AEW was dealing with a rash of injuries and a spiral caused by the Brawl Out incident. The women were not featured much on television despite a solid division being built up. Today, it’s arguable that Toni Storm and Mercedes Monè are easily two of the top five stars of AEW, alongside Swerve Strickland, Hangman Page and Jon Moxley. The other talents in the women’s division have put on great matches in this tag team tournament, and several of them have fought in full-blown intergender matches with the men without looking out of place at all. There are very few people who look at Marina Shafir, Willow Nightingale, Kris Statlander, and Megan Bayne, for example, and not feel like they are entirely competent to tangle with the men. Once upon a time, that could be said about some of WWE’s top women, but outside of Rhea Ripley, it doesn’t feel that way anymore. There’s a difference between being safe, as in not doing anything stupid to injure yourself, and playing it safe, where you work so hard at nothing hurting that nothing even looks like it hurts. The former is commendable, but the latter is not professional wrestling. It felt like watching circus performers tonight at Survivor Series. To me, it sealed my belief that AEW’s women’s division has fully lapped WWE’s in every way, from storytelling to promos to the wrestling itself.
Because, really, if someone just won a Wargames match, shouldn’t it look like a war took place?
And not like you barely broke a sweat?
Thad Zajac has written on occasion for PW Mania since 2015. He can be found on Bluesky at @lettersfromthewasteland.org, and at his website, Letters From The Wasteland, where he provides commentary on politics and pop culture.Â
