Kayfabe.Ink

Watched my first Blood & Guts last night. Well, half of it, anyway, about which more later. And I have questions.

I was excited to watch the women’s match because it featured so many of my favorite AEW wrestlers, and, as I’ve complained before, both here and on Bluesky, I don’t feel like the women in AEW get as much of the spotlight as they should. So it’s rare that I’ll get to see Kris Statlander, Willow Nightengale, Thekla, Queen Aminata and Persephone all wrestle on the same night. In fact it pretty much never happens. So I had to tune in despite the fact that I usually don’t dig extreme matches, with the barbed wire and the glass and the Legos—sorry, toy blocks.

And I really enjoyed this. Which brings me to the question: why? Part of what allows me to enjoy wrestling is the knowledge that the violence is fake, so why did I enjoy this match so much when there was SO MUCH BLOOD? Like, Megan Bayne was actually kind of hard to look at with her face just absolutely covered in blood.

I think because it’s a great story. At the end, when the faces held their hands aloft, bloody but unbowed, having overcome extreme adversity, it was kind of inspiring. Also the fact that the match was won by babyface Kris Statlander wrapping barbed wire around Julia Hart’s head through her open mouth and then tugging on it was slightly disturbing and also good storytelling: how far will you go to win? And what will it cost you? (I see rumors swirling about Statlander joining the Death Riders, which I think would be great not only for the storytelling but for the Death Riders as a faction, since they’d have two women and not just a bunch of guys who get to wrestle all the time and Marina Shafir who gets a match like once a month.) I liked Mercedes calling out Shafir’s mascot status in the Death Riders in their promo, and I hope this storyline is going somewhere.

Also loved the “Bandido goes apeshit” promo, and then I called it a night because a)I’m old and I was tired and b)I’m just not intersted in watching Will Ospreay or Darby Allin wrestle since I learned what they’ve been credibly accused of by women. I never really got Ospreay’s popularity in the first place, so that’s not much of a loss for me, but I really liked Darby Allin’s work before I learned more about what kind of person Samuel Ratsch is. Why can’t I separate the art from the artist and enjoy Darby Allin getting thrown off the top of the cage?

It’s an interesting question because of course I know that the characters wrestlers play are not who they are, and Darby is very good at his job, but I simply can’t overlook him being an abusive boyfriend. He’s good at his job, but there are SO MANY wrestlers out there who are not abusive partners and who could be as good as Darby Allin if given the same opportunities he’s had. But Darby continues to take up spots on the card. Essentially he’s taking up space that I’d rather see filled by someone who’s not a piece of shit.