AEW star Shawn Spears believes Blood and Guts – AEW’s version of WarGames – is closer to the original WarGames matches produced by NWA’s Jim Crockett Promotions in the 1980s.
Spears, who was part of the first-ever Blood and Guts match on this week’s AEW Dynamite, said that modern pro wrestling fans are accustomed to WWE NXT’s version of the WarGames structure – which has no roof and allows competitors to use foreign objects and fight outside the two rings.
“I’m not sure how many people nowadays, our general audience nowadays, has even seen some of the original WarGames matches,” Spears told Gary Casidy of Inside the Ropes. “I don’t know if they’ve gone back that far. I think what they’re then most accustomed to is what they’ve seen in recent times with the two cages and the open cages, and there’s tables and there’s all this, trash cans, and there’s all these extra things coming into play.
“What we love about what we’re doing in AEW is we are tipping our hat to history. We are going the old school cage. There’s going to be a top on it. There’s not going to be a lot of room for tables, and a lot of room for trashcans and a lot of room for all this. We’re going back to the original style of the original WarGames-type scenario, which is brutally exciting, but it’s also brutally violent.”
Spears and The Pinnacle defeated The Inner Circle to win the inaugural Blood and Guts match. Although most of the match took place inside the structure, MJF and Chris Jericho battled on top of the cage after Tully Blanchard beat up a ref to grab the cage door key. Sammy Guevara eventually surrendered on behalf of his team after MJF threatened to throw Jericho off the top of the cage.
