Each time a young promotion comes along that decides to take a more intense, violent, and/or mature approach to storylines and matches, old-timers will speak out against it.
Usually, when the promotion is formed, it’s created from wrestlers who were once in said old-timer’s larger promotion. The owner or booker of the said promotion will often make some note of the promotion’s product.
A Lowbrow Product?
A recent example of this is back in July 2019 during a WWE conference call. WWE CEO Vince McMahon alluded to All Elite Wrestling’s product—without saying the company’s name—as “blood and guts”.
Just for hindsight’s sake and to relate things to how WWE and AEW are now, here’s the quote from a question by Wolfe Research analyst Eric Katz as transcribed by The Motley Fool:
We’re going to be a bit edgier, but still remain in the PG environment. We just haven’t come anywhere close actually to going into another level. So that will be something we’ll do in terms of direction of content, more controversy, better storylines, et cetera. But at the same time, we’re not going to go back to the attitude era, and we’re not going to do blood and guts and things of that nature such as being done on perhaps a new potential competitor. We’re just not going to go back to that gory crap that we graduated from. And again, a more sophisticated product, again, attracting much better writers and attracting better management, and things of that nature. So again, as I said, I feel really good about it.
With that, let’s look at three notable companies that were considered garbage wrestling or blood and guts wrestling that thrived. I’m going with lasting ten years or more as a measurement so All Elite Wrestling and ECW haven’t made the list.
Frontier Martial-Arts Wrestling (1989-2002)
Formed by Atsushi Onita in 1989, FMW started off a traditional promotion featuring Onita in main events against martial artists.
Basically, an Indy version of New Japan from the period. Very early on, the main events began to include street fights and barbed wire deathmatches.
A major inspiration for Onita’s booking for main events was the wild brawling he’d seen in Memphis during his learning excursions in the 1980s.
Giant Baba, the founder of All Japan and Atsushi Onita’s trainer/former-mentor disapproved of the approach and called it “garbage wrestling”.
Even after Hayabusa became the ace in 1995, this was a staple of shows. The exploding barbed wire of some main events caught on in Japan and made the company a must for a new generation of tape traders.
It’s important to note that FMW was like any other promotion: a mix of styles and talent of varying ability. As a matter of fact, that counts for all entries on this list.
FMW began going in a more sports entertainment direction in the late 90s before closing due to money woes in 2002.
Combat Zone Wrestling (1999-present)
CZW was founded by wrestler John Zandig as a promotion for his students and himself to have regular work. Combat Zone Wrestling took ECW’s style, cranked it up to 11, ripped the knob off, and moved the violence past our third entry’s levels.
The company’s product was dubbed “ultraviolence” and was similar to IWA Mid-South, Mid-American Wrestling, and Juggalo Championship Wrestling’s deathmatch style.
CZW shows also featured ground-breaking high flying and a couple of technical bouts early on with the blood and guts wrestling being reserved for major storylines and annual tournaments.
The company has changed hands over the years and the product is more of a melting pot of indy in-ring action.
Thanks to strong management and not being overly ambitious growth-wise, CZW has managed to weather financial issues that have seen its influential predecessors as well as its contemporary promotions falter or close.
Big Japan Pro Wrestling (1995-present)
In the early 1990s, the deathmatch style had steam thanks to companies such as FMW, W*ING, and IWA Japan.
Big Japan Pro-Wrestling is the youngest of that generation of deathmatch companies, holding its first show in 1995.
At the time, FMW was rising, W*ING was closed and IWA Japan was on the downslide. BJW opted to use a more violent death match main event product like IWA Japan and W*ING.
In a way, you could say that it was the first of the current death match wave as it moved from the barbed wire period to light tubes and all kinds of crazy stipulations.
Although the fallout of the BJW vs. CZW war altered its main event scene dramatically, Big Japan has managed to stick around much longer than expected of a blood and guts company.
This has been thanks to a strong dojo and financial management as well as Eiji Tosaka, a referee and commentator for the company who has close ties to other indy promotions.
The whole time, Big Japan promoted a mixture of styles before devoting divisions to different products in the last decade.
Blood and Guts Wrestling Can Thrive
All Elite Wrestling doesn’t run the approach nonstop but it is a popular part of the company’s product. The company product is a variant of the Attitude Era only for a modern audience.
Khan and company stripped the tacky parts that wouldn’t hold up ten years after the era was over and boosted the intense feuds and exciting rivalries aspect.
Blood and guts wrestling is just the natural outcome of such a storyline direction. If a wrestler is attacked and bad-mouthed week after week violence ensues.
I mean, you don’t expect these wrestlers to just have a clean, sanitized match under vanilla rules. At the minimum we as fans expect it to be settled in a match.
Hell, not even in the ring nowadays. If it’s settled in the ring that’s great but the structure of a match will do.
AEW coined a new PPV called Blood and Guts which was supposed to take place in March 2020 but has been moved because of COVID. If this period in AEW’s history is remembered as the “Blood and Guts Era”, I’d say that’s perfect.
It just shows that a company can present passionate, intense, and hyper-athletic wrestling at a top-level. Besides, every promotion needs a motto or battle cry that will be remembered.
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