Last night, AEW held their Blood and Guts AEW Dynamite and had the women kick the show off.
I saw a lot of responses online about how the women should have main evented. Based on wrestling match quality? It’s hard to argue. The women absolutely had the better of the Blood and Guts matches between them and the men in the main event.
One could also argue that just on show narrative, it kicked off with the heels winning, then the champion Hangman Adam Page beating Powerhouse Hobbs to announce the steel cage match against Samoa Joe for Full Gear, followed by a feel good main event ending. Made sense to have us leave on a positive note.
But this all ignores the fact that pro wrestling on TV doesn’t really work the way maybe some think it does. The main event on television isn’t actually the “most important match” for TV viewers. What has been historically the most important match for AEW Dynamite is the opener. Specifically the first two quarter segments, as that’s when viewership is at its highest.
Those first two quarter segments really tell you who is most important in the company. It’s usually reserved for the men who are the biggest draws. Or who the company perceives to be their biggest draw. It’s often where the AEW Men’s World Championship program gets built up. This is because AEW Dynamite typically has their highest viewership during the first two quarters, followed by the fifth quarter at the top of 9PM. You’ll notice when Maxwell Jacob Friedman is on the show, he’s either in the opening quarters or that top of the hour 9PM.
So what does this have to do with the women opening with Blood and Guts? It’s about the rarity of women opening Dynamite. Between 2019 and 2022, women never opened Dynamite with a match. Never. Not once.
The first time women opened Dynamite with a match was April 19, 2023 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania where Ruby Soho and Toni Storm of The Outcasts faced Britt Baker and Jamie Hayter. While this was the first women’s opener on Dynamite (likely thanks to the Brittsburgh connection) it wasn’t the first segment. That was a talking segment featuring MJF.
No other women’s matches opened Dynamite in 2023. In 2024 we got two and they both featured Mercedes Moné. August 14, 2024 versus Hikaru Shida and December 18, 2024 versus Anna Jay.
Now in 2025 we’ve had five. Four out of the five featured Mercedes Moné:
April 16, 2025 Mercedes Moné versus Athena
May 7, 2025 Toni Storm versus Anna Jay versus Penelope Ford versus Thunder Rosa
July 2, 2025 Mercedes Moné versus Mina Shirakawa
September 3. 2025 Mercedes Moné versus Alex Windsor
November 12, 2025 Women’s Blood and Guts: Mercedes Moné, Megan Bayne, Marina Shafir, and Triangle of Madness versus Kris Statlander, Toni Storm, Harley Cameron, Willow Nightingale, Mina Shirakawa, and Jamie Hayter
So there’s been eight times in the history of AEW Dynamite that women have got to open the show. That should put into perspective how important it is to do so. Too often we perceive the last match to be most important, as that’s the standard. TV, especially for Dynamite at 8PM, just works differently. It also used to work differently for the WWF Saturday Night’s Main Event, where the opening match was the one they knew they’d get the most people. You also have examples in history like how Bruno Sammartino used to sometimes have his match before the main event so New York reporters could get their photos and stories done before the paper went to the press. Nobody later tried arguing Gashouse Gilbert was the bigger star.
The fact that most of these started happening because they signed Mercedes Moné should be no surprise. She’s likely very aware of this, and AEW is aware she needs to be put at the top of the show. The only time this year it was done without Mercedes was with Timeless Toni Storm. If that Blood and Guts made didn’t feature either of them? I doubt it would have opened. Likely would have opened with the falls count anywhere match.
Hopefully that adds some context to why the women opening Dynamite wasn’t a bad thing for them and was actually a major accomplishment, and showed that AEW had faith in them being the first match people watched that night. Didn’t hurt it was the best match of the night too. Women just do violence in AEW best.
