It took four years for AEW to book a Women’s variant of the Blood & Guts match, the company’s own derivative of WCW – and later WWE’s – WarGames. Which in itself was ironic, considering the name was originally a riff on WWE’s dig at the ‘excessive gore’ in the tag team match between The Bunny and Penelope Ford against Anna Jay and Tay Melo. 

Either way, when it did happen for the first time last year, Mone joined Megan Bayne, Marina Shafir, Julia Hart, Skye Blue, and Thekla in defeating Harley Cameron, Willow Nightingale, Jamie Hayter, Kris Statlander, Mina Shirakawa, and Toni Storm after 46 minutes of blood-soaked, weaponized violence. 

Everyone involved in the match, including Mone, went above and beyond to cement the decision to book a Women’s Blood & Guts match as a good one. She made good use of her several title belts by bringing them into the cage, handing them to each of her teammates for a group beating with the belts, after having dropped Statlander onto her own Women’s World title belt. 

While undoubtedly this was a group effort, with Blue putting the blood in Blood & Guts with a gnarly blade-job in the early goings specifically, Mone was undoubtedly core to the storyline aspect of the bout. Her history with Shirakawa, Storm, Statlander, Nightingale, and Cameron, as well as an intriguing first-time meeting between her and Hayter, made for her presence in the match being paramount. And it gave her opponents a villain to chase through the various levels of enforcers on her team. 

All in all, the first Women’s Blood & Guts could easily be argued among the best of the match type, even in its relative infancy, and remains one of the best viewing experiences featuring Mone in her career.