The Elite Is Not OK! AEW Blood and Guts Could Be Supergroup's Waterloo

Blood trickled out of Nick Jackson's mouth, a rolling door in the bowels of the arena precariously close to crushing his sternum. His friends and family could do little more than look on helplessly, with any attempt at a rescue hopeless. It would have taken ages to reach Chris Jericho and his Inner Circle, both the cause of and beneficiary of the assault.

This isn't how the story was supposed to play out for The Elite, a wrestling supergroup whose success on the independent scene helped launch All Elite Wrestling onto the national stage. 

Founded by The Young Bucks and Kenny Omega and later expanded to include Cody Rhodes and "Hangman" Adam Page, they were supposed to be the faction in AEW. Heck, the promotion even took its name, so certain that the indie wrestling stars would be just as dominant on TNT as they'd been in smaller promotions all over the globe.

Then Jericho happened.

The WWE legend, approaching 50 and bordering on plump if he took a few days off from the gym, emerged as their foil, a fedora-wearing fly in the ointment. He not only dispatched Omega, Rhodes and Page in singles competition, he also tormented and taunted them while he did it.

There are levels to this game—and Jericho, despite losing his heavyweight title to Jon Moxley—exists on a plane none of The Elite have yet to reach.

Making matters worse for The Elite is the timing of Jericho's renewed assault. This week on their YouTube series Being the Elite, Page quit the group (again) this time more definitively than before. His budding rivalry with Matt Jackson has gotten so extreme that, even amid a furious Inner Circle assault to close Dynamite, the two couldn't help but devote a little time to hating each other.

The Elite is not fine.

If there is a better setup for a (we can't call it) WarGames match in two weeks at "Blood and Guts" in the Prudential Center, I'd love to hear it. 

Old timers in the wrestling space are beside themselves to see this concept return to Turner television. A staple of WCW in the days when you had to get up to change the channel on the television, it's a match that hasn't been done justice in the era of WWE dominance.

It has run a version of this match on NXT in recent years but, conceptually, it has missed the mark, turning it into just another showcase for wild stunts and acrobatics. This isn't a match about nine guys standing around in a huddle waiting for someone to jump off the top of a cage; it's a match about pain and persistence, about, well, blood and guts.

Created in 1987 by the "American Dream" Dusty Rhodes after watching Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, the match beyond is designed to capture and propagate hatred and spill blood. It's a tool for wrestlers who already despise each other to help deliver pain to their enemies.

One of the most visually impressive matches ever, with two rings surrounded by a giant steel cage, and topped with a mesh roof, the match is about containing violence that otherwise could never be suppressed. The battle between The Inner Circle and The Elite has spread from the ring to the ramp to parking lot.

Perhaps this, finally, can corral the fires that burn within these 10 men?

There is no escaping the cage here. And no one who steps into it should desire it anyway. Enmity is the fuel that drives it, and the promotion has done a great job ramping that up to extreme levels. 

The battle within The Elite, built for weeks on YouTube and Dynamite, makes the match that much more interesting. A bout like this, with 10 men occupying the same space and the submission the only way to win, requires a level of trust, commitment to the cause and team work. You can't just watch out for yourself or your partner. You have to have an eye out for everyone on the squad to have a hope of winning.

AEW has created real doubt that The Elite are up to the task. Their smooth road to success has been bumpier than expected. In two weeks, the biggest speed bump yet gets tossed into their path. Are they up for the challenge? 

This is the kind of wrestling narrative that made me a fan, taken to another level as motivations, loyalties and friendships shade this simple story very, very grey. Fissures in their friendships turned into cracks and are slowly becoming gaping holes.

No, The Elite is not fine. And going into a match like this, they can't afford to be anything but. Can they pull things together in order to survive? Or will this be the impetus for the worst wrestling breakup since Nikki Bella and John Cena? 

That's a lot of questions for one match to answer. The fact I have confidence AEW is capable of pulling it off is why Dynamite is must-see television every Wednesday night.

Jonathan Snowden covers combat sports for Bleacher Report.