10 Most Effective Wrestling Blade Jobs Ever
9. Dustin Rhodes Helps Make A Company
Double Or Nothing needed to be a masterpiece of a pro wrestling show; anything else, even something merely very good, would have failed to substantiate the hype of AEW as instant, game-changing competition.
The show was a masterpiece, and its highest peak all but made the company as something distinct from the sanitised WWE from which fans had become so removed that an alternative was viable in the first place. In short, Cody Vs. Dustin Rhodes crystallised the vision of AEW and must therefore be considered amongst the most significant and effective matches of the 21st century.
The harrowing blade-job of Dustin Rhodes elevated the match as an emotionally affecting triumph.
If he looked helpless out there, that's because he was. He cut himself deep to get the gravity of the match over - so deep that, at times, he barely looked like he was selling. But he was, and he obscured that because he's a genius babyface. When he exploded into the code red, it was a cathartic reckoning of a moment informed by his sublime, fading 2.9 kick-outs.
He broke the Muta scale, but in a way that never felt tawdry or desperate, and the sheer emotional heft reminded fans not just what blood can do for a match, but of what big arena-sized pro wrestling actually is.