Better Than You BAY BAY win a Tag title shot, but their bond is already breaking

AEW’s Blind Eliminator Tournament — where wrestlers were paired “randomly” to compete for a shot at FTR’s Tag belts — came down to a budding-if-unlikely friendship, and two stablemates who’ve never quite felt they were on the same page.

World champion Maxwell Jacob Friedman & Adam Cole started off looking for ways to undermine and betray the other. They had just come off a one-on-one encounter that ended in a draw, which prevented Cole from getting a match for MJF’s belt. They ended up bonding, and becoming fan favorites in the process.

Sammy Guevara & Daniel Garcia, on the other hand, have largely been operating independent of the Jericho Appreciation Society for a while now. Midway through the tournament, Chris Jericho flat out told them to find their own path.

How would all that play into the final match of the tournament on the July 18 Dynamite?

Leading up the match, we were reminded about the connectionn Friedman and Cole have formed. They got blitzed on 200 proof Asian liquor...

... and then bought each other matching ring gear! And their excitement over that paled in comparison to how excited MJF was when Cole debuted their new entrance music mash-up!

Guevara & Garcia seemed to be okay, but were thrown off by Jericho showing up to join commentary. Maybe that’s why their timing was off on the dance off MJF called for at the start of the match (it wasn’t the best bit of comedy we’ve seen from this program. The gag was that Cole was the only one of the four who couldn’t dance, which was thrown off a bit by Sammy struggling to get the timing down during his tandem routine with his partner, but the Boston crowd was into it). Anyway...

Better Than You BAY BAY went for the elusive double clothesline. it went as well as it ever has, and led to the World champ playing face(?)-in-peril. The heels went for the move, and got their comeuppance when MJF ducked it to get the tag and bring Cole in hot.

His roll was slowed by Guevara, who also denied a second double clothesline attempt, countering it into a double Spanish Fly. A blind tag thwarted the next attempt, as Garcia came in with a double chop block. The comeback from that fired Max up so much Cole convinced him to actually do a topé!

After that and a Panama Sunrise, you know what time it was!

Cracks showed in both teams after the bell. Guevara & Garcia refused to be consoled by Jericho on the ramp, then Cole & MJF nearly got into when Friedman got upset about the way Adam held his title before giving it to him.

The Panama City Playboy got his partner focused on their Tag title shot July 29 on Collision, and the arrival of the champs for a showdown helped get him back on track. But the end is coming, and I’m still gonna be heartbroken when it happens.

Get complete results and coverage of everything on tonight’s Blood & Guts episode of Dynamite here.