Chris Jericho Addresses Controversial AEW Blood & Guts Finish

Chris Jericho Addresses Controversial AEW Blood & Guts Finish

Chris Jericho has addressed the criticism surrounding the AEW Blood & Guts finish, which saw him pushed from the top of the cage by MJF.

Since The Inner Circle and The Pinnacle squared off last week, fans have been talking about the finish of the first-ever Blood & Guts match. While some were satisfied with the story, others complained about the Inner Circle surrendering, and the subsequent cage-fall by Chris Jericho.

Speaking on his Talk is Jericho podcast, Jericho noted that he thought the spot looked amazing. Pointing out that the spot was performed similarly to how some stuntmen perform their feats, Jericho claimed that the majority of fans were satisfied with the final product.

Explaining that he doesn’t like being on the receiving end of extreme spots, Jericho told fans that he won’t be doing anything like his Blood & Guts fall again.

Here are the full quotes:

“The idea was, he hits me with the ring and he’s going to throw me off unless I surrender. We thought, how much of a piece of shit would he be if the guys did surrender and he threw me off anyway. It was a combination of a Tony Khan idea, an MJF idea, and a Jericho idea.

“I don’t pretend like I want to take crazy stunt bumps. I didn’t want to take a thumbtack bump in the Ambrose Asylum and I didn’t really want to take a bump from the top of the cage to the floor, but it was best for the story. The original plan was for Santana & Ortiz (to surrender), but Santana had the idea for Sammy to do it because it was more of a babyface thing for Sammy.

“It was a black gym mat, about six inches high from the bottom, and it was a bunch of cardboard boxes, just empty cardboard boxes. That’s what professional stuntmen fall on and we had a stuntman there. He orchestrated the bump Kenny and Sammy took at Stadium Stampede.

“Then there was plywood and decoration, like a flat piece of plastic, that looked like a steel grate. That was it. It went from being a ten-foot air mattress to a thing that was three feet off the ground, which made the fall about 18 feet. I watched the stunt guy take the fall and he had a ‘turtle shell’ to protect his back and a helmet. I didn’t get a helmet. He told me to take a step off, not to flip back, which was what happened when I took the powerbomb from Wardlow off the stage.

“There was a lot of praying and you just think, ‘this could be it.’ The other time I felt this way was when I took the bump into the thumbtacks.

“I tell (MJF), ‘Give me a shove’ because I needed to feel something so I could take a pushback. I step back and I thought the bump would go by fast, but I just kept looking at him as I fell. Then, I landed, and of course, it takes the breath out of you. I’ve seen a few people bagging on it being a crashpad. It was no crashpad, it was a cardboard box. I don’t give a s**t if it was a crash pad, you just go for it. It felt great, obviously, it hurt, but I could move my arms and legs and I wasn’t dead. The crowd went completely silent and I just laid there until they took me away on a stretcher and the people started clapping.

“It was later on that I started hearing ‘the fall didn’t look great.’ For me, when I watched it back, I thought it looked amazing. When you watch it back, I barely missed hitting my head on the lights on the stage. I almost overshot everything. Everyone in the business knows how dangerous this can be and how terrifying it is and the margin for error is slim. You have the right to bag on it. Out of the 1.3 million who watched, if 3,000 people didn’t like it, that’s a very small percentage. Most people thought it was crazy and I got great feedback.

“I hope you enjoyed it because you’ll never see me do it again. I’m glad it turned out the way it did. I wouldn’t change anything.”

A complaint voiced by many fans was that the gym mat and cardboard was visible. A number of wrestlers commented on the spot, including  Shayna Baszler.

On AEW Dynamite tonight, Jon Moxley defends the IWGP US Championship against Yuji Nagata. Orange Cassidy and PAC will also compete for the right to challenge for Kenny Omega’s AEW Championship at Double or Nothing. A recent report revealed the reason why this week’s episode of Dynamite has such a stacked card.

Quotes via Fightful.

What are your thoughts on the above story? Let us know in the comments on Twitter or Facebook.

3 years ago by Sanchez Taylor

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