Chris Jericho has opened up about the Blood And Guts match that helped propel AEW Dynamite to be the number one show on cable.
Jericho and his Inner Circle met The Pinnacle inside the two ring cage match in an all-out war. Reminiscent of War Games matches in the past, men bloodied and battered and the match could only stop from a submission or surrender from one team.
MJF’s Pinnacle claimed the win after MJF threatened to throw Jericho from the top of the cage to the stage below. This was enough for Sammy Guevara to surrender and spare his leader but MJF then threw Jericho to the stage below anyway for good measure.
Speaking on his Talk Is Jericho podcast, Chris Jericho discussed the match, what went into making it, and the challenges the ten competitors faced.
Jericho began:
“The time of the match got a little bit kerfuffled for various reasons. Things didn’t fall exactly where we wanted them to. I know there was some talk about the commercial break happening at a bad time, and it did. But we were trying our best to get things on track.”
“A lot of times during the match I was talking to Aubrey Edwards about the time. I remember when Max came in he didn’t have a lot to do so I said let’s go to Jericho quicker. We had a lot of stuff to do and I didn’t want to get cut off by commercials. Live TV is live TV, you can’t stop a commercial break.”
Chris Jericho then revealed that there was a spot in the match inspired by his days in WWE. Jericho was a member of ‘Team WWE’ against The Nexus at SummerSlam 2010.
Jericho explained:
“My idea was that we had so much stuff, when I came in Max and his crew would retreat when they saw the countdown. I would take my guys and do the West Side Story spot. We just wait and the crowd will just get into this. I got the idea from The Nexus in Sacramento when we did the 7 on 7 for Summerslam. We just came into the ring to face off against The Nexus, and it was this complete crazy rumble.”
“I said nobody move until I give the cue. I knew that would happen again, if we let everybody reset, it was going to be huge. People were going nuts when we are meeting in the middle. I then pulled out the bat, which I had hidden the whole time. When I pull the bat out, I didn’t just get it in the ring. The idea was that people were supposed to feed me, but no one did so I just started hitting everybody.”
Chris Jericho has also since addressed the finish to the Blood And Guts match and elaborated the amount of work that went into his fall from the cage.