Chris Jericho Addresses Criticism Of AEW Blood & Guts Fall
The fall wasn't well-received by some
May 12, 2021
All Elite Wrestling held their first Blood & Guts match last week and The Inner Circle clashed with The Pinnacle.
MJF's new faction ultimately picked up the win following a gruelling match after he threatened to throw Chris Jericho off the top of the cage and Sammy Guevara surrendered. Le Champion looked to be safe, but with MJF being the despicable heel that he is, The Salt Of The Earth pushed Jericho off the cage anyway, sending him tumbling to the stage below.
The Painmaker landed on what looked like a crashpad and some cardboard and AEW's production team received criticism for not disguising the apparatus better.
The Demo God discussed the Blood & Guts match on the latest edition of Talk Is Jericho and he went into detail about what he actually landed on.
"It was a black gym mat that was about six inches high. That was on the bottom. Then there was a bunch of cardboard boxes. I was like, 'Are you gonna fill these things with anything?' 'No just empty cardboard boxes, that's what professional stuntmen fall on.' And we had a professional stuntman there, he was the guy who kind of orchestrated the big bump that Kenny and Sammy took at the end of Stadium Stampede last year. So we have a professional there," Jericho said.
"So they're building this with a six inches high black gym mat, then a bunch of cardboard boxes, empty. And then on top of that some plywood... and a flat piece of plastic that was kind of looking like a steel grate and that was it. I was like, 'That’s it?!' This thing went from this 10ft air mattress to this thing that was, I don't know, 3ft off the ground which made that fall 18ft."
Jericho then detailed the fall itself and addressed the criticism of the landing.
"I said [to MJF], 'Give me a shove. I need to feel something so I can take a little bit of a push back.' And I step back and I thought this bump would go by fast, but I just kept looking at him and looking at him and looking at him as I fell. And then I landed and, of course, it takes the breath out of you. Trust me, I've seen a few people bagging on the fact that it was a crash pad.
"Once again, no crash pad, it was cardboard boxes. I don't give a sh*t if it was a crash pad, it's one of those things where doing that, are we qualified to do be stuntmen? I don't know, I never went to stuntman school but just 30 years of being in the business and you just go for it. You just absolutely put your caution to the wind and go for it," he continued.
"And it felt great. Obviously, it hurts, you're paying the price but I could move my arms and legs and I wasn't dead or knocked out. And I was like, 'This is great, what a perfect finish for this.' And it took the wind completely out of the sail of the crowd. They just went completely silent and I just laid there until they took me out on a stretcher. And when they took me away on a stretcher people started clapping. People were believing and buying into it and as was I.
"And it was only later on that I started hearing kind of like, 'Oh people thought the fall was on a crash pad and it didn't look great.' And for me, I watched it back, I thought it looked amazing. And the thing that was really scary is that if you watch it back, I barely missed hitting my head on the lights at the back of the stage. I went so far back that I almost overshot everything," Jericho added.
"So, once again, everybody in the business knows how dangerous this can be, how terrifying it is and just the margin for error is so slim. And like I mentioned earlier, there's some hardcore wrestling fans that were bagging on it and that's fine, you have the right to bag on it. And out of the 1.3 million people that watched it, like I said, if 3,000 people didn't like it, that's a very small percentage. Most people just thought it was crazy, as did I.
"Once again, I've got very thick skin and it really doesn't bother me if people didn't like something because we move on to the next week. But everybody has opinions and I appreciate feedback. But for me, and I always go back to what did I think about it? And when I watched it back I was like, this is absolutely insane, it's terrifying, it's a little bit exhilarating. But it's one of those things that I hope you enjoyed because you'll never see me do it again. Ever."
