During the time of the height of the pandemic, All Elite Wrestling introduced two match concepts that the fans are still in awe for till this day and want to see make a return to live television. The two matches are the Stadium Stampede Match and the Blood & Guts Match and the first-ever Stadium Stampede Match took place at the 2020 Double or Nothing Event, when the Elite defeated the Inner Circle, while the second-ever Stadium Stampede Match took place at the 2021 Double or Nothing Event, when the Inner Circle defeated the Pinnacle.
All Elite Wrestling was set to hold their inaugural Blood & Guts Match in March of 2020, but the bout was pushed back a year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. After being delayed for over a year, AEW had the first-ever Blood & Guts Match on the May 5, 2021 episode of Dynamite, where the Pinnacle would defeat the Inner Circle. All Elite Wrestling then held their second-ever Blood & Guts Match on the July 29th Blood & Guts episode of AEW Dynamite, where the Blackpool Combat Club (Interim AEW World Champion Jon Moxley, ROH Pure Champion Wheeler Yuta and Claudio Castagnoli, Eddie Kingston, Santana and Ortiz took on the Jericho Appreciation Society’s “The Wizard” Chris Jericho, Jake Hager, “The Spanish God” Sammy Guevara, Daniel Garcia, “Cool Hands” Angelo Parker and “Daddy Magic” Matt Menard and beat the Jericho Appreciation Society.
Top AEW Star Chris Jericho recently spoke with Inside The Ropes on the spot in the Blood & Guts Match where Claudio Castagnoli was swinging him atop the cage and whose idea it was as they had a chance to build a main event star really quickly.
This is what Chris Jericho said:
“That was my idea.” “The reason for it is, Claudio came in. And I actually went and stood in the arena at Forbidden Door just to hear the reaction. I knew people would go nuts for him, but they went f*cking nuts for him. And I was like ‘They really, really like this guy.’ Once again, we had a chance to build a main event star really quickly.”
“What’s the best way to do that? Focus on his strengths, and one of his strengths is his strength. He is so strong, it’s unbelievable how strong he is. So I said ‘We’ll have him start with Sammy because Sammy is very dynamic, he can make him look good. And then let’s continue through.’ And I had the idea of going on top of the cage.”
Chris Jericho also talked about why they decided to have a few moments of the Blood & Guts Match take place on top of the cage. Jericho said the first-ever Blood & Guts Match only had a limited number of fans in the crowd and they have to go on top of the cage during this year’s Blood & Guts because it’s essentially the debut of the match and the first time the fans have seen how big it actually is, with a massive crowd in Detroit, which is one of the biggest crowds AEW has had.
This is what Chris Jericho said:
“I wouldn’t have thought of that again except from last year’s Blood and Guts, we still only had a thousand people in the crowd.” “And if you remember, because of how we shot it at Daily’s Place, what you saw as the cage and then basically just the wall behind it, the big tron, the stage. You couldn’t really get a sense of the massiveness of this cage. It looked cool, but it was almost to me like ‘Oh good job guys. Is this your Hell in a Cell? Good job.’”
“So when I got there I said ‘We need to do something on top of the cage. Because I’m just envisioning this shot from the hard camera of the cage, with 6,000 people on this side, with Eddie Kingston standing on top of the cage and people just pop.’ That was my vision. People were like ‘We shouldn’t go on top again.’ I said ‘Next year, no. This year we have to because it’s essentially the debut of Blood and Guts. It’s the first time people have seen how big this is, with this giant crowd in Detroit, one of our biggest that we had.’”
Chris Jericho then talked about how the Blood & Guts Matchup as well as the spots they had during the match has put them on a different level and has made them as big as other promotions such as the WWE.
This is what Chris Jericho said:
“This puts us on a different level.” “This makes AEW look every bit as big as any other wrestling company in the world today. ‘Let’s go up to the top.’ Sammy texted me a couple of days before saying ‘Hey, I want to take a bump off the top.’ I said ‘Of course you do.’ He wanted to take a bump off the top last year and I was like ‘I’m already taking it.’”
“So we were like ‘What can we do? How could we do it? Eddie throws him off. Great. And then maybe I put Eddie into the Walls, and Claudio comes up to save the day.’ And Tony then had the idea of two submissions, and Claudio gets the tap out first which robs Eddie Kingston of his submission, which causes a little bit of animosity between those two. Story, story, story.”
You can check out Chris Jericho’s comments in the video below. H/T to Wrestling Inc. for transcribing the quotes.
