Chris Jericho Comments on AEW’s First Ever “Blood & Guts Match” Next Week, Being a Babyface, More

Chris Jericho will be part of one of the biggest AEW television matches this coming Wednesday on Dynamite. Jericho’s Inner Circle group consisting of Jake Hager, Sammy Guevara, Santana, Ortiz & Jericho himself will face The Pinnacle’s Maxwell Jacob Friedman, Shawn Spears, Dax Harwood, Cash Wheeler and Wardlow in the first-ever Blood & Guts Match in AEW history. It’s essentially a WarGames match without actually calling it that because WWE owns the rights to that name. There will be two rings with a roof on top like the traditional NWA/WCW WarGames match. The WWE version does not have a roof on top.

The name “Blood & Guts” actually comes from WWE Chairman Vince McMahon, who said on a WWE conference call: “We’re not going to do blood and guts and things of that nature such as being done on perhaps a new potential competitor.” After hearing that, of course, AEW ran with it. They wanted to do the first Blood & Guts match last year, but the pandemic canceled those plans and now they are doing it this year.

Jericho has done several interviews promoting the Blood & Guts Match. Here are some highlights from his interview with friend Connor Casey of ComicBook.com:

Jericho commented on what he thinks about the Blood & Guts Match:

“Blood & Guts is a little bit different. Even just in the way that it’s constructed. You’ll see that on Wednesday. I’ve been in a lot of first matches before. The first Elimination Chamber, the first Money in the Bank, the first Stadium Stampede, so I’m no stranger to that.”

“And anytime you get a match that’s never happened before from a stipulation standpoint, it’s exciting because there’s really no rules. It’s a little bit of a detriment in as far as you can’t go back and watch old versions to get ideas from because there haven’t been any other versions. So I think all across the board, we’ve really built it up properly. The angle is very hot. It’s the perfect timing to have this type of match.”

Since MJF turned on Jericho’s Inner Circle and formed The Pinnacle, Jericho has gone from one of AEW’s top heels to one of their top babyfaces. Here’s what Jericho had to say about being a babyface in AEW for the first time:

“It’s been probably, I think, five or six years since I’ve been the good guy. And I think I’ve really embraced some of the art forms of a babyface promo that a lot of people don’t know. It’s great to make jokes and all that sort of thing, but really what has been resonating with people watching on TV and the people in the crowd, and even for myself, is the real intensity and the seriousness of it. And because I haven’t been a babyface in so long, I haven’t done that in a long time. And so this kind of version of Jericho 2021, with all the experience that I have in cutting promos and kind of, once again, evolving into this more of a serious type of a vibe, which is what needs to be done when you’re talking about this whole story, which started in September and really revved up about a month and a half ago when The Inner Circle was attacked, and then we’re off TV for a while. And then we got our revenge.”

“And then after that, it’s like, ‘I don’t want us to keep fighting each other over and over again. Let’s just bring it more back to the promos.’ And had Mike Tyson not been available and showed up, we wouldn’t have even touched each other. But we had Mike come in and we did the match with Dax and myself, which was great. But the idea was, let’s not do a lot of physicality. Let’s base it more on promos and psychology.”

Jericho talked about AEW working with Impact Wrestling and why it doesn’t necessarily need to be more than what it currently is:

“Our roster is jam-packed as it is. And I think our involvement with Impact has been pretty much what it should be. I’m not saying this in an egotistical way, but AEW is at a completely different level than Impact is. So anything that we’re doing with them benefits them a lot more than it benefits us, in my opinion. And I think the fact that they’ve had Kenny Omega there, they’ve had Private Party there. That’s a bonus for them. Chris Jericho will never go to Nashville and work in an empty studio in front of somebody. There’s just no reason for me to do that. If those guys came over to invade, who are they going to [bring]?”

“If we needed to make it big, we could. But right now, our roster is so jam packed, and we’re doing such a great job of creating our own stars as it is. You could always do an invasion at some point, but I just don’t see why that really benefits AEW right now when we’ve got so much going on and so many of our own guys who are really breaking through to the next level. I want to keep the focus and spotlight on that.”

Jericho also went on to talk about Kenny Omega winning titles in other promotions, praise for MJF, AEW potentially doing a show in Madison Square Garden and more.

Here’s the video of the AEW Dynamite segment from this past week when The Inner Circle and The Pinnacle had a promo face off to get us even more interested in the Blood & Guts match next week.