Chris Jericho On Nick Gage Match – “You Don’t Know What To Expect”
Wrestling legend Chris Jericho had one of the most violent matches of his career recently when he faced Nick Gage on AEW Dynamite and he spoke about it on his podcast. Jericho even went into detail about how he nearly had to put a stop to things if Gage went too far.
The reason Jericho faced Gage, who is not under contract to AEW, is because Jericho’s rival Maxwell Jacob Friedman got to pick Jericho’s opponents in the “Five Labours of Jericho” storyline. The match between Jericho and Gage took place on the July 28 episode of Dynamite.
Jericho recently talked about his match with Gage on an episode of his Talk is Jericho podcast. Jericho’s guest on that podcast was Matt Cardona, who also faced Gage recently and left with the GCW Championship much to the dismay of hardcore GCW fans. Jericho commented on how unpredictable Gage was:
“You don’t really know what to expect. For me, I had a shirt on as well, and I had gloves on, but I had to cut the fingers off because you still have to use your fingers to manipulate and do things. And sliced there, which really hurt the hand, and then the back, getting planted on the broken tempered glass.”
“And you just feel the [Jericho makes a cracking sound]. There was a part where on your match and mine where you see our back because I remember thinking, I don’t want this to be a bloodbath. I just want this to be pretty intense and pretty violent, and then there’s a scene though, right towards the end, where there’s blood coming out. I’m like, we’re so gonna get kicked off. There’s no way they’re gonna let this work!”
During the match, Jericho donned his famed “Painmaker” look while noting that other wrestlers told him to be aware of Gage’s unique wrestling style:
“Somebody was saying, ‘You got to have Nick on Talk is Jericho,’ and I’m like, I don’t really want to have him on Talk Is Jericho because I like the idea of this match that we had, just kind of leaving it alone because it was very violent. The thing about him is I had so many people text me before the match saying, ‘You got to watch out for this guy,’ and they’re not people in the business. They’re fans.”
“I had a lot of people that were in the know but not maybe wrestles per se, saying, ‘You got to watch this guy. If he tries to shoot on you, you got to take him out. You got to watch this, watch this.’ I’m thinking to myself, this guy is playing this psycho character. And when you talk to him, he’s a pretty cool guy. But when you look into his eyes, there’s something not right. He has the years of jail in his head and all these bumps that he’s taken. So when people are saying that, you’re like, oh, you don’t understand, he’s just playing a character. But when you see him, you’re like, if this guy does decide to go rogue, what am I going to do?”
Jericho also recalled a moment in the match where he thought things had gone a bit too far when using a light tube and Jericho might need to become violent for real:
“We had a spot in our match — it wasn’t really a spot. Obviously, ours was on TV, so it’s a little different than yours because there’s a time constraint, and I think Nick was a little nervous for that reason. Plus, we drew over a million people. So, it’s obviously the biggest crowd he’s ever wrestled in front of in TV land, and he gave me a piledriver on the glass and smashed the stuff over me. And then he breaks the glass, and he kind of sticks me with it.”
“And then, before he goes to get more light tubes, he comes back and does it some more. And I’m like, ‘You’ve done it enough, dude.’ He came back the second time, and this time, he was really getting me. If you see this one here, this is not a razor. It’s not a gimmick. It is a literal light tube glass abrasion from that sticking, and that’s why I was like if this motherf*cker keeps going. I’m going to have to kill him because enough’s enough already. But I don’t think he was doing it maliciously. That’s just him in this zone.”
One of the memorable spots in the match was when Gage used a pizza cutter (something Domino’s Pizza wasn’t happy about) to Jericho’s forehead with Jericho explaining that it was legit.
“The pizza cutter, as well, is completely legit. Put a pizza cutter up to your forehead and lightly press. Then imagine a guy literally coming back and forth. I’m glad that I did it. Same as you, I had a lot of people go, ‘Jericho didn’t have to do that. Cardona didn’t have to do that.’ If you know anything about us as performers, there was no reason why we wouldn’t do it. It’s part of the story.”
Chris Jericho puts his career on the line this Sunday at AEW All Out against MJF.