Chris Jericho Recalls Scariest Bump Of His Career
Chris Jericho has had an incredible 30+ year career in professional wrestling and now the wrestling legend is opening up about the most terrifying bump of his career.
As the first AEW World Champion in company history, Chris Jericho has been one of the biggest stars in the company since day one. In 2021, the first ever Blood & Guts match took place on Dynamite with Jericho leading The Inner Circle against MJF’s team known as The Pinnacle. In a match that had a cage surrounding two rings, Jericho took a huge bump when MJF shoved him off the cage and Jericho landed back first onto a platform down below.
Jericho discussed his AEW career during an Inside The Ropes live show that aired on his Talk Is Jericho podcast and he spoke about how dangerous the backward bump was.
“Once again, I mean terrifying by the way, [that was] one of the most terrifying things I had to do, just all day thinking about it, and I knew that it was the finish that had to be done. You know, it’s surrender or submit, we’re on top of the cage, Max [MJF] is threatening to throw me off. Sammy surrenders, they win the match, and then he throws me off anyways, that’s a heel, that’s what he should do. So I would have loved to not have taken that bump, but it was the only way to end that match.”
“So it’s part of my job, like we mentioned with the light tube or, you know, talking about the spin [Claudio Castagnoli’s giant swing] on top of the cage, all that stuff. I would rather not do those things, but it fits the story, and that’s the most important thing to me. So, yeah, I was scared, I really was scared. And if you watch that, I dislocated my elbow on one side, but if you really watch, there was like a bunch of lights, that when I fell off, I went so far back that the back of my head missed a rack of lights by this much.”
“If I were to whack my head on the back of these metal spotlights, I would have died, right? But you don’t think about that. And when you’re doing it, just pray for the best.”
Thankfully Jericho did miss those metal spotlights and while he did dislocate his elbow, he was able to return to the ring again. Jericho also talked about the 2022 Blood & Guts match with his ally Sammy Guevara getting thrown off the cage and taking a bump through a table.
“So Sammy’s fall the other day at Blood and Guts was way crazier because it was higher, my fall on the stage wasn’t as high, but I’m not Sammy Guevara. I’m not talented, as far as being an athlete, and I have a thing called fear that goes into my head that he did not. But I remember all day long, just thinking about it praying like, ‘Please’, we just, every precaution you can take, we took but still you’re literally falling, you know, 12 feet on your back, can’t see anything. It’s just like, ‘Here we go.’”
“And they said, ‘Step off the back.’ So you’re standing and they said step off. So the guy just goes, you just step off and then you just fall. I’m like, ‘Well, it’s easy for you to say, Mr stuntman.’ So I’m on the thing and it is a step back, and I pushed myself off, which is why I almost hit my head on the back. But you know, we’re not trained stuntmen, but it’s part of what we do, so I thought it was a great finish.”
“And I think like I said, the reason why we did is because it just fit the story and just kind of really intensified the rivalry and the stakes between Max and Chris. Because at that point, we’ve been going for, I think, eight months, but there was still more to the story. And that’s why we end up going a whole year because that story played itself out in a year, it couldn’t have gotten shorter. Some people say it was too long, I don’t think. I think every week and every piece fit the puzzle of that overall tale that we were telling.”
There have been two Blood & Guts matches with Jericho on the losing end of both matches. Sammy Guevara lost for his team in 2021 and then in the 2022 Blood & Guts Match, Claudio Castagnoli made Matt Menard tap out.
Jericho will be in action this Wednesday, September 21 on Dynamite when he challenges Castagnoli for the ROH World Title at Arthur Ashe Stadium in Queens, New York.