AEW’s Dax Harwood put his body on the line during the very first Blood and Guts match, but acknowledges that the finish of the match ‘sucked.’
After being postponed for over a year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, AEW held its first Blood and Guts match in May 2021, which saw the Pinnacle defeat the Inner Circle.
Harwood was on the Pinnacle’s team for the match and saw first-hand the controversial finish, in which Chris Jericho was thrown off the cage structure and landed on crash mats, disguised as steel grating.
Reflecting on the match on his FTR podcast, Dax admitted that the ending of the match did “kind of suck.” He said,
“Yeah, that finish the ending how it went down, did kind of suck. It wasn’t the fault of any of the performers. I just think that, again, this was during the pandemic era, so we were all working without a net on how to shoot things. Daily’s Place kind of made it a little difficult to shoot. But that’s the cards we were dealt. First Blood and Guts match ever in AEW. And again, like I said, working on live TV without a net.
“So the way it was shot is the reason that the fans soured on it. And again, I don’t blame the cameraman or the directors, the producers, nobody knew. It was just those are the cards that we were dealt. So when I say that, it was the way it was shot. I don’t mean that in a bad way. I just mean that we were all still in the process of learning how to deal with this pandemic-era style of wrestling.
“I thought the idea for the finish was great. I thought that the execution going into it was done well. It’s just the way it was shot probably could have been thought through a little bit more considering the small confines of the Daily’s Place.”
Speaking about the critical response from fans, Harwood claimed those who said the spot looked too fake would have claimed AEW was not looking after its wrestlers if the spot looked too dangerous.
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