AEW superstar and former world champion Chris Jericho spoke with Sports Illustrated earlier today to hype this evening’s special edition of Dynamite on TNT, where the Demo God leads the Inner Circle in the promotion’s first ever Blood and Guts matchup against the Pinnacle. Highlights from the interview are below.
Says the match will be a spectacle but also contain a strong story:
This is going to be remembered for a long time, and it will be a spectacle, but the key is the story behind it. We’ve heard a lot about it, but we’ve never seen this before, even though it’s been advertised since last year. It’s like a lost album.
Says there was no way they couldn’t book this match first following the Pinnacle’s debut:
It made me think of what Hell in a Cell or Elimination Chamber or Money in the Bank used to be. Now you see matches just get thrown in there. It’s like, F—, there’s no reason for it other than the name of the pay-per-view. This only works when the story demands it, and with what we have done here, the story here demands it. It wasn’t right for us to wait until Dynamite was touring again to have this match. You don’t book this match and have an angle follow it—you have the angle that leads to this match. That’s the only way to do it, and that’s why the time to do this is right now.
On returning to narrate Dark Side of the Ring season 3:
This all started last year when I did an interview for the Chris Benoit two-parter [of Dark Side]. I had no interest in doing it until Chavo Guerrero reached out and said we needed to be the ones to do it properly. [Show creators] Evan Husney and Jason Eisener do a great job, and that’s when they asked me to do the narration for the whole series. There are so many tales in wrestling; some are tragedies like Benoit and Owen [Hart], and there are more contemporary ones, too, that are really interesting stories. We’re covering Brian Pillman, Dynamite Kid, the Ultimate Warrior. It was a different time in the ’80s and ’90s. Those guys were on the road 300 days a year, and as we show, the business was very different back then.
How he adds a first-hand perspective to some of the show’s topics:
I’ve seen all sides of the coin, so from an experience standpoint, it’s very beneficial to have me involved. I’m narrating from the point of view of someone that’s seen a lot of this, and I’m also in a handful of the episodes providing insight. Dynamite is one of my all-time favorites. He’s a very complex guy who had two separate sides to him. There is also an episode about Johnny K-9, and I lived with Johnny K-9. When people are saying, ‘I can’t believe that he bombed a police station,’ I can believe it. There was something off about this guy. All of these stories are very interesting, and it is the dark side of the ring in a lot of ways, but there is also a lot of enlightenment and understanding when you watch this show. It’s legit, it’s passionate and that’s why the show is as good as it is.