Chris Jericho Believes Recent AEW Match Made Them Look As Big As WWE

Of all the memorable moments to take place during the Blood and Guts match between the Jericho Appreciation Society and the Blackpool Combat Club on the July 29 episode of "AEW Dynamite," perhaps the most notable was Claudio Castagnoli swinging Chris Jericho atop the Blood and Guts cage. It's the kind of crazy idea that makes one wonder who came up with it.

"That was my idea," Jericho said during a recent sit-down with Inside the Ropes. "The reason for it is, Claudio came in. And I actually went and stood in the arena at Forbidden Door just to hear the reaction. I knew people would go nuts for him, but they went f*cking nuts for him. And I was like 'They really, really like this guy.' Once again, we had a chance to build a main event star really quickly.

"What's the best way to do that? Focus on his strengths, and one of his strengths is his strength. He is so strong, it's unbelievable how strong he is. So I said 'We'll have him start with Sammy because Sammy is very dynamic, he can make him look good. And then let's continue through.' And I had the idea of going on top of the cage."

Jericho also revealed why they decided to go back on top of the cage for Blood and Guts, much like they did in the first ever Blood and Guts match one year ago.

"I wouldn't have thought of that again except from last year's Blood and Guts, we still only had a thousand people in the crowd," Jericho said. "And if you remember, because of how we shot it at Daily's Place, what you saw as the cage and then basically just the wall behind it, the big tron, the stage. You couldn't really get a sense of the massiveness of this cage. It looked cool, but it was almost to me like 'Oh good job guys. Is this your Hell in a Cell? Good job.'

"So when I got there I said 'We need to do something on top of the cage. Because I'm just envisioning this shot from the hard camera of the cage, with 6,000 people on this side, with Eddie Kingston standing on top of the cage and people just pop.' That was my vision. People were like 'We shouldn't go on top again.' I said 'Next year, no. This year we have to because it's essentially the debut of Blood and Guts. It's the first time people have seen how big this is, with this giant crowd in Detroit, one of our biggest that we had.'"

Jericho further stressed how important fighting on top of the cage was to making AEW look like a major league promotion.

"This puts us on a different level," Jericho said. "This makes AEW look every bit as big as any other wrestling company in the world today. 'Let's go up to the top.' Sammy texted me a couple of days before saying 'Hey, I want to take a bump off the top.' I said 'Of course you do.' He wanted to take a bump off the top last year and I was like 'I'm already taking it.'

"So we were like 'What can we do? How could we do it? Eddie throws him off. Great. And then maybe I put Eddie into the Walls, and Claudio comes up to save the day.' And Tony then had the idea of two submissions, and Claudio gets the tap out first which robs Eddie Kingston of his submission, which causes a little bit of animosity between those two. Story, story, story."

If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit Inside the Ropes and provide a h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription