Chris Jericho competed in his first-ever death match earlier this year against Nick Gage during the July 28 episode of Dynamite. The match was part of the five labors of Jericho storyline leading to his match against MJF at All Out. The bout created some controversy but it was overall well received by fans. The match received a 4-star rating from Dave Meltzer but Y2J believes that it was deserving of 5 stars.
Jericho opened up about the evolution of his Painmaker character on the latest episode of his Talk Is Jericho podcast. Speaking of his fight with the hardcore star, the former AEW champion claimed that it was one of his favorite matches. He further explained that it deserved a 5-star rating:
“We did the match with Nick Gage and came up with all the cool spots that you saw. one of my favorite matches. You talk about a five-star match. I don’t know if there’s such thing as a five-star deathmatch. Of course, there should be and of course there is. In my opinion, it was a four and a half, five-star match. If I were ever doing an addendum to my List of Jericho book. I [will] put it in there as four and a half stars [or] five stars. I never had a full-fledged deathmatch before. I’ll never have a full-fledged deathmatch again. But that night, we had a great one,”
How Chris Jericho Came Up With The Ending To The DeathMatch
Chris Jericho won this match against the former GCW champion in a unique manner. The wrestling veteran used the mist to overcome the viciousness of his opponent and score the victory. During the episode, Chris explained how he came up with the idea to introduce mist in AEW and how Tony Khan reacted to it:
“I was thinking of something towards the end that can really turn the tide cause Nick was using the light tubes and all that other stuff. I thought well, ‘What if I blow mist? Haven’t seen any mist in years.’ Obviously [we] talked about The Great Muta earlier. That is a Great Muta classic, vintage trait. Tajiri did it in WWE for a while.
I thought this will be really cool if I do some sort of a mist. So I told Tony about it and he goes, ‘What color is it gonna be?’ And I said ‘It’s gonna be black.’ He’s like ‘Well that’s great because Muta used the black mist once in 1987 [it] is even worse than the green.'”
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