Shawn Spears On His Chair Shot To Cody, Becoming “The Chairman”

All Elite Wrestling’s resident “Chairman” Shawn Spears has opened up about his nasty chair shot to Cody Rhodes and embracing the Chairman character. Speaking on The Chris Van Vliet Show, Spears recounted swinging the chair at Cody, not knowing the damage his attack had caused until he saw the blood.

“I swang [sic] for the fences, he leaned in, and just that one little bit caught him. I didn’t know he was bleeding,” Spears confessed. “That’s because I kinda had a moment with Brandi [Rhodes], where I looked at her and kinda had a staredown with her. And I looked at him to get that one more shot and I saw the red and I was like, ’S&*%’”

He argued that, as far as their storyline was concerned, it was a “best case scenario.” Spears noted how, regardless of that, he didn’t want to be responsible for his friend needing 10 stitches in his head. “But it is wrestling, things happen, I’m pretty sure I’ll be on the tail end of a bad shot at some point.”

Shawn Spears Becomes “The Chairman”

Shawn Spears reflected on how that one chair shot, and the subsequent damage it caused, helped to put him on the map in AEW. It turned him from a “happy-go-lucky ‘Perfect 10’” wrestler into a monster villain against Cody’s babyface, birthing “The Chairman.” 

“[…] that’s where ‘The Chairman’ thing was born, so I just kinda kept it, ran with it, and have yet hit someone in the head once again, so it’s a moniker, it’s a tagline that hangs with me for the moment. In terms of what’s gonna happen, I might swing it again soon.”

He shared how he’s much happier now than he was just one year ago. Spears highlighted how it wasn’t WWE itself that was behind his unhappiness: “It was just, I wasn’t happy being where I was there. So I needed to take ownership. They can’t change to work around you, you need to take ownership of your own situation.”

Conceding how many are afraid to take that first step in leaving and embracing the unknown, Spears reiterated how taking the gamble has led him to be much happier despite the fact he was “petrified to leave” at the time. 

H/T to WrestleZone for the transcription.