Swerve Strickland Weighs In On ‘Blood Drinking’ Spot From AEW Full Gear: “That Was Theater, That Was Cinematic”

Swerve Strickland gives his thoughts on a spot that happened at AEW Full Gear.

The top company star spoke about his brutal and bloody Texas Deathmatch with Adam Page at the event, a match he walked away from victorious. However, early on Swerve was bleeding buckets around the ring and Page slid under him to drink his blood before spitting it out in a red mist. The live crowd in Los Angeles audibly gasped and the reaction online was just as surprised from the spot, which went viral immediately. During a recent interview with TMZ Sports, Swerve called the moment theater.

I mean, that’s pretty much why we’re here, having this conversation in the first place. If you’re gonna go all out in a match like that, you have to release all the chains, all the handcuffs, understand that there’s going to be criticism because we’re gonna shake the foundation a little bit. Shoutout to a lot of the forums that are picking up, talking about it, discussing it. We appreciate you, I love you, thank you, for watching, and adding so much noise to the discussion about the match. But in 2023, it’s become really difficult to really catch the attention across all these platforms. People are coming up with five-star matches every pay-per-view. Every pay-per-view, I think there’s a five-star match, guaranteed. This match is put in there to have that. I’m not even a big fan of five stars. I’m just more about the story, and if there’s something memorable about it. If it happens to be five stars, some people perceive it as that, cool. I’m all about the business and television and theatre. I feel like that was one of those moments it was like, that was theater. That was cinematic, like, ‘Oh my god. You have to go out of your way to see this because I can’t even believe it.’

Regarding the brutality of the match Swerve welcomed fans who disliked it to criticize it, but reminds them that AEW was built on pushing boundaries.

Whoever has anything to complain about it, feel free. Complain, I implore you. It’s not a good thing to do. I don’t implore anybody to do anything like that. But the fact that it was done, it makes people [go], ‘I don’t believe you. I gotta go see this for myself.’ That’s what that was. We pushed boundaries. That’s what AEW was built on. Pushing boundaries, doing things that other places just couldn’t do, or are not able to do. You’re not able to see that anywhere else. There’s been another product that’s been doing it for so long. They’re excellent at what they do. We gotta find what we’re excellent at what we do. That was the pinnacle of what AEW was like. That’s what we do. We are excellent at what we do.

Swerve is currently competing in the AEW Continental Classic tournament to crown the first-ever Triple Crown Champion. He will face Jay White on this Wednesday’s edition of Dynamite.

(H/T and transcribed by Fightful)