Swerve Strickland Defends Controversial AEW Blood Usage At Full Gear

Swerve Strickland is defending the memorable blood-dripping spot from his match at AEW Full Gear.

In a match that many considered the best of the night and perhaps one of the best of the year, Swerve Strickland found a way to defeat “Hangman” Adam Page in a Texas Death Match at AEW Full Gear.

During the match, Swerve bled heavily from his forehead while Hangman also used a staple gun to put staples into Swerve’s upper body. There were many other weapons featured throughout the match, including a chain that Swerve used to choke out Page to win the match.

The incident that really got people talking was when Swerve was leaning over with blood dripping from his forehead, Page grabbed Swerve’s hair and Page opened his mouth under Swerve so that Swerve’s blood was pouring into Page’s mouth. The spot drew gasps from the Los Angeles crowd.

While speaking to former WWE superstar Mojo Rawley on TMZ Sports, Swerve said that in a match like that, you need to do attention-grabbing spots like that.

“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.’”

Swerve Strickland Believes AEW Was Built On Pushing Boundaries

After working for WWE as Isaiah “Swerve” Scott from April 2019 to November 2001, Swerve was released and signed with AEW in March 2022. Since then, Swerve has been an AEW Tag Team Champion with Keith Lee while also leading his own stable known as The Mogul Embassy.

As he talked about the bloody Full Gear spot some more, Swerve spoke about how All Elite Wrestling is all about 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 Strickland picked up a big win on the November 22nd edition of AEW Dynamite when he beat Jay Lethal in the first match of the AEW Continental Classic tournament.

H/T Fightful