Swerve Strickland defeated “Hangman” Adam Page in a “Texas death match” at the 2023 AEW Full Gear PPV event. Fans were particularly drawn to the scene in which Page drank blood dripping from Swerve’s head.
Swerve revealed the following to former WWE star Mojo Rawley on TMZ.com about the blood drinking spot:
“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.’”
“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.”
You can check out the interview below:
(quotes courtesy of Colin Tessier)
