One of the most memorable images coming out of AEW’s most recent pay-per-view was Shawn Spears in his underwear with manager Tully Blanchard’s face on it.
Whether or not it was a good idea, the match Spears had with Dustin Rhodes at Double Or Nothing got many people talking. However, it wasn’t an idea that many people knew about, including Blanchard himself. Speaking on the AEW Unrestricted podcast, Spears started talking about the match saying that not even the company’s EVPs (Cody, Kenny Omega and The Young Bucks) and AEW President Tony Khan had no idea what Spears was planning to do with the match.
“The beautiful thing about AEW is that you have freedom to go ahead and do what you want. The boxers, I didn’t tell anyone about it. I told the camera men but I didn’t smarten up the announcers and I didn’t smarten up anybody. That includes the EVPs, they didn’t know. Tony didn’t know either. I went out there on pay-per-view and one way or another, I was going to get people talking. That was my way of trying to stand out, have a memorable moment, good or bad. It’s either a swing and a hit or a swing and a miss, but one way or another, I wanted to get people talking about me along with this pay-per-view,” Spears said.
Although it ended up being a notable thing that happened in the match, it was a departure from the style of wrestling shown on AEW pay-per-views. Spears addressed that and admitted that kind of match would probably fit better if it aired on AEW Dynamite or Dark and not on a pay-per-view event where people pay money to watch.
“In retrospect, that might not have been the best way to go or it might have been an entertaining way to go. If you could find me a better, more entertaining five to six minutes, knock yourself out. Would it have been better suited for TV? Probably. It was not a pay-per-view match or segment, probably better suited for TV. I have to remember that people are paying a lot of money to watch this pay-per-view and that might not have been something that they were looking to see or wanted to see, so moving forward, as a performer, I have to keep that in mind. I wanted to try and offer our audience a little something different,” Spears said.
But lastly, Spears mentioned the fact that Blanchard had no idea of what was happening as well. That match, which Spears lost, did lead Blanchard to cut a promo on Spears soon after and Spears gave Blanchard plenty of high praise for that promo.
“He didn’t know either. I didn’t smarten him up. Nobody knew. We had a couple of conversations afterwards and he wasn’t too thrilled. I watched [the promo] back on a few occasions and it was probably the best promo that I have ever been a part of or seen in probably a couple of years,” Spears said.
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