10 Shocking AEW Behind The Scenes Revelations

5. AEW Originally Wanted To "Take Back" Unprotected Chair Shots To The Head

AEW All Access CM Punk
AEW

The second major event in company history - obviously discounting All In - June 2019's Fyter Fest went down in infamy for a truly disgusting Shawn Spears chair shot to the head of Cody Rhodes.

This very real meshing of a steel chair meeting the unprotected head of the American Nightmare left Cody gushing blood in a sight that turned many a stomach. Not just was the visual itself unsettling, it obviously brought up the discussion over CTE and the head trauma such actions can do over time to a wrestler.

Of course, this led Tony Khan to immediately ban chair shots to the head.

While some may have speculated that this chair shot was possibly called on the fly or that timing was off on the swing, the reality is that AEW originally wanted to "take back" unprotected chair shots to the head. This had been a practice banned by WWE since the Benoit Tragedy in 2007, but All Elite Wrestling wanted to revisit this idiotic idea of yesteryear.

As Rhodes noted to Collider back in 2019:

"We went to great pains to 'take back' chair shots by soldering and ironing out the proper way to do it... and we just didn't get all of it."

Likewise, Tony Khan and the Young Bucks discussed at the time how they attempted to "gimmick" a steel chair in order to make it safe to crack someone around the skull with - with that something the promotion would've moved forward with.

Unfortunately for Cody Rhodes, this act went spectacularly wrong at Fyter Fest. Fortunately for the wrestling world, though, this incident thankfully caused AEW to drop all plans of making this a regular occurrence.

Senior Writer
Senior Writer

Once described as the Swiss Army Knife of WhatCulture, Andrew can usually be found writing, editing, or presenting on a wide range of topics. As a lifelong wrestling fan, horror obsessive, and comic book nerd, he's been covering those topics professionally as far back as 2010. In addition to his current WhatCulture role of Senior Content Producer, Andrew previously spent nearly a decade as Online Editor and Lead Writer for the world's longest-running genre publication, Starburst Magazine, and his work has also been featured on BBC, TechRadar, Tom's Guide, WhatToWatch, Sportkskeeda, and various other outlets, in addition to being a Rotten Tomatoes-approved film critic. Between his main dayjob, his role as the lead panel host of Wales Comic Con, and his gig as a pre-match host for Wrexham AFC games, Andrew has also carried out a hugely varied amount of interviews, from the likes of Robert Englund, Kane Hodder, Adrienne Barbeau, Rob Zombie, Katharine Isabelle, Leigh Whannell, Bruce Campbell, and Tony Todd, to Kevin Smith, Ron Perlman, Elijah Wood, Giancarlo Esposito, Simon Pegg, Charlie Cox, the Russo Brothers, and Brian Blessed, to Kevin Conroy, Paul Dini, Tara Strong, Will Friedle, Burt Ward, Andrea Romano, Frank Miller, and Rob Liefeld, to Bret Hart, Sting, Mick Foley, Ricky Starks, Jamie Hayer, Britt Baker, Eric Bischoff, and William Regal, to Mickey Thomas, Joey Jones, Phil Parkinson, Brian Flynn, Denis Smith, Gary Bennett, Karl Connolly, and Bryan Robson - and that's just the tip of an ever-expanding iceberg.