AEW's Swerve Strickland Looks Back On Hell Of War Match With AR Fox

Fans around the world still to this day have fond memories of Lucha Underground, where the DNA of the promotion can found in some of the biggest companies in the world today. One of the matches everyone remembers taking place in 'The Temple" was the Hell of War match between Killshot (Swerve Strickland) and Dante Fox (AR Fox), a bout Strickland was recently asked about during a recent appearance on the "No-Contest Wrestling" podcast.

Strickland explained that he and Fox wanted to break the stereotypes black wrestlers are labelled with at times by leaning more into their respective military backgrounds, giving their characters a much more gritty and real feel to them and their eventual blow-off match. "We're not seeing two black wrestlers performing as black wrestlers, we're seeing two fighters, we're seeing two soldiers, we're seeing two killers go at each other regardless of color," Strickland said. "We could have been any ethnicity and you would have still got that same effect. It doesn't change the story at all."

From a personal standpoint, Strickland believes that the bond he has with Fox takes the match to an extra level, that bond being something that resembles a big and little brother relationship, with Strickland always trying to catch up to Fox. Strickland walked away victorious after putting Fox in an ambulance, proud of the fact that he lived up to his own personal expectations.

"We met the challenge, and we wanted to just...not meet it, be we wanted to blow it out of the water. This is Ultima Lucha, the before the main event was like [Prince] Puma and Rey [Mysterio], [they] killed it. One of the best matches I've ever seen live to this day....That was the bar, how do we smash through this bar?"

Please credit "No-Contest Wrestling" when using quotes from this article, and give a H/T to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.