There was a very scary moment on Smackdown Live last week during the match between James Ellsworth and AJ Styles (their first encounter). AJ was going for the ‘Styles Clash’ and Ellsworth did the one thing you CAN’T do for that move, he tucked his chin (please keep your Ellsworth has no chin jokes to a minimum).
This had potential for disaster because he could have landed straight on his head. Luckily AJ adjusted and everything was okay. Ellsworth was recently on the Bischoff on Wrestling podcast where he discussed what happened:
“I got it back at the last second. He took care of me too. In practice everything was fine and all that. It’s just that instinct thing for a wrestler to, “tuck your chin.” That’s the one move you don’t do it on. I felt so bad about it afterwards. They were all cool about it and everything because it looked good on TV. It looked like he killed me. It’s not like it looked bad or anything. It was just that instinct of, “tuck your chin.” I’ve been told to do it for fourteen years and that’s all it was” (Source: Bischoff On Wrestling).
Ellsworth continued:
“I was ok. It was fine. I didn’t get hurt obviously and AJ is, like I said earlier in my humble opinion, is the best in the world. He knows how to adjust to things and everything was ok afterwards” (Source: Bischoff On Wrestling).
[irp posts=”16748″ name=”James Ellsworth Reveals What Vince McMahon Told Him After His Title Match Against AJ Styles”]
You can watch the move from WWE’s youtube channel below (Skip until about 1:05 or so in):
Lucky that Ellsworth was okay and he didn’t break his neck. Another example of why AJ Styles is one of the best wrestlers on the planet.