Never let it be said that Jimmy Kimmel would let a silly rivalry get in the way of being a hero.
While recently chatting with Variety, the Jimmy Kimmel Live host shared an “untold story” about saving the life of Matt Damon, his rival in a years-long feud.
Kimmel told the outlet that the Oscar winner and his brother Kyle were over at his home for dinner, which was pork ribs made by the comedian himself.
“He came late, was very hungry, and started eating fast,” Kimmel said. “He started choking on a pork rib. It was stuck in his throat for about an hour and a half.”
Matt Damon and Jimmy Kimmel.
Randy Holmes/Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty
“I said, ‘We have got to get him to the hospital,’ because if he dies in my house, I’m going to prison for the rest of my life,” Kimmel quipped. “I will never be able to explain this as anything other than a murder.”
While the exact statistics behind death by pork rib are still a mystery, Kimmel wasn’t going to take any chances. He said that he did “a lot of YouTube-ing” before they figured out that “eating little bits of bread was the way to get that rib to work its way down into his stomach.”
That wound up being the key. “Bread saved him. We tried the Heimlich many times. It was too far down,” Kimmel concluded.
Considering how long Damon and Kimmel’s faux enmity has been going on, it’s surprising that Kimmel kept this story under wraps for so long. It would have served as the ultimate one-upper in the duo’s longstanding antics.
Especially after Damon scored a big victory against the late night host last month.
During the July 30th episode of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, which Kimmel hosts in prime time, Damon competed with a secret weapon — Jeopardy host Ken Jennings.
The duo made it all the way to the final question, for all the marbles: “Which of these words is used to describe one of the most beautiful auditory effects on Earth: the sound made by the leaves of trees when wind blows through them?”
Matt Damon, Jimmy Kimmel, and Ken Jennings on ‘Who Wants To Be a Millionaire’.
Disney/Christopher Willard
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Jennings, who’s won a game show (or 74-plus), said he and his partner wanted to “play this very safe.” So they opted to take away two of the answers. After the 50/50 confirmed that what Jennings had thought was likely the correct answer, Damon mused, “It is so awesome having Ken Jennings as your partner in a trivia game. I can’t even tell you.”
Kimmel fumed that Damon was there with a trivia master, vowing to come on Jennings’ game show with “someone you hate.”
The duo ultimately won the $1 million, in what Kimmel called “the least dramatic million-dollar moment in history,” and they collected a check for the nonprofit Water.org, which Damon co-founded in 2009. The organization is dedicated to bringing water and sanitation to the world.
“I’m begrudgingly going to shake your hand,” Kimmel told Damon before reaching out. And Damon accepted it.
Watch the big moment above.