Jason Kelce Vows to Return Super Bowl Luchador Mask to Texas Teen: ‘Sorry It Was Commandeered’
The Philadelphia Eagles center was seen wearing the colorful mask at afterparties while celebrating the Kansas City Chiefs’ big win
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Photo:Tony Tran
Jason Kelce is about to make one Kansas City Chiefs fan very happy!
While partying the night away following brother Travis Kelce and his team’s 2024 Super Bowl victory, the Philadelphia Eagles star wore a yellow and red luchador mask — which he credited on his New Heights podcast earlier this week for taking the celebration to the “next level.”
It turns out, the mask belongs to a Dallas eighth-grader named Elijah Smith, who wants his piece of 2024 Super Bowl history back.
“Operation ‘Get Elijah His Mask Back’ is underway!” Kelce, 36, wrote on X (formerly Twitter) Friday morning, linking to a news story on Dallas-Fort Worth station KXAS-TV. “I appreciate everyone bringing this to my attention, and look forward to uniting Elijah with his mask once again. Your mask indeed brings great fortune, I owe you big time, sorry it was commandeered.”
While Kelce claimed on his podcast that he found the mask on the floor of a nightclub, Smith begged to differ.
“I gave him my mask and then he dropped it and then picked it back up,” Smith told the station. “Then I got a picture with him wearing it and then I just hung out next to them for five to 10 minutes, they were dancing and everything.”
But when it was time for the middle-schooler to collect his mask — which he says has brought him good luck in three previous Chiefs Super Bowl games he’s attended with his parents — Kelce had already moved on to the next party.
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Tony Tran
“I saw videos on Instagram this week of him wearing it at the next afterparty he went to, so he clearly never took it off the whole night,” Smith said, per the outlet.
For Kelce, the mask not only complemented his yellow-and-red Chiefs overalls situation, but it also added to his experience of celebrating his brother and the Chiefs’ win.
“It didn’t really start getting to the next level until I found that luchador mask,” the father of three said on the podcast he co-hosts with his brother. “There’s something about finding that luchador mask that really just transformed the night. It was like I transformed.”
But for Smith, the mask has sentimental value.
The teen’s parents, Thad and Sarah Smith, are longtime friends of Chiefs chairman and CEO Clark Hunt and his wife, Tavia, his mother noted in an Instagram post that included her own photos from the Las Vegas afterparty.
Last year, while the family celebrated the Chiefs 2023 Super Bowl win against the Eagles, Elijah got Chiefs cornerback Trent McDuffie to sign the mask and “it has a huge autograph on the side,” Elijah said.
Now that Jason is ready to return the special mask to its rightful owner, Elijah has one last request: “It would be pretty cool if he autographed it and sent it back,” he said.
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