50 Ups & 50 Downs For WWE's Decade: The 2010s
21. The Festival Of Friendship
The Festival of Friendship was an inch-perfect severance to the uneasy union between Kevin Owens and Chris Jericho. A rare case of WWE's drawn-out comedy serving a grand purpose, the character-driven centrepiece of the February 13th 2017 edition of the show was a masterclass in performance nuance in keeping with months of narrative between the 'best friends'.
Every gift Jericho bestowed upon Owens was a gift to the crowd. The audience had deeply invested in the pair and were in on Owens' eventual turn weeks before Jericho himself. When professional wrestling has the opportunity to play with dramatic irony in such a way, the slow demise of a performer is a heartbreaking joy to watch.
Blind to his buddy's disdain, Jericho closed the segment by paying tribute to their tag team in a genuinely heartfelt tribute, before dramatically revealing the gift he'd received from his former companion. As Jericho barely had a second to register his name on a 'List of KO' before Owens struck, viciously beating him down with a powerbomb on the apron, before smashing him through the Jeritron screen has 'Y2J' himself had done to Shawn Michaels almost a decade earlier.