Every Chris Jericho Reinvention Ranked From Worst To Best
Everything Is Jericho.
Chris Jericho first made waves in mainstream pro wrestling as a Thrillseeker in Jim Cornette's Smoky Mountain Wrestling, having flirted with some endearingly terrible names in a bid to land a career of any renown: as 'Jack Action' and 'Sudden Impact', Jericho was always a man of reinvention, just not prodigiously so.
Jericho, across a legendary career that no fellow professional may ever surpass, appeared on the debut broadcasts of WCW Thunder, WWF SmackDown, WWE NXT and AEW Dynamite. And this is no journeyman career, in which he bounced from promotion to promotion as a mere seasoned, dependable pro: in those matches, he wrestled legends Ric Flair, Daniel Bryan, Kenny Omega and the Young Bucks. Jericho is the line through which modern wrestling history is traced. The man defined through reinvention is, ironically, the one constant of the industry's evolution in the post-expansion mainstream.
This is even more impressive than it reads underneath the surface: Jericho survived and thrived within the total over-exposure of the post-syndication, content-fatigue era. He achieved this by fashioning himself as the Madonna of the mat game. In wrestling, you either die, or live long enough to draw "boring" chants.
It's time to break open a little bit of the bubbly to celebrate the one man who never did...
13. Super Liger
Jericho infamously lost his newly-won AEW World Championship last month, but by then, he was such an expert worker that he turned an embarrassment into a legitimately hilarious series of promos.
He wasn't equipped with the self-assurance to deal with the humiliation that was his catastrophic debut as 'Super Liger' in New Japan Pro Wrestling. The biggest embarrassment on the biggest stage, Jericho, promoted as Jushin Liger's nemesis, never did complete the story arc. At the 1997 Tokyo Dome show, Super Liger went over Koji Kanemoto in a match so comically bad fans laughed at it.
Jericho attempted his trademark springboard dropkick spot, but, unable to see through the mask, he lost his footing. He had difficulty manoeuvring himself around the ring, too, due to the constraints of his costume. And that's what it was; it would be charitable to describe it as "attire", because he was only ever cosplaying as his rival. The rest of the match, riddled with miscommunications, was at best disjointed. The character was immediately dropped because it was so untenable.
Super Liger was meant to be the evil doppelgänger of Jushin Liger, but the opposite was true. He was as hapless in the ring as Jushin was awesome.