10 Best AEW Finishers
6. Chris Jericho's Judas Effect
The Judas Effect looked comical when Jericho first announced it in a training vignette on the Road To Double Or Nothing series. Cody even mentioned as much to build his feud with Le Champion, in the process hanging a lampshade over the finish to put it over.
It's strange also because Jericho has for years used a less emphatic version of a back elbow as a transition move.
His first use of the Judas Effect didn't look great, but it worked convincingly enough because he put it over before he struck it. The finish to his match with Kenny Omega at Double Or Nothing looked flat, but, because Jericho is a master of timing, he made an aspirational move look incredible at the best possible time: at All Out en route to capturing the AEW World Championship.
It works best when there's a Judas in, a Judas in Hangman Page's mind, because he sells it like death, but the power of the move is less in the execution, and more in the mythology. Jericho can get a pronoun over huge, much less a finish, and his burly physique hauls it over the line. It looks like it hurts, and it is delivered by a legend of a performer. It doesn't look spectacular. He hasn't even consistently mastered the timing.
But there looks to be no getting up from it, and that is the art of the finish at its very core.