10 Reasons Why Chris Jericho’s Post-WWE Run Is His Best Ever

There's been a brilliant, blistering and violent simplicity to how New Japan Pro Wrestling have booked Chris Jericho, mostly because - unlike WWE - they can actually still afford characters enough room to deliver on dream matches.

Alpha vs. Omega looked great on a graphic and even better between the ropes. Jericho vs. Naito promised one thing then delivered something entirely different. Jericho vs. EVIL was unremarkable and still somehow stature-enhancing. Jericho/Naito 2 was an actual honest-to-goodness wrestling feud payoff for the ages on an organisation's grandest stage. Rainmaker Vs Painmaker played into Jericho's ludicrous god complex so well that he forced audiences to consider the fact that he could both outwrestle and defeat IWGP Champion Kazuchika Okada despite blindly f*cking obvious reasons why neither of those things could be possibly true.

There remains a Hiroshi Tanahashi-shaped hole in his NJPW CV thus far, but a tease in his last appearance suggested that's still on the table in spite of his AEW commitments.

This, in a nutshell, sums up Jericho's contemporary genius - he never lets himself fall off any radar as long as there's creative direction to control and money to be made. In an industry never more changeable, he's clinging on to supremely successful old fashioned methods.