10 Wrestling GOATs With ONE Fatal Flaw
6. Chris Jericho
GOAT credentials:
Has anybody been as good for as long as Chris Jericho?
As the man himself put it, he was never particularly fast. He could work the in-vogue cruiser style when he first broke through, but, with his eye on the long game, he was almost destined to become a great. He developed a way of working that enabled him to do it for a long, long time. He never absorbed himself into the WWE bubble. He knew when to leave, when to change, when to return, what fans wanted, what they didn't want. He was a super-charismatic composite fan favourite throughout the Attitude Era, knowing that the catchphrase and the aerial was in vogue at the same time, and after a legendary WWE run, he perfected the art of the brawl when even his hardly fast approach to the "workrate match" had been lapped by his disciples.
Fatal flaw:
Beyond his patchy form post-Le Champion, his ability to sense the pulse of the wrestling fandom is almost too keen. He gloms onto almost everything and has developed a rep as a clout vampire as a result. Great as he still is a lot of the time - that match with Tomohiro Ishii, Jesus Christ - he's the rocker who played synths in the 80s and the heavy band who went on a nu-metal misadventure in 1999.