13 Ups & 6 Downs From AEW Dynamite (Nov 27)

1. Glorious F*ckery

A wonderful set piece of pro-wrestling comedy, Chris Jericho's Thanksgiving Celebrashon for Le Champion was just tremendous from start to finish.

An AEW starting off with f*cking VIRGIL in the ring in 2019 is almost as much of a hoot as old Soul Train Jones getting locked in a Million Dollar Dream to close the damn thing. God bless that man for finding another way to score that f*ck money in the modern era.

The set was as elaborate as expected, with oversized gifts, inflatable nonsense, a troupe of trumpet players, and a yet carpet. 'The Alpha' was in excellent form. Turning the "thank you Jericho!" chants to jeers, he said he was finally about to get his "thank you" from AEW executives and the TNT brass, instructed the crowd to look under their seats for a voucher for a whole 50 cents off his new t-shirt design, and claimed that he'd spent months sourcing grapes from the mountains of Nepal to create his own bubbly. The man is now selling bottles of champagne. Jesus Christmas.

The Inner Circle handed Jericho their gifts. Sammy Guevara had a cardboard cutout of him and "my brother, my father figure" hugging, Proud & Powerful had "a little bit of the forty," and Jake Hager had a terrified Chris Jerigoat. Jericho's dad, Ted Irvine, emerged from a huge box to rip on the Chicago Blackhawks. Then, Justin Roberts got his *rse kicked when Chris decided he didn't like the announcer's tone as he read the thank you note.

If there's a supplemental Down, it's that the SoCal Uncensored's reveal as band members in disguise didn't resonate as well as it perhaps could have. Regardless, this Celebrashon was a riot. Gloriously opulent and over the top, it presented this Jericho character at his most self-indulgent and we, along with the man himself, luxuriated in it.