AJ Styles defeated Chris Jericho in the rubber match between the two, in a bout that was ultimately disappointing but possibly carried too much in the way of expectation going on. Jericho in particular seemed a little off, but a performer of his standing is allowed to be less than perfect from time to time. Again, all of this may just be a case of unreachable expectations going in. The right man won, and the right man won clean. That's important. But the major question coming out of this, and in my opinion the worst decision made of the entire evening, was why oh why did Chris Jericho kick out of the Styles Clash? When AJ made his debut in the Royal Rumble, the move was teased on a number of occasions and the crowd were ready to lose their minds every single time. He finally got to use the move on SmackDown, and it was put over strong by the commentators as essentially an instant kill. In many ways, it is this that did a lot of the work with getting AJ so over in Japan. The Styles Clash was treated with the utmost fear, with competitors doing all they could to avoid it. It was this that led to the development of the Calf Killer (now Crusher), which AJ used to defeat Jericho last night. I understand it is 2016 and finishing moves aren't protected as they once were, but this was taking it a little too far in my opinion. A new superstar needs their finisher protected in order to continue to condition the crowd to respond to the right thing. Styles has used the Clash in two matches now, with a 50% success rate. If WWE are planning on getting rid of the move then fine, but if not then why is Jericho kicking out of it in an undercard match on a routine B-level special event? It was a baffling move, to say the least.
Born in the middle of Wales in the middle of the 1980's, John can't quite remember when he started watching wrestling but he has a terrible feeling that Dino Bravo was involved. Now living in Prague, John spends most of his time trying to work out how Tomohiro Ishii still stands upright. His favourite wrestler of all time is Dean Malenko, but really it is Repo Man. He is the author of 'An Illustrated History of Slavic Misery', the best book about the Slavic people that you haven't yet read. You can get that and others from www.poshlostbooks.com.
