8 Ups & 1 Down From AEW Dynasty (Results & Review)

Downs...

1. Chris Jericho Wrestled

Dynasty Chris Jericho HOOK
AEW

Chris Jericho is beyond a joke in April 2024, but that didn't prevent the fans from laughing at him.

For the entire seventeen-minute (!) duration of his win over HOOK, fans pelted him with abuse. They told him to go away. If he actually went away and toured with Fozzy, he'd still be unpopular: the fans also told him, loudly, that Fozzy sucks. The St. Louis crowd also told him to retire several times.

The thing is, move-for-move, this might have worked had Jericho wrestled it as 'Le Champion' when he was over. This was a theoretically cathartic match, at least for 10 or so minutes. Jericho took a truly wild sideways bump neck-first through a table. On the night, though, it would not have mattered if he turned in the performance of his life. The fans are profoundly sick of his woefully over-exposed character.

The match played out as another SummerSlam 2014 retread. Between a 2021 match with Wardlow and his first encounter with HOOK a few weeks back, this is the third time Jericho thought this was a fresh, cool idea. Deeper in the match, Jericho aimed to escalate his "sadistic" offence. It was an impossible task. He has zero aura even when he's smashing HOOK face-first with a baseball bat shot, and the realisation that he wasn't losing spoiled the schadenfreude atmosphere five full minutes before it was put out of its misery.

What's really damning here is that Jericho's very presence brings into harsher focus the differences between AEW in 2024 and WWE in 2024. The fans in AEW hijack unwanted, awful stuff that they don't want to see now. That used to be WWE's problem. What a bleak paradigm shift.

A dreadful scene.

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Contributor
Contributor

Michael Sidgwick is an editor, writer and podcaster for WhatCulture Wrestling. With over seven years of experience in wrestling analysis, Michael was published in the influential institution that was Power Slam magazine, and specialises in providing insights into All Elite Wrestling - so much so that he wrote a book about the subject. You can order Becoming All Elite: The Rise Of AEW on Amazon. Possessing a deep knowledge also of WWE, WCW, ECW and New Japan Pro Wrestling, Michael’s work has been publicly praised by former AEW World Champions Kenny Omega and MJF, and current Undisputed WWE Champion Cody Rhodes. When he isn’t putting your finger on why things are the way they are in the endlessly fascinating world of professional wrestling, Michael wraps his own around a hand grinder to explore the world of specialty coffee. Follow Michael on X (formerly known as Twitter) @MSidgwick for more!