9 Ups And 11 Downs From WrestleMania 32

8. Did AJ Forget To Shake Vince€™s Hand?

chris jericho aj styles.jpg

Let€™s see if we€™ve got this right. Veteran Chris Jericho betrays newcomer AJ Styles, turning on him after their tag title match. Jericho continues to distract AJ during his matches, occasionally attacking him.

WWE, with a need to build new, younger stars with so many veterans either reaching retirement age or being injured more often (see Cena, John), decides in its infinite wisdom to have Jericho defeat Styles clean (well, mostly clean) in the middle of the ring.

Is that all correct?

Look, it€™s understandable that WWE doesn€™t want to have every match outcome being predictable and a foregone conclusion, but sometimes, you need to do what€™s €œbest for business€ rather than trying to surprise or outsmart the fans. Jericho is a legendary wrestler and his winning on its own is not a bad thing.

But having Styles, in his WrestleMania debut, lose a match that could have put him in a position to be a top level star is just baffling. You can almost see AJ being shuttled down the card to another face in the crowd. Maybe that€™s a really pessimistic view, but we€™ve seen it happen multiple times, so it really wouldn€™t be shocking to see Styles fighting for the Intercontinental Championship in a month.

Of course, we€™ll have to see what€™s next in this rivalry. But man oh man

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Contributor

Scott is a former journalist and longtime wrestling fan who was smart enough to abandon WCW during the Monday Night Wars the same time as the Radicalz. He fondly remembers watching WrestleMania III, IV, V and VI and Saturday Night's Main Event, came back to wrestling during the Attitude Era, and has been a consumer of sports entertainment since then. He's written for WhatCulture for more than a decade, establishing the Ups and Downs articles for WWE Raw and WWE PPVs/PLEs and composing pieces on a variety of topics.