AEW Vs NXT - The New Wrestling War
It took the forging of a relationship with Kenny Omega and The Young Bucks to get to the point on January 4th where Chris Jericho somehow stood across from them all on NJPW's grandest stage, shortly before they tore it down. Cody was on the card too - he'd gotten to The Elite before Jericho and brilliantly interwoven himself into the multiverse the trio had curated from a the humble beginnings of a travel blog.
The mainstream paradigm was already shifting just by virtue of Jericho's presence on the card, but this still had the air of a Rock-At-WrestleMania relationship...until the catastrophic Raw 25. 'Y2J's contribution to a the supposed special celebration of the show just 16 days later amounted to a little more than a bit of backstage banter with Elias.
The company hadn't pied him off completely, but his contributions were carefully reduced by the vignette. Jericho didn't care. His assault on Tetsuya Naito on January 5th was one of the major talking points in the industry - far more relevant than anything WWE had in their locker that month with the exception of Ronda Rousey's jaw-dropping Royal Rumble debut.
Raw 25 wasn't counterprogramming to Wrestle Kingdom 12. It was barely programming on its own terms. A sprawling arrogant misfire, the show sh*t on nostalgia as a concept and forced the big ticket fans in the Manhattan Center to eat it between pieces of unbuttered toast. Raw 27, if such a thing were to exist in 2020, simply wouldn't get away with that atrocity on a Monday Night if AEW were booking Kenny Omega Vs Jon Moxley on their weekly show 24 hours later.
At least some of those trapped East Coast fans will have had NXT TakeOver: Philadelphia to look forward to five days later. Johnny Gargano and Andrade 'Cien' Almas capped off a sh*thot card with hot sh*t five star classic. Sh*t by name, but fertilser by nature - NXT continued to feed WWE's hardcore fanbase in spite of main roster pesticides nearly choking them to death.
CONT'D...