Chris Jericho In AEW - What Went Wrong?

Never fast, he’s really slow these days. He hasn’t wrestled a great, over match in a long while - since the Wembley aberration. Across January and February, his dire, ceaseless feud with the Don Callis family rumbled on. He wrestled Kyle Fletcher and Konosuke Takeashita and could barely keep up. There was a teetering, unnerving quality to those matches, in both of which he took really nasty bumps that he was physically incapable of executing properly.

Still clever, despite everything, his run with the FTW title will allow him to wrestle shortcut-laden plunder brawls in which he can hide. The fans in St. Louis however still hated his interpretation of that genre at Dynasty. They told him to retire.

Then, there was the incident over the holidays.

Chris Jericho, as Brawl Out continued to dominate the conversation, claimed he’d never signed a non-disclosure agreement; journalist Nick Hausman wondered aloud in response to that tweet if Jericho had made anybody else sign an NDA. Another X user then theorised that Hausman had insinuated that Jericho was responsible for Kylie Rae’s mysterious departure from AEW in 2019, posting a screenshot of an unsourced rumour speculating that Jericho had invited Rae to a hotel room under the false pretence that she wouldn’t be alone with him. Kylie in response to that posted a heart emoji. No allegation was made - but dots were connected by AEW fans. Those fans let him know at Worlds End.

It is impossible to invest in Jericho without knowing the extent to which, if any, he is a creep. On that "if any": Tony Khan was handed the opportunity, during the Worlds End (sic) press conference, to adamantly deny that Jericho had ever received a complaint related to his conduct in AEW. That opportunity was not taken; Khan instead blathered on, non-specifically, about AEW’s safety record.

Jericho, who hasn’t felt like the WWE interloper who could still hang with and beat his predecessors in years, has nothing left. He’ll never win a truly significant match again, or at least he absolutely shouldn’t, and fans can snuff that out like a bloodhound. Fans back winners. Jericho - a glorified jobber desperate to cling on - is a loser who can’t stop losing.

Jericho used to have the ability to pop fans just by saying a word or phrase in a daft, amusing way.

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