Every Chris Jericho Reinvention Ranked From Worst To Best
3. The Best In The World At What He Does
Jericho was always a loudmouth, in every incarnation, using the piercing howl of a hair metal frontman to either rouse the crowd or irritate them into submission. He was always rapid in his delivery, too, accelerating through his schtick like an updated carnival barker in a bid to capture the attention; if you couldn't keep up, you couldn't hear him.
He dialled everything back in an effort to reinvent himself in 2008.
He never shared the closest of relationships with Eric Bischoff, but he cribbed from his playbook, consciously or otherwise, to pull it off. He did the opposite of what was making him stale.
Certainly inspired by the low, authoritative tones of Nick Bockwinkel, Jericho slowed down the pace of his promos drastically to antagonise a crowd expectant of his old, overblown charisma, and his choice of words was very effective, too: as a reader, you're probably aware that the quickest way to draw heat is to use long words in an attempt to claim intelligence and thus superiority, and Jericho's talk of "gelatinous tapeworms" and the like felt insulting in both content and pitch.
As best demonstrated in his seminal rivalry with Shawn Michaels, Jericho reinvented his ring style, too, emphasising a viciousness and intensity, scaling back the more spectacular reaches of his arsenal.