Every Chris Jericho Reinvention Ranked From Worst To Best
10. Saviour
A conscious throwback to his old, Y2J persona, but with a babyface tweak, at least he had a point this time: Randy Orton wasn't a particularly interesting character, and so Jericho sought to "save" us from him and usher in a new era of charisma, or something.
The lack of imagination infected the viral marketing campaign; the Matrix effects in the vignettes looked severely dated, a full four years after Revolutions had caked the series in sh*t, and the act itself all felt over-familiar, even if he hadn't been seen for a long time. Jericho returned as if transported from a different time, layering his whole "boring" spiel in irony.
Jericho wasn't alone in this opinion. He was desperate to change his act, but even when he wasn't fresh, he was still inspired: it was upon this return that Jericho debuted his new Codebreaker finish. Inspired by Naomichi Marufuji, this move was a very astute choice: the Walls of Jericho was always over, but the drawn-out struggle to clinch the finish didn't have the same impact as Bret Hart's Sharpshooter, for example, since it wasn't as revered or protected.
The Codebreaker made great use of Jericho's by-then superb ability to pace a finish and time his movement, and with it, his ring style caught up to his eclectic character work - both of which advanced by orders of magnitude very quickly.