Jericho reinvents the rub

On the last episode of AEW Dynamite, Chris Jericho announced that after a string of high profile losses, he was ready once again to shed his skin and start anew. While the tease of another ‘new’ Chris Jericho is always exciting, there’s a more urgent reinvention for Jericho; his booking.
It’s become increasingly clear over the course of this year that Jericho wants to give back to the new generation and put talent over. He wants to get “jobber” wrestlers on the mid-card. He wants to get mid-carders to the main event and he wants to help former main event wrestlers get their momentum back into the title picture.

While it had some (massive) flaws, last year on the whole was special for Chris Jericho. After coming back from a near-fatal illness at the end of 2021, Jericho drove himself to his best year in AEW, and maybe one of the best of his career. He got into fantastic shape, created a new faction in the Jericho Appreciation Society, won his eighth world title in becoming Ring of Honor champion, and what I think might be the most important, had incredible matches with Bryan Danielson and Jon Moxley as Chris ‘Lionheart’ Jericho, his persona from the early nineties. After doing it all he went back to the start and showed the world he hadn’t missed a step. That above all felt like 2022 was Jericho’s Swanson. All that’s left now is to gracefully elevate the talent that excites him. Only problem is, Jericho has lost complete control on how to get talent over.

In mid December Jericho was scheduled to fight Action Andretti, a relative unknown making his AEW Dynamite debut. While Jericho had just lost his Ring of Honor world title, it was on a Ring of Honor pay per view. On AEW’s flagship show Dynamite Jericho had over six title defences under his belt plus a successful defence at AEW’s pay per view All Out. So while Jericho had a recent loss, it didn’t feel like it had an effect on his momentum on AEW Dynamite. Jericho at this point was a massive star. 

During his promo before the match he drops a hint that he’s going to start a feud with Ricky Starks. The idea of Starks being the guy to beat Jericho on Dynamite felt tantalising, all that momentum that Jericho had built felt perfectly aligned for Ricky Starks, who after having a high profile loss to MJF could feel bigger than ever by taking down Jericho.
However, in that match with Action Andretti, Jericho losses. The crowd, the world, is stunned. It’s a massive, massive moment in AEW Dynamite’s history. Chris Jericho just lost to a jobber! So you wonder, why did Jericho hint at a feud with Ricky Starks if he’s instead having a programme with Andretti. Then next week you realise, fuck, he’s doing both.

Ricky Starks beats Jericho on Dynamite either a week or two weeks after and it means essentially nothing. Not only after Starks wins, Jericho’s JAS beat Ricky Starks up after the match so any chance of noting Jericho’s defeat, or Starks’ victory is gone.  On Marc Maron’s WTF Podcast Jericho talks about this segment like it’s a success. He’s managed to get Starks over with the win, and then got his faction over with a beatdown after.

“So no the storyline is these two guys, Ricky Starks and Action Andretti are like these two partners that are thrown together just by the fact that my guys beat them both up. Right, so now they create an alliance, this guy Ricky’s getting higher up the food chain, Andretti’s getting higher up the food chain, my guys are getting some great shit, it all fuckin works together, you know?”

Problem is, when everyone gets over, no one gets over.
Andretti and Starks, two strangers united in their desire to beat Jericho, a man they had both defeated weeks prior. Strangely, the faces were revolving around the heel. The heel being the booker of the feud.

Next was Adam Cole, but before that, a key point I need to make. Due to what I can only assume is creative pushback, Jericho’s feuds against top stars are never as bad as those lower on the card he goes up against. With Adam Cole being a top tier talent who’s already been in two AEW main events the feud was a lot shorter and therefore less egregious. 
Mainly the dark tone of feud not matching up with Jericho’s goofy aesthetic, and Adam Cole’s forced tough guy promo. The match itself was awful and before Adam Cole sprung back into action against MJF, many wondered if his ability had completely vanished.

Now we’re at Jericho’s fourth feud of the year against Sting. No, sorry, I mean against Sammy Guevara. Once again Jericho has left Sammy waiting like Kendall Roy begging his belligerent father to do the right thing for him and the company and step down, only to be met with a “no, in fact, I’ll feud with Sting”. This above all encapsulates the push and pull between Jericho’s focus on maintaining a starring role versus the new approach to putting the new wrestlers in the spotlight. To me, he’s failing at both.

It’s the most frustrating of all of Jericho’s messy feuds to watch because the Jericho and Sammy Guevara relationship and hopeful succession is as rich and storied as AEW Dynamite itself. These are two characters who have fought side by side countless times and I want to bang my head on the desk knowing that it’s not going to work because while I can just about trust Jericho as wrestler, appreciate him as a promo, he has no idea how to make an angle work for anyone anymore.

Jericho survived WCW’s awful booking, managed to be an incredible champ in WWE’s land of the giants and captured the NJPW/Kenny Omega zeitgeist by putting on incredible matches, pushing audacious angles, having a sharp sense of humour and generally having one of the most forward thinking minds the industry has ever seen. However, that has always been how Jericho has preserved himself. Which for the reasons I stated earlier, where necessary, but it’s now just as vital, just as necessary for Jericho to get a grip on how he gets the people he wants to push over. If Jericho can manage to do that, it might be his greatest reinvention yet.

The MJF face turn has already started

On the same night MJF announced his campaign to win the AEW title from CM Punk, maybe even during the backstage fight that would derail the trajectory of MJF’s career and the entire company, Chris Jericho did something controversial in his own right; he broke MJF’s kayfabe.

MJF’s well documented commitment to kayfabe feels pleasantly out of place in today’s wrestling climate. Where many have traded their mystique for shoot interviews, MJF has built a character in and out of the ring to the point where we have to contend with the fact we have no idea who MJF really is. Every vulnerable story he tells about his past makes you wonder if he’s being genuinely open, garnering sympathy or mocking the Marks who believe him

Almost every wrestler who’s been asked about MJF has been in on it, too. Wardlow, Dax Harwood, Eddie Kingston, and others have all made it clear that MJF is an arsehole in and out of the ring. Even when Punk gave MJF some praise he made it clear throw in a “fuck him” to make it clear where we stood on MJF as a person.

“I said to him 'when you come back, you're going to be a babyface.' He's like, 'I don't want to be a babyface, I don't want to be a babyface.' I was like, 'It's going to happen.' He's like, 'I don't know what to do,' and I said 'I'm sure The Rock said the same thing or Steve Austin said the same thing. You can do a babyface comeback. I'll teach you, it's easy.'

“I don’t know what to do” are words we’d never think MJF could say. It was the first time for me at least, that I saw MJF as a twenty six year old man struggling to deal with a character he cares deeply for, rather than seeing the character itself. In the weeks leading up to his match for the world championship with Jon Moxley, we could see Max working out in real time whether he should cater to the ever growing crowd that were cheering his name, or if he should stay the course as a heel.

As we know MJF stayed heel, won the title with William Regal’s help, turned on him and has since been having an almost-stellar run as the world champion. His feud with Bryan Danielson helped cement him as a heel, but his feud with the four pillars felt as if he was trying to limit his strengths to help the other three competitors hide their weaknesses. His recent match with Tanahashi had the crowd cheering more for him than The Ace of NJPW. No matter what MJF does, he can only stem the tide for so long. The crowd are booing MJF because they know he’s a prick, but do they want him to be? When he makes the crowd laugh, puts on incredible matches and brings the best out of every opponent he wrestles, it’s hard to let being called a stupid hillbilly really get in the way of appreciating and loving their presence.

On the other side of the coin, we have the man who took MJF into the greatest feud of his career (and my personal favourite in AEW’s history) CM Punk. A babyface who has polarised the entire AEW fandom due to the actions on the very same night MJF returned. He’s finally back on a new show built round him and from what we can tell, his vision for wrestling is at the forefront of the show. AEW Collision. The same way MJF feels like he’s denying the crowd to cheer, Punk feels like he’s waiting for the perfect moment to get the entire crowd to boo.

While Bret Hart’s most famous match is the Montreal Screwjob, his magnum opus has always been his match against Stone Cold at Wrestlemania 13. The legendary ‘Double Turn’ where the increasingly booed Bret Hart and the increasingly cheered Stone Cold finally let the crowd swap who to who to support and disparage in one fell swoop.

“I don’t know what to do”
“It’s easy, I’ll show you”

On last Saturday’s AEW Collision Punk belittled Max’s belt and accomplishments as a champion. That same night MJF fought twice and even defended his championship against Ethan Page after being challenged on the principle of ‘respect’. MJF won that match clean. These are the seeds being sewn, and it’s not a coincidence that defence was on CM Punk’s show, Collision. 

Who better to trust with becoming a face on the level of Stone Cold than the man who loves Bret Hart more than anyone in the world who isn’t bald with a podcast? Who took you from a Midcard heel to a main event player? Who’s better in the wrestling world right now at revelling and maximising the boos and cheers of a split crowd? Right now there’s no better guiding light to becoming a babyface for MJF than CM Punk, and there’s no better moment to fully turn heel for Punk than MJF. 
I’m confident that when the time comes, they’ll know what to do.