Jay’s Ways – Jericho Clowns Himself Yet Again

I’ve been pretty good at NOT writing about Chris Jericho as of late. For those of you out of the loop, he likes to go the route of a ‘shock jock’ sometimes and shoot from the hip. Working for All Elite Wrestling, he tends to go for the shots against WWE for attention or acting like a clown on social media. All opinions of course…but it hasn’t been a good 24 months or so from Jericho.

Forget the online feud with Sebasian Bach.

Forget losing the AEW Title at a cheap steakhouse.

Forget the political donations being made public, followed by wise cracking “I’m not a political guy” and getting called out for it by his peers.

Forget the editing/hiding of his fading hairline on a selfie.

Forget the ridiculous Covid 19 thoughts…and then actually testing positive in a not-so-ironic twist.

Forget about STILL defending the fact his buddy Luther has a job in AEW.

Forget about the fact he went onto the WWE Network and admitted out loud that HIS COMPANY wasn’t competition to them.

Forget about him ripping WWE for their lack of build in the same sentence he is hyping up a Blood And Guts cage match as a feud OPENER, not closer.

Forget all of that right now because none of it matters. We are going to stay on the topic of the Blood And Guts match today. The big ending to that match was Chris Jericho flying off the top of the cage onto a clearly padded/staged ramp. AEW played it up as a huge incident and like he was seriously injured. That is okay. The commentators obviously SHOULD be doing that! It’s their job to try and sell you what is happening.

The unfortunate part is that the fall was very clearly staged. It looked more like somebody jumping into bed on a bunch of pillows than anything dangerous. Something similar happened in AEW when the company hyped up a big exploding ring death match thingy on pay-per-view, but when the explosion happened, it was a couple of sparklers. A huge dud and a big slap in the face to anybody who actually plunked down cash to watch that. I didn’t…but some wrestling fans were suckered into and were disappointed.

Same theory applies here. Jericho falling off the cage was supposed to be a dramatic, emotional moment. Rather, it looked laughable and came off ridiculous.

My opinion is that if you can’t properly do a big stunt, don’t do it. Just like a big budget movie. If you can’t do the special effects correctly and the finished product looks like garbage, guess what? Critics are going to rightfully call you out and say the graphics sucked. Just how it is. Since the match, Jericho and AEW have caught a ton of flak over it. The ‘scene’ didn’t quite end up being as serious as maybe they thought on paper.

During his Saturday Night Special (a Chris Jericho Q&A session), he had A LOT to say about the big moment. To the shock of nobody, he defended the moment and then took shots at everybody who gave him crap for it. Of course, he isn’t entirely understanding the point. We all respect him for putting his body on the line and doing his best to entertain us. We all know the sacrifices and pain these athletes go through. We were giving him (and AEW) crap for how it came across or how it looked on television. That was the criticism, not the fact he did it.

During his long winded rant, he kept at it. Here is the quote I want to focus on:

“Best of luck to anybody in our business, and anybody that bags on somebody who’s taking a chance and putting their bodies on the line can really f**k off. Especially people in the business. I could say some names. There’s a couple of chicks in WWE who said some stuff and they should probably not have said that. They probably weren’t trained any better, and in 6 months they’ll probably be asking us for a job anyways and I’ll remember that, so we’ll leave it at that.”

First off, credit to Fightful.com for the quotes. I have said it before, but they do great work. Fightful breaks stories constantly and has really come on as perhaps THE most trusted source on professional wrestling. All the props in the world to them.

Now back to Jericho – what a petty comment. The ‘chicks’ that made joking posts on Twitter are Shotzi Blackheart and Shayna Baszler. Even if WWE has been cutting some wrestlers as of late, those two have nothing to worry about, so even suggesting that is a tad little insulting. We are going to ignore the fact he called them “chicks” because that is self explanatory. Next, again, nobody is bagging on Jericho for putting his body on the line, so that argument he made up in his mind is stupid.

Last but not least, this whole thing comes off horrible for Jericho once again. How petty to suggest he/AEW will blacklist the “chicks in WWE” should they become free agents. How petty. To say they “probably weren’t trained any better” is equally as insulting to WWE and their trainers there…but again, whatever. Just the threat or implication that Shotzi or Shayna are in trouble from Principal Jericho, as if they give two hoots. Based on Shotzi doubling down on her joke from May on Twitter already, it appears she stands firm with her opinion and isn’t going to worry about the idle threat of being blacklisted down the road.

Overall, that quote bugged me, so I decided to write about it. Just my opinion but Jericho needs to find a way of balancing the role of being an outspoken podcast host looking for listeners and shock jock. He crosses that line far too many times, especially since jumping to All Elite Wrestling. Sometimes it is best to sit there and look like a stupid idiot than to open your mouth and prove it.

https://twitter.com/ShotziWWE/status/1390124361357660163