Featured image by Ricky Havlik
Rude of this match to be better than I remembered. Even ruder of Jericho to show up motivated and ready to work here. It’s not devoid of Jericho’s usual post-WWE trickery. He rings the ring bell to declare himself the winner (at the exact same time that JR comments that Jericho never got too cocky to become lazy int he ring) and also does his well worn out grab the camera spot. But especially in the first half of the match, he holds his own pretty decently. For the most part, he keeps up with Kenny’s pace in the first half and even chops back with a lot of force.
It’s not a perfect performance though especially when Jericho has to go on control. He switches to using mostly punches which is a bad call given that his punches just don’t look great. As with Naito, Jericho also has trouble bumping for some of Omega’s offense. He noticeably struggles to get the momentum and rotation on an Omega snap rana.
The exact opposite can be said of Omega however. Omega remains so committed to bumping for Jericho’s offense that it adds a lot to Jericho’s own performance. Halfway through the match, Omega’s nose gets busted which makes his selling more believable when he’s giving so much to some of Jericho’s offense here. He also takes the initiative to set up some of the better moments in the match such as bumping for both the major table spots in the match.
As the match goes long it does start to lose steam however even despite both men’s best efforts. Jericho does a lot to try and match the pace though, at once nailing consecutive Lionsaults from two different angles, and another time catching Omega coming off the top with a Codebreaker. But unfortunately, the finish does a lot to taint the effect of the finishing stretch as well as the match overall. Jericho flubs a One Winged Angel counter into a DDT and instead of moving on, decides to expose his own flaw but repeating the spot to do it right–essentially confirming the mistake that had been made. Surprisingly amateur move from such a long time veteran. The finish also didn’t feed right structurally as Jericho cycles through his signature moves from the Lionsault to the Codebreaker and then straight to the Judas Effect instead of building his way up to it. Not a major flaw especially as it helped pick the pace back up after the big botch but a bit of a headscratcher nonetheless.
Still, another great match and yet another win in the Jericho column as a whole despite yet again being the obvious lesser performer in the match. But so far, things are looking pretty all right (not great) for the maniacs who voted Jericho into WOTY.
