On the Fite TV broadcast, we get Jericho interacting with the crowd as they chant “Stupid dick” at him. He, for some reason, decides to try and throw the chant back at the crowd instead of leaning into it to further get heat. He gets a strong reaction out of the crowd with his quips but it’s a promo that highlights all of Jericho’s strengths and weaknesses on the mic. He is definitely charismatic and funny but it’s also an entirely self-serving charisma that doesn’t add much to his act as the top heel in the company at all. In fact, the promo did more to endear him to the crowd than to amplify the heat he was already receiving just by coming out.
Once the bell rings, we get a really fun television main event that works around Jericho’s limitations incredibly well. It opens with an extended babyface shine segment with Guevara bumping like crazy for both Omega and Page. Omega shows a lot of meanness in this segment, really taking it to Guevara in small ways. It takes some interference on Hager’s part for things to lean into the heat segment on Omega in the ring.
I’ve complained often in this project that matches take a dip once Jericho has to work in control but they work around that problem well here. By incorporating Hager’s interference, there’s a lot more substance to the heat segment that covers up a lot of Jericho’s limitations in the ring. When the action gets to heat up again, Page and Omega do a great job building their comeback. It rises in intensity with both Guevara and Jericho taking some fun bumps for the babyfaces until interference from PAC on Page allows the Inner Circle to come out victorious yet again.
An incredibly efficient and fun tag here that in the end, has very little to do with Jericho. Guevara did the lion’s share of the work in the ring for his team and this had much more to do with the babyfaces and their big offense than anything Jericho brought to the table.
