Liked this a little less than when I first saw it. If you follow me on Twitter, you might have seen me add this to my MOTYC thread and based on this viewing, it wouldn’t make it again.
It’s still a very good match. 2019 was a really good year for Cody and I’d say that he’s actively great in this match. There’s a nice crisp on all his offense and he sells his ass off. He’s also easily responsible for all the best moments of the match, the peak of which being smashing his own head into the entrance ramp after missing on a tope. Cody brings a lot of emotion to the match that adds to stuff like his Moonsault attempt or some of the late roll ups he gets on Jericho.
Unfortunately, this viewing does expose a lot of the flaws of the match. Firstly, this thing is bloated. This match goes just shy of half an hour and it absolutely did not need that time. Jericho and Cody seemed to be going for that classic championship style match and it just doesn’t work because Jericho really can’t keep up. All his offense is sluggish and never comes together with any real sense of urgency. He throws some great belt shots though and gets to milk the most out of certain setpieces like confronting Dean Malenko who’s judging at ringside or getting smacked around by Cody’s mom.
Otherwise, most of what’s good here comes from Cody. Jericho’s just there and even actively detracts from things if you ask me. He’s consistently exposed in singles matches like these which makes the Inner Circle as an act one of the best booking moves AEW made. It’s clear to me that AEW knows how to use Jericho well especially on television so why anyone decided he needed twenty-eight minutes to mill about here boggles me.
