(8/12) Best Matches Series: The Best Matches of Chris Jericho (Season 5 Episode 8)

joshandstupodcast
Aug 26, 2020
2 min read

Welcome to Season 5 of my Best Matches series: where I look at the best matches of a certain wrestler. This season I look at one of the best wrestling reinventors of all time (my opinion, of course, haha) and distant family member Chris Jericho (no proof of that, just that his real-life surname is Irvine so you never know haha).

I'll look at his time in WCW, his battles in the 2000s with the likes of Triple and The Rock, to his late WWE career, his time at New Japan etc. If you want to look at my previous series then click on the link below.

(These posts will be once a week and not every day as in the previous series. So every Wednesday at 1 pm (UK Time) these reviews will be up)

Check out the last four seasons:

Kenny Omega (Season 1)

https://joshandstupodcast.wixsite.com/jswrestlingpod/post/all-posts-from-season-one-of-best-matches-series-kenny-omega-in-njpw

Becky Lynch (Season 2)

https://joshandstupodcast.wixsite.com/jswrestlingpod/post/all-posts-from-season-two-of-best-matches-series-the-best-of-becky-lynch-s-in-nxt-wwe

Stone Cold Steve Austin (Season 3)

https://joshandstupodcast.wixsite.com/jswrestlingpod/post/all-post-from-season-three-of-best-matches-series-best-matches-of-stone-cold-steve-austin

Eddie Guerrero (Season 4)

https://joshandstupodcast.wixsite.com/jswrestlingpod/post/all-posts-from-season-four-of-best-matches-series-eddie-guerrero

Next, we look at Chris Jericho's battle with The Rock when he faced him at No Mercy 2001 for the WCW Championship.

Season 5 Episode Eight

WCW Championship Match Chris Jericho vs. The Rock No Mercy 2001 • 21st October 2001

Here is the best match both Jericho and The Rock did in my opinion and I think this was Jericho's first real World Title opportunity. I love that the more the match when on the more heel Jericho become, even using The Rock own Rock Bottom (I love it when heels do that haha) and trying to do the people elbow.

Great spot with The Rock doing the Rock Bottom through the announce table which looks awesome and that table did break into a million piece which was also great (poor Spanish announce table haha)

I think it really showed how serious they were with Chris. He got a lot of offence on The Rock and a lot of credit goes to The Rock as his selling was great here. This was happening around the time of the invasion storyline and I find it funny that we have two WWF guys fighting for the WCW championship (I don’t think they cared at this point haha).

We get overbooking here with Stephanie getting involved and hating Jericho so much that she would rather see The Rock win than Jericho. It backfired of course and I like that Jericho used the chair to get the win with the Break Down (Which is The Miz Skull Crushing Finale haha).

Overall, it is a classic in all sense of the word and just shows how great Jericho's ability as in-ring storytelling was, and his first title win made him look credible when he became the undisputed champion later in the year. So, if you want to watch a great battle between two greats of the industry, you should check this match out.

Verdict: 8 out of 10

Watch The Full Match on WWE Network (Go to 1 hour 44 minutes into the video)

https://watch.wwe.com/episode/No-Mercy-2001-11795

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