2022 Ongoing MOTY List: Jericho vs. Danielson

 

2. Chris Jericho vs. Bryan Danielson AEW Dynamite 9/14

ER: I watched this match on January 6, 2024, the three year anniversary of the most important date in the Jericho household, and I think this match should be considered among the all time greatest Jericho matches in his very long career. Jericho is 51 years old, which is past the age where you automatically expect to see any athlete or performer's greatest work, and I was blown away how Jericho was able to work this great match without relying on his age for the match story. Jericho is a different wrestler now than he was younger, but this wasn't about an old guy showing he could still hang (even though it did), until his slower step and aging body leads to a painful loss. Jericho's act impressed me because of how effective it still played at his age, but this match would have been just as great if he worked it the same way at 31. 

He doesn't get any kind of break in this match and it's impressive as hell. The first 5 minutes is exclusively him getting chopped and kicked and thrown inside and outside the ring before finally ducking a kick and almost pulling Danielson to the mat with a German. Danielson welting and bruising and purpling Jericho's chest, and the pained way Jericho instinctively began flinching from these cruel shots, only got more intense the deeper the match went, hammering Jericho's chest and turning the chops into something that looked like they would physically wear any man down. You want to talk worn down? Jericho took so many brutal chops that it lead to his chest actually being completely sunken in and his pecs looking weirdly shaped before the match even started. From the chops. 

I almost always hate Fighting From Your Knees spots in modern wrestling, but Jericho does a great version of a spot I hate. I couldn't even tell you if I've seen anyone do this spot better, or who that person even was. Jericho alone owns it now. When they started taking turns punching each other in the head while kneeling directly in front of each other, it was easily the only part of the match I began to dislike, after thinking every other part had been excellent...until Jericho took over and started punching Danielson really hard in the side of the head and then started slamming the side of his addled and uncleared-by-some-doctors head into the mat. Jericho began a spot that he has to know was hack and overplayed and it felt like he was showing how to make that spot an actual successful real part of a match, a red-faced boat dealership owner's fantasy coming true as he beats an undercover Antifa member brainless on the Capitol steps. 

Pulling off the Lionsault in your early 50s is cool, sorry but that's the rule. Moonsaults of any kind past 50 are automatically cool. The moonsault is a crazy spot for a guy a decade older than me to still be doing, especially so because Jericho's success rate gets worse and more dangerous the older he gets, so the move feels like a Big Move than ever. Jericho has always had a great top rope huracanrana, and it is still a really impressive huracanrana. It doesn't have the leaping height it did 25 years ago, but it's been replaced with a lower trajectory and looks more powerful for it. That said, it's his punches while standing on the top rope before hitting his rana that looked even better, thrown right at Danielson's brow, Jericho balancing by holding Danielson's head and punching. I love a good missed ringpost charge spot and Jericho does a great fast miss and deflated fall through the ropes to the apron. 

Not only do Jericho's LionTamer and single leg crab look great, sitting heavily into both in a controlled way, but he is operating on such an entire new plane that his spinning toe hold looked like a fucking RINGS level submission weapon. Illusion made Danielson's leg look like it was getting bent around Jericho's calf, and I love how Chris Jericho is the technician finally able to show us the most painful version of a historically funny hold. Perhaps even more impressive is how his intentionally slow application of the figure 4 managed to breathe fresh life into a spot that has been done so many slightly different ways by the greats and also by the shittiest wrestlers ever, making me buy the move as a real honest to god finish in a way that I didn't think possible. 

Chris Jericho is clearly as effective as ever in the ring, and that's the story of the match. He will go on to lose this match, but he will not lose because of ineffectiveness or age. He was never ineffective. He lost because Bryan Danielson can beat any other wrestler on any given night. Chris Jericho - as wrestler and possibly only as a wrestler - is as relevant as ever. 

2022 MOTY MASTER LIST