2024 Ongoing MOTY List: Jericho vs. Suzuki

 

9. Chris Jericho vs. Minoru Suzuki AEW Dynamite 7/24/24

ER: I cannot stand modern matches with long bad-looking stand and trade sections, and that's what makes up the bulk of this match between two guys whose wrestling matches I no longer look forward to seeing. "Hey man you hear about that match where two guys just traded forearms for a half hour" yeah man I'm never going to watch it or read about it. Why would I want to watch two wrestlers throw worked strikes with a hard strike thrown in maybe every fifth exchange? Well, I guess there are rules, and there are exceptions to rules, and the rules and their exceptions change when the combined age in the ring is 110 years old. Two 30 year olds chopping each other and making faces and straining their necks? Sounds terrible. Shit would suck and nobody would speak about it again. "Hey man you hear about that match where two grandfathers chopped each other until their hands were swollen and blood was running down their chests?" The rules have changed. 

It's a bit sad seeing the most lucrative earning years of Suzuki's career finally winding down. The man has made career money working forearm exchange matches for 5 years in the states. The polaroid money alone must be incredible. Every person who saw clips of the Mecha Mummy match and had never heard of Yoshiaki Fujiwara lined up in droves to see Minoru Suzuki blow into town with his 5 Light/1 Heavy Stick Out Tongue Repeat routine and every single person who ever wanted to scream Kaze ni nare with a a ton of people who look exactly like them has had chance after chance after chance to do so. Now Minoru Suzuki blows into the Volunteer State for the first time and the crowd response to Ayumi Nakamura was so tepid that I finally realized the whole thing is over. It's been over for me for a while now, but there were still believers and I assumed it would thrill them until he was in his late 60s. I wanted it to. I couldn't have been less excited to watch a 2024 Minoru Suzuki match against 2024 Chris Jericho. I didn't want to see Suzuki working a Jericho match and I really didn't want to see Jericho work a Suzuki match. God. Please. 

What I did want to watch was an honest to god war of attrition between two old guys who decided to hit each other until one of them gassed out. It's Jericho. Jericho's the one who gasses out. Jericho's obviously going to be the one who gasses out from hitting a guy with chops as hard as he can. It's at least 8 minutes of two old guys doing nothing but chops, and that sure sounds rote as I type it but what might start rote turns intriguing real quick when you can see Jericho visibly tiring and physically in pain as he gets outstruck. Minoru Suzuki barely regards Jericho's first chop, and by minute three he isn't reacting in any way to them. Jericho, in continuing to hit Suzuki, begins to only damage himself. Suzuki was reacting to his chops like Jericho was a young boy from a rival fed. He had no life behind his chops, could barely swing his arms, and the more gassed out he got the harder his body reacted to Suzuki's chops. Blood was literally running down Jericho's chest in rivulets and he could no longer flex his chest or straighten his arms enough to absorb Suzuki's chops. His entire body was being turned with every chop and yet he was stuck in this bit now and couldn't get out. His hand was killing him and the only thing he could do was beat his hand against a small brick wall that was never going to break. All Jericho had to do was break, but he was in it, and you could tell he was really seeing just how long he could go with old man Suzuki, who it must be said now has the exact same posture and movement as old man Fujiwara. 

Jericho wanted to test himself, and that's interesting. That's more than just a too long forearm exchange or even a too long chop exchange. Jericho wanted to see how much he could absorb and see how far through the pain he could push himself. That's some rock headed dumb brain wrestler stuff right there man. He doesn't need to do that. Nobody asked him to do that and I bet the majority of people watching him do it wished he wasn't doing it and weren't interested in seeing it. But Jericho wanted to do it because he's a dumb pro wrestler and wanted to see how many more chops he could take after his chest was busted open in several spots, and wrestlers who don't need the money who choose to do stupid physical things are the kinds of wrestlers I still want to watch. 

He eventually broke and the match pivoted into Suzuki working over Jericho's self-pummeled hand, and I laughed when Jericho torched his arms and then had to get the bad one arm barred over the ropes and smashed inside a folding chair. This man don't know when to quit and I realized I was smack in the middle of the most interesting Suzuki match in years, because Jericho had twisted and tweaked his formula and made the exchanges turn into limb work that actually meant something and flowed out of the endless stand and trade. 

You would not believe how uninterested I was in seeing these two wrestle in 2024, and they made me interested. Rules change. 

2024 MOTY MASTER LIST