Or if Manifestation Works, Can it Get Chris Jericho Off of my Television
by: A.C. Wright
I think we’re overdue for a conversation on how Chris Jericho needs to take a break from television. I don’t speak for everyone, only myself, but based on my observations, it seems like others might relate. I am a pretty positive person and generally only take the time to write about the things I love1. I’ve got past pieces about my love for Sting, Eddie Kingston, Willow Nightingale, and others. So it feels a bit strange to be writing about something that I don’t like – Chris Jericho – but that should tell you how bad it’s gotten.
“You don’t have to watch it! Just change the channel!” I hear someone wearing a FOZZY shirt scream in my direction.
That’s a great idea and so true! I absolutely already do that!
However, there have been multiple episodes where Chris Jericho programs are woven throughout the show and when that’s the case it’s easier to just not watch at all or plan to go back after the show is done when I can skip and just watch the stuff I kind of wanted to see, but then I realize that most of it wasn’t really inspired enough to go back to, so I just watch John Carpenter’s The Thing again instead and wonder if I’m just “chasing the dragon” when it comes to wrestling – forever trying to catch the feelings that it used to give but, deep down, I know it’s unlikely I’ll reach that particular high again.
Then some match graphic pops up, probably involving Shelton Benjamin, and I get excited and I’m pulled back in!
It’s junkie behavior.. but it’s my junkie behavior.
“Isn’t an essay overkill?!”
Absolutely.. but so is Chris Jericho and just changing the channel obviously hasn’t been enough. He’s still out there every week doing the same shtick he’s been doing slightly different variations of for so long that I don’t care to trace it all the way back. Occasionally, there are moments that can be bearable or matches that are fine, thanks to the other competitor, but they are few and far between. There aren’t any match graphics involving Chris Jericho and another member of the AEW roster that will make me perk up. Which is a sad state of affairs when you consider the roster AEW has.
1 which this will morph into, not unlike Power Rangers of old
Some of my favorite wrestlers are in AEW and sometimes you learn that there are fates worse than the casual existence of Jericho. The ones you love have the potential to get trapped in “the vortex”..
*queues Chris Jericho’s old WCW music which was a banger and in parallel timelines where he’s still using it, this essay probably doesn’t exist because I’m too busy dancing to it like Ian Curtis to give a fuck*
I can understand why AEW made Chris Jericho their inaugural World’s champion2. Jericho had been a top guy for years, a multi time champion in WWE, WCW, and New Japan. He’s had a legendary run and, as a new company trying to become an established challenger to WWE, it makes logical sense to make your first World’s champion someone reliable with that kind of history and name that can make people think, “oh I remember him!”
However, I don’t know that it was as helpful in setting AEW up as being a huge alternative to WWE.
But I’m not here to re-tread Jericho’s history anymore than I have.. nobody’s got time to go over the rollercoaster that is Chris Jericho’s run3. Some of us have kids to raise.. not me.. but some of you probably might.
Instead, we must head closer toward the present to figure out what to do about this shit.
2 I’m not saying it’s what I would have done – but I get the mindset
3 some might describe it as more of a log-drop, “Splash Mountain” sort of ride
“The Learning Tree” started as a monicker for Chris in April 2024, after a series of unfortunate events, that he used while “offering” “advice” – facetiously trying to “teach” the young members of AEW. This was his attempt at proving he is in on the “joke” – or the fact that he was getting grief from fans of the product that suggested he doesn’t actually lift anyone that he surrounds himself with in any lasting way and just takes up tv time for himself.. because that tends to be the case.
Anybody that has been associated with Jericho and has gotten further over, it is due to the work of those performers and has very little to do with them having had association with Chris Jericho.
“The Learning Tree” grew from just a self-assigned label to a group with the addition of Big Bill and Bryan Keith, who were given their own plant based nicknames “The Redwood” and “The Bad Apple”. I really enjoy both of these performers and it bums me out that they got looped into this.
Yes, they’ve been given time on television but they are forced to be associated with the cringe of Jericho. I think both men will come out fine at the end of this malarky but it’s not doing them any favors in the meantime.
Big Bill has been able to run with whatever AEW has thrown at him and the crowd likes him a ton more than Jericho. It’d be interesting to see him as a regular singles act.
When Bryan Keith was revealed as a member, I was legitimately pissed off. Bryan was one of my favorites on the indies before he signed on to AEW and initially it seemed like they understood what was so cool about him and were pushing him as such.
Then, out of nowhere, they threw him in this Jericho faction and stripped away a lot of the stuff that was cool and unique about him, often leaving him to feel like just another guy that sometimes gets really angry for no apparent reason.. cause he’s a “bad apple”.
I feel like they each deserve better than to get stuck in the shadow of Jericho’s trunk.
As bad as it can be to get tucked in to one of Chris’s outfits, getting chosen to join his faction isn’t the only way you get pulled into the Jeri-circles of Hell.
One of the worst things that can happen, as a fan, is to see a match graphic featuring someone you like against Chris Jericho because there is a strong chance it means they will be feuding with him for the foreseeable future.
Just ask HOOK, who I don’t really care about but once seemed to have a lot of potential and now doesn’t seem to have half of his original aura. He spent the bulk of 2024 feuding with Jericho over the FTW title and nobody was any different coming out of it.
HOOK finally won his father’s title back at All In, leading one to believe that the feud was over and HOOK might have finally escaped without having to have a health scare to get out of Jericho’s orbit. After-all, how could you top going over in Wembley?
However, in a very inspired booking choice, they dropped a graphic featuring HOOK teaming up with members of The Conglomeration to take on The Learning Tree along with Rod Strong4.
I thought to myself, “Well, at least it’s HOOK and not somebody that I care about.”
Words I would eat upon remembering that Mark Briscoe was part of The Conglomeration. The match was ultimately a back door into a feud for Jericho to beat Briscoe to become the Ring of Honor World’s Champion for his second time.
I’m not sure what this was supposed to do for Mark Briscoe or for the ROH title, or even for Jericho but now he’s the champion and can say, “nueve”, so that sure is a lot of fun5.
4 for some reason. No shade to Roddy, who I very much enjoy.. I was a little afraid he was about to get sucked in as well but he’s stuck in the Undisputed Triangle that those dudes can’t seem to get out of – except Bob Fish, whose 82+ years of professional wrestling experience helped him to escape a few years ago.
5 They’ve got all these titles and none of them mean anything anymore, so I’m not sure who really cares or why we should.
I had the naive hopes that maybe they would sequester Chris to be a Ring of Honor exclusive with his title. After-all, for some reason, Athena6 – the longest reigning ROH Women’s World’s Champion – has been exiled to ROH television and isn’t allowed on AEW tv, for some reason, despite all of the men’s ROH champions being active and even occasionally defending their titles on AEW programming – because that makes a lot of sense and doesn’t seem strange at all.
Obviously, that was not the case and still Jericho is on television every single week in some capacity. Even on weeks he’s not wrestling, we can’t get a break from his uninspired song and dance that isn’t helping anyone.
I don’t know about you, but I’ve hit my wit’s end about it and feel like if Tony Khan’s not going to send Jericho home for a break and Chris doesn’t want to be around his family7, then maybe we have to try something else.
6 who is amazing and deserves to be on television far more than Chris Jericho does
7 I can’t say I blame him. I saw a couple of photos from his wife’s visit to the US Capitol back in 2021.
Here is where we get to talk about something that I love.
I started meditating a number of years ago and have felt the benefits that it has added to my life. I’ve used it as a tool to help get rid of a lot of the negative shit in my life that weighed me down and sucked away my joy. So I’ve been wondering if perhaps I focused some of that meditative energy on getting Chris Jericho off of television, what would happen?
Not anything negative!
I want to be very specific about that. I don’t fuck with negative energy and malicious actions. I don’t want weird vibes around me or some sort of monkey’s paw situation where Jericho hits hard times and becomes my neighbor or something. I don’t like Chris Jericho but I also don’t want him to get injured or anything. I just want him to choose to go away for a long time of his own volition.
Again, perhaps contrary to what some of this piece may have suggested thus-far, I’m a pretty positive person. So I am trying to creatively visualize Chris in positive scenarios that would take him off of my television.
Here are a few that I’ve thought of –
I like to think of Chris Jericho taking a break from AEW so he can focus on a new hobby.. maybe a beginners pottery class? A little self-conscious because he hasn’t done it before but eager to give something new a shot. He never gets any good at it but the joy that he gets from making shitty ashtrays for his wife is enough.
Maybe instead of being on AEW television every week, Jericho could take on a life as a pirate in some Floridian harbor. In my vision he’s got a peg-leg but I don’t know if it’s real or not. He’s chasing around families demanding they call him “the Painmake-arrgh” as he steals their boats and belongings before heading toward international waters.
You know those goats that scream? I like to think of Chris raising some of those little bastards. I can see him wearing a big straw farmer’s hat, shirtless in some denim overalls that are covered in goat shit as he cradles his pride and joy, a little asshole with a weird haircut named Sammy that just won’t stop screaming and fucking stuff up.
The important thing isn’t so much what he’s doing, it’s that he’s doing it away from my television8.
8 You’ll notice I didn’t visualize him making another FOZZY record or performing music live and that’s because there’s been enough of that shit too.
Is Chris Jericho the main problem with AEW? Not necessarily, but – as an older, out-of-touch wrestler past his prime taking away valuable time from should-be-superstars that the booker is wasting with the same spent shit in a failed effort to seem relevant – he’s a part of it.
AEW has a more than capable roster with the potential to tell captivating stories in ring and on mic without Chris Jericho being involved at all. Instead people that we care about get pulled into Jericho’s exhausted universe and get written off tv via forklift – like Samoa Joe was – and leave us praying that when Joe comes back he can just ignore that he even knows who Chris Jericho is rather than having to lose another 6 months of his career circling Jericho’s drain.
At the end of the day, it’s Tony Khan’s company and he must want Jericho on his show beating the same dead horse every week.
So since that seems unlikely to change anytime soon – on one’s journey of self-growth, we must learn to be thankful for what we have in the present and, in this case, it’s that now the shows are simulcasted on MAX where we can start 20 minutes late and skip through the bullshit.
Am I saying that Chris Jericho should retire?
No? Maybe? I don’t really care, dude.. I just need a break. Absence makes the heart grow fonder and all that.
I mean.. I don’t think that will work for him for me in this case, but it’s a start.
I could once appreciate some of what Chris Jericho has given to professional wrestling but the longer he sticks around taking up tv time with the same dizzy drivel and having mediocre matches, the more dents it’s putting in his legacy. I need him to go take a break for a long while – go fishing, learn to crochet, take a road trip, go to therapy, take up swing-dancing, learn to paint with watercolors, start meditating, bee keeping or countless other things.
Perhaps, if you join me in this creative visualization process, perhaps we can manifest the universe to show Chris Jericho other ways to find fulfillment that won’t require a hostage negotiator.
Note from the author:
In all sincerity, meditation has made a massive difference in bringing peace to my own life & I encourage others to try it out even if you’re not using it to cleanse your television of Chris Jericho.
You can read more from A.C. Wright at SwingingAtGhosts.wordpress.com
