HHH v Chris Jericho

[Loss]

HHH v Chris Jericho - WWF Smackdown 02/08/01

 

TSM review last summer:

 

HHH v Chris Jericho ? WWF Smackdown 02/08/01

For all the ballyhooed drama between HHH and Jericho, both on screen and in real life, Jericho has traditionally been HHH?s best opponent, and this match is yet another show of evidence to support that. HHH surprisingly does a good job of giving Jericho credibility through allowing him to remain on offense for most of the match, and even though Jericho loses, he is allowed to get his heat back with a Walls of Jericho after the encounter was over. This was about as good as a throwaway seven-minute match between these two could possibly be, which means it had little to offer in terms of long-term impact or memory, but was fun enough to not be a waste of time. The portion of the match where HHH is in control sees him pandering to the audience and stalling instead of focusing in on Jericho, while Jericho?s comeback was the same type of comeback he?d make against X-Pac, and he needed to show that he was reaching a little deeper here. There are flashes of that, specifically when he performs a beautiful top rope huracanrana, but we don?t see that consistently.

 

Admittedly, the booking leading into this one was very confusing. The planned main event was Jericho versus Billy Gunn. HHH attacked Gunn backstage, which led to him taking Jericho?s place. Strangely, Jericho was representing HHH in the match while Gunn was representing Austin, which means logically, when HHH replaced Gunn, he should have been representing Austin. The winning side would pick the stipulations for No Way Out, but HHH still got to choose the stipulations. It?s always interesting to notice how almost every facet of the booking is steered in a direction that keeps Hunter looking better than everyone else and smarter than everyone else at all times. Some things never change.

Revised:

 

For all the ballyhooed drama between HHH and Jericho, both on screen and in real life, Jericho has traditionally been HHH?s best opponent, and this match is yet another show of evidence to support that. HHH surprisingly does a good job of giving Jericho credibility through allowing him to remain on offense for most of the match, and even though Jericho loses, he is allowed to get his heat back with a Walls of Jericho after the encounter was over. This was about as good as a throwaway seven-minute match between these two could possibly be, which means it had little to offer in terms of long-term impact or memory, but was fun enough to not be a waste of time. Admittedly, the booking leading into this one was very confusing. The planned main event was Jericho versus Billy Gunn. HHH attacked Gunn backstage, which led to him taking Jericho?s place. Strangely, Jericho was representing HHH in the match while Gunn was representing Austin, which means logically, when HHH replaced Gunn, he should have been representing Austin. The winning side would pick the stipulations for No Way Out, but HHH still got to choose the stipulations. It?s always interesting to notice how almost every facet of the booking is steered in a direction that keeps Hunter looking better than everyone else and smarter than everyone else at all times. Some things never change.

 

HHH just letting go of the pedigree so he can be backdropped out of it instead of creating some type of struggle to counter the move has always bugged me, but it's definitely a problem here. Jericho is a house of fire early on, running through his usual offense and also hitting a springboard shoulderblock. HHH tries to use the steel steps to his advantage and Jericho counters that by climbing them and diving backwards on him. Michael Cole is nauseously frustrating here, as they work the same same sequence they worked in their 06/14 match, a match I watched just minutes prior to this one, and he says, "I don't think I've ever seen that before." Well, I have. It's not that I expect him to remember that, but the announcers are largely clueless throughout, as when Cole reminds Lawler of Jericho winning the title and having it reversed the previous year, it's obvious Lawler has completely forgotten about that storyline and just says "Well, I'd forget about that if I were you."

 

Back to the match, it's obvious that while Jericho is still over, his peak is behind him, as he doesn't get nearly the heat he got eight months prior, despite working some of the same segments, despite having a pre-match opportunity to run down Stephanie and despite this match taking place in Oklahoma City, which is normally a pretty hot crowd. We also get Eddy Guerrero interfering to cost Jericho the match, and Steph gets in her shots as well. Had Stephanie been a wrestler, Jericho/Stephanie would have had the best buildup of any match in 2001, because they spent so much time feuding them with each other, but they never really found a way to translate that into matches of any kind where she sent a swarm of people after him. As a result, they both ended up looking like they were fighting sexual tension toward one another, and we were all just waiting for them to make out and mean it at a moment's notice.

 

The match is a total afterthought once the bell rings, as Austin immediately comes out and has a staredown with HHH. In a nice touch, since Austin can't touch HHH, they let Jericho get his heat back by doing a post-match Walls of Jericho on HHH while Austin screams in his face, but the point being made that entire time is that Austin has gotten the best of HHH yet again, not Jericho. Sharing a beer with Steve post-match might have made Y2J seem cool and important.