Jericho should have been the heir apparent to The Rock and Steve Austin

[Reacher]

Originally Posted by Jordan X Yeah that was a huge pop. But factor in the environment. A title change in the middle of Raw in 2000, the possibility was nill that it would ever happen, the crowd would have popped for whomever they chose to give that moment too. Especially Jericho though because he was the underdog's fan choice. I don't think there is any was to say Jericho didn't have the run he deserved. He's been impeccable for most of his career. He struggled at the start but after his first Mania main event he started to find his true footing. I guess he sometimes got lost in the MITB shuffle in certain years but he had legendary moments in WWE. And once he left WWE he has had his best run yet in AEW when he was World Champion. And just as he started to get stale, last night he shredded an amazing promo and turned babyface in a way only he can do.

Don’t get me wrong - I think Jericho has had an excellent career filled with many spectacular moments and 4.5 star matches (along with a good number of 5’s as well). I just think he could have and should have been so much more. In 2000 for instance, the WWE spent the first half of that year trying to use Jericho’s momentum to get Benoit over when what they should have been doing is having Jericho finally going over Benoit in a convincing way. He should have gone over Angle in a similar way. Being over as a main-event caliber face is an almost impossible task and very few wrestlers really truly achieve that. Just ask Roman Reigns. Just ask John Cena as to how difficult he found this outside of the child demographic.

Jericho and RVD were literally the only two guys that were way over in this regard and unlike RVD, Jericho could work all styles with any wrestler. Unfortunately, the WWE elected to go with Hunter as their top guy, but the problem with Hunter is that his character as a face was very bland. Was nothing like his heel character at all, and so when the WWE decided to “trust the analytics” and make Hunter their guy (I.e. Triple H consistently drew the highest rated segments on TV in 2000), they didn’t take into account that the fans loved HEEL Triple H and that there would still be tons of questions marks associated with him as a babyface.

Ultimately, I think Vince didn’t commit to Jericho because
1) He wasn’t American
2) He wasn’t quite big enough
3) Triple H was Vince’s Son-in-Law and so pushing Jericho ahead of Hunter might have served as a conflict of interest? (I’m speculating on this one).