Picking the Top Chris Jericho Match Every Year for the Last Decade | Bleacher Report

0 of 10

Credit: All Elite Wrestling

There are few names in professional wrestling more acclaimed than Chris Jericho, and rightfully so.

The 51-year-old continues to reinvent himself and has helped revolutionize the industry over the last decade, delivering superb in-ring performances and helping to elevate a new generation of stars while still proving he is as valuable now as he was when he made the jump from WCW to WWE in 1999. 

Over the last decade, Jericho has wrestled a variety of opponents in a number of different matches, while molding his legacy as one of the most creative performers in the industry and one of its great storytellers.

Ahead of what will surely be a wild, chaotic brawl at AEW Double or Nothing, in which he teams with The Jericho Appreciation Society to battle Blackpool Combat Club, Eddie Kingston, Santana and Ortiz, relive the best matches from each of the last 10 years of his in-ring career.

1 of 10

Credit: WWE.com

Jericho entered Extreme Rules firmly in the head of WWE champion CM Punk after weeks of insulting his family’s addiction history, as well as his sister.

Looking to use The Straight Edge Superstar’s emotions against him, Y2J was sure he had the winning recipe for victory and revenge for his loss at WrestleMania 28 a few weeks earlier.

And for a good portion of the match, it looked like it would work. He brutalized Punk and taunted his sister at ringside. Jericho looked to be on his way back to the mountaintop.

However, Punk showed great resiliency and fought his way back into the bout. Despite a late Codebreaker that injected some drama into the proceedings, Punk recovered, countered Jericho’s attempt to beat him with his own finisher and put the future Hall of Famer away with the Go To Sleep to successfully retain his title.

A hard-hitting and story-driven Street Fight, this remains an underrated gem and the best match of the first chapter of the Superstars’ rivalry. A third pay-per-view showdown between them a year later would be even better.

2 of 10

Jericho again found himself opposite Punk in Chicago, this time at Payback in June 2013.

The match, which saw Punk return to the squared circle for the first time since a loss to Undertaker at WrestleMania 29, would prove to be their best against each other. 

A match of reversals and counters, it saw them trade submission holds and then finishers as they built drama down the stretch.

Jericho appeared to be on his way to victory when he caught Punk with the Codebreaker in midair as he coming off the top rope with his patented flying clothesline, but the hometown hero narrowly escaped defeat at two.

As he did a year earlier, Punk persevered and caught Jericho with a GTS. The former undisputed champion bounced back into a corner and Punk caught him on the rebound, downing him with a second finisher for the win.

A great match that set aside the bells and whistles in favor of fantastic professional wrestling, it proved that sometimes all you need is two accomplished competitors doing what they do best and the fans will respond accordingly.

3 of 10

Credit: WWE.com

Jericho made one of his many returns to WWE in 2014 and found himself opposite Randy Orton in a battle of all-time greats at the Night of Champions PPV.

The fans in Nashville, Tennessee disappointed with their lack of response early on, but the counters, blocks and reversals on display helped build a considerable amount of drama and woke them up late. 

Jericho avoided the RKO at one point by countering with the Codebreaker but was unable to put his third-generation opponent away. Unfortunately, the desperate babyface took to the sky in an attempt to put Orton away and flew right into the devastating finisher as The Viper went on to score the victory. 

Probably the least great of the 10 matches on this list, but it is still a strong showdown between the two and the best of what was an uncharacteristically so-so 2014 for Jericho.

4 of 10

Credit: WWE.com

If there is a hidden gem to be found on this list, it is the 2015 battle between Jericho and Neville from the WWE Network special Brock Lesnar: The Beast in the East.

Kicking off the show, the competitors set the bar for the event with a fantastic match that showcased Jericho’s known excellence and reminded the audience of just how damn talented Neville (AEW’s Pac) was and still is.

An aggressive, intensely physical contest saw Jericho control the bout, then bump all over for Neville as the former NXT champion mounted an energetic comeback. He downed Jericho with a corkscrew plancha to the outside, added a standing Shooting Star Press and followed with some kicks. He springboarded right into a Codebreaker, but Jericho could only keep him down for two.

Just when it appeared as though it was Neville’s night, Jericho snatched victory from the jaws of defeat by getting his knees up on a Red Arrow attempt and applying the old-school Liontamer variation of his Boston Crab finisher for the submission win.

A great, great match that is well worth going out of your way to watch and one that will make you want to see The Demo God and The Bastard lock horns on an episode of AEW Dynamite sooner rather than later.

5 of 10

The 2016 edition of the Money in the Bank ladder match featured an incredible collection of talent. Jericho joined Kevin Owens, Sami Zayn, Dean Ambrose, Alberto Del Rio and Cesaro for the annual high-stakes match and the group of critically acclaimed competitors did not disappoint.

With six Superstars to spotlight, Jericho did not have the starring role in this one that he obviously has in the other nine matches on this list, but he did bring a veteran presence to the contest. He also rocked Ambrose with a Codebreaker early on that threatened to take The Lunatic Fringe out of the equation.

Late in the match, the Superstars battled on a makeshift scaffold in a bit of a contrived spot and it was there that Jericho would see his final action of the night. Ambrose would upend Owens to win the match and the guaranteed title shot while Jericho would jumpstart a partnership with KO that would represent some of his finest WWE work of the decade shortly thereafter.

6 of 10

The feud between Jericho and Kevin Owens should have produced a defining match in 2017 but never really did, much to the disappointment of the performers themselves and the fans, who had been sucked into the extraordinary storytelling efforts of the Superstars.

On the July 25 episode of SmackDown, after several weeks off of television, Jericho returned to battle Owens and AJ Styles for the United States Championship in a Triple Threat Match. The contest, a one-off for Y2J, would be every bit as good as you would expect from the talent involved.

Jericho renewed his rivalry with Owens and played up his history with Styles in a bout that featured high drama as a result of some great near-falls. Jericho survived a springboard 450 from Styles and the pop-up powerbomb from Owens to stay in the fight but a frog splash by his former tag team partner, and an alert Styles making the pin instead of KO, proved his downfall. 

The match would prove to be Jericho’s penultimate one for WWE as he would embark on a journey that took him to Japan and, ultimately, saw him become Elite.

7 of 10

Jericho wrote the latest chapter of his legendary career on January 6, 2018 in Japan when he battled Kenny Omega in the much-anticipated main event of Wrestle Kingdom 12. A match months in the making, it brought two of the most celebrated professional wrestlers together on one of the grandest stages the industry has to offer.

More brutal and violent than ever, Jericho had no problem attacking and bloodying Omega in the lead-in to the match, creating genuine anticipation for a dream match and bringing more eyes to New Japan Pro-Wrestling than even Bullet Club could imagine. 

The aggressive Jericho employed a brawling style, incorporating weapons into the No Disqualification match to counteract Omega’s strikes. It worked to an extent but Omega kept popping back up, answering Jericho with strikes and even drove him through a table at ringside.

The back-and-forth nature of the bout kept the fans inside the historic Tokyo Dome invested and red-hot throughout. In the end, the very chair that Jericho used to great effect throughout the contest, including to bust Omega open, was utilized against him to break up a Lionsault attempt. The Cleaner would drive Jericho into it moments later with a One-Winged Angel and secure the win in what amounted to one of the most important matches in modern wrestling history.

For Jericho, it was proof that a little reinvention and a wealth of new opponents outside of McMahonland could rejuvenate his career and allow him to add to his Hall of Fame-worthy legacy in the process. It would also show the world that there was an unquenched thirst for a new, more exciting, energized pro wrestling product, just waiting for someone to come along and help revolutionize the industry with it.

8 of 10

Revolutionize is exactly what Jericho and his Full Gear 2019 opponent, Cody Rhodes, helped do earlier that year. With The Young Bucks, Kenny Omega and owner Tony Khan, they introduced the wrestling world to All Elite Wrestling, a company conceived for wrestling fans. 

After a whirlwind year that saw the company present its first pay-per-view, Double or Nothing, in May and debut its weekly television show, Dynamite, months later on TNT, inaugural world champion Jericho defended his title against top contender Rhodes in a hotly anticipated clash at November’s Full Gear. With the added stipulation that The American Nightmare could never again challenge for the title if he failed to dethrone Jericho, the stakes (and heat) were at a high.

Adding to an already dramatic match was a laceration Rhodes suffered early on after colliding head-first with the entrance ramp. Jericho exploited it like a vicious heel would and taunted the Rhodes family at ringside. Everytime the challenger mounted offense, Jericho cut it off. 

Late, Jericho countered a top-rope hurricanrana into the Walls of Jericho. His best friend a bloody mess, in excruciating pain, MJF tossed a white towel into the ring for the submission, awarding Jericho the match and robbing Rhodes of the title. 

While the finish and everything that followed would be the emphasis for a Rhodes-MJF feud, there was no denying that Jericho was in a groove at that point, delivering some of his finest work in years and relishing the opportunity to be the top star of this brand new promotion.

He took the role of champion seriously, performed up to it and the result was a dramatic, story-driven match that ranks as one of his best matches in AEW to date.

And that includes a whole lot of excellence. 

9 of 10

Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic that shut the world down and forced AEW to conduct shows at Daily’s Place in Jacksonville for months, the feud between Jericho’s Inner Circle faction and The Elite, led by Kenny Omega, was supposed to conclude with the very first War Games-inspired Blood and Guts match.

With that option off the table, the two factions competed at Double or Nothing 2020 in a Stadium Stampede match. The first of its kind, it would be a brawl throughout TIAA Bank Field, home of the Jacksonville Jaguars. Since there was no crowd to feed off of, the competitors relied on cinematic wrestling and immense creativity to deliver one of the best and most original matches of the year. 

It had everything: multiple Matt Hardy personas, a horse, pro football mascots, Hangman Page and Omega bonding over beer and milk, and an awe-inspiring One-Winged Angel from the stands through a giant wooden platform for the finish.

An incredible match that Jericho had a huge hand in both putting together and executing, it was proof positive of what professional wrestling can be when it allows its participants some creative freedom and does not force them to be beholden to a convoluted script.

That Jericho and his Inner Circle teammates sold their inevitable ass-kicking as greatly as they did only elevated the quality of the contest.

10 of 10

The feud between Jericho and MJF spanned a year and provided some of the most memorable moments in the short history of AEW. It also spawned Jericho’s best match of 2021: a tag team title match pitting The Demo God and The Salt of the Earth against The Young Bucks at February’s Revolution pay-per-view.

There were considerable questions about Jericho and MJF’s ability to set aside their egos and present a genuine threat to Matt and Nick Jackson’s tag title reign. They did and delivered a hell of a challenge to the best tag team in wrestling.

They controlled the pace early and often but interference from Wardlow backfired when he ate a Judas Effect from Jericho and the Bucks capitalized, rocking both opponents with superkicks and putting Jericho away with the Meltzer Driver.

A fantastic, dramatic, back-and-forth match in which spots built on top of the last before culminating with the champions narrowly surviving the makeshift tandem, this was an extraordinary start to the pay-per-view that set the bar high for everything that followed.

It also proved that Jericho could, and would, perform up to the level of his opponent and was incredibly motivated to get the story with MJF over. The two of them would go on to have some very strong matches later in the year following the scarf-wearing loudmouth’s obvious betrayal, but the showdown with the Bucks remains the height of Jericho’s in-ring year.