Top 10 Biggest Botches Of Chris Jericho's Wrestling Career
David Mccullough Chris Jericho has been an industry veteran with a stellar career spreading across the professional wrestling plains. The 52-year-old has wrestled for the independents, ECW, WCW, WWE, and now AEW. When you have been wrestling for more than three decades non-stop, there are bound to be some mistakes along the way. These mistakes in the wrestling community are called botches, which means to fail in executing a move during a match or a spoken line by mistake.
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The Ucho is no stranger to botches and has had his share of them in his still ongoing tenure as a pro wrestler. Although it should be noted that he does not like the word “botch” itself, as he had stated in a podcast last year. He also chewed out the fans that exist on social media, just to point out the mistakes that wrestlers make. “Things happen in a match. The f*cking word I hate the most that fans use is botch. ‘Oh, you botched that one.’ Shut your f*cking mouth. There is no such thing as a botch. This is a live show. Mistakes happen. Why? Because we are human beings and we’re live.” Let's discuss some of his botches that we could find that Jericho would famously say, “You Just Made The List!”
10 Jericho’s Pants Landing On His Head
Chris Jericho is known for his flamboyant and stylish entrances. One of these AEW entrances required him to tear away his pants and toss them in the air, along with his faction members. It seemed like a good spot, only for the pants to land on his head twice, on two separate occasions, making this a rib tickler, not once but twice.
9 Leaking A Big Match Result
In September 2022, the AEW World title tournament’s first match was between Bryan Danielson and “Hangman” Adam Page. Danielson had won that match quickly, but fans already knew that he was going to win, courtesy of the former Le Champion, Chris Jericho.
In a segment earlier that night, The Wizard boasted that he would beat Danielson next week to go to the Grand Slam finals, thus indicating that the American Dragon would be his next opponent. The fans were quick in pointing out this botch and let him have it on social media.
8 Beat The Clock Challenge
During a 2012 RAW episode, Chris Jericho was in a Beat The Clock Challenge against Big Show. After both competitors landed outside the ring, the referee started counting them out in one of the slowest 10 counts in history.
It took the referee 29 seconds to do the countdown. He did not even stop when Jericho entered the ring to break the count and finally counted both of them out. The clock had actually run out a second before he was finished. Moreover, he declared Jericho as the winner while the commentators later clarified that it was in fact a draw. This whole fiasco was the referee’s fault and an all-out botch in decision-making, in which Y2J was involved but not guilty.
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7 Pissing Off The Undertaker
When Chris Jericho debuted in WWE, he had the gimmick of calling out wrestlers who he deemed as boring. He was a heel, saving the ratings from boring superstars.
However, Jericho should have known better when he called out The Undertaker. He interrupted The Phenom and insulted him for cutting a boring promo. When he went backstage, The Deadman, being the locker room leader, gave him an earful for burying his competitors. He later admitted that it was a huge mistake in his career’s early days and could have gotten himself buried.
6 Almost Fighting Brock Lesnar
Brock Lesnar made Randy Orton bleed with vicious MMA-style elbows to the top of the head during their SummerSlam 2016 match. A gnarly gash opened up on the top of Orton’s head which was bleeding profusely. As a result, the match had to be stopped.
When Lesnar returned backstage, Chris Jericho, who is Randy’s good friend, confronted The Beast for his actions. An expletive-filled interaction continued between the two, and they came nose to nose, almost fighting each other. Then Vince McMahon himself intervened, telling Y2J it was only a work. Both Brock and Randy were in on it, making Jericho’s reaction unnecessary and a botched attempt at heroics.
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5 The Botch Vince McMahon Would Not Let Him Forget
Chris Jericho was involved in a match with Cesaro in a Las Vegas non-televised house show. He was wearing knee braces at the time and was attempting a top rope move. As he was climbing to the top rope, his knee brace got stuck on the rope, and he fell into the ring.
It was a non-televised event but WWE chairman Vince McMahon still got a clip of the botch. Vince proceeded to show that clip to everyone backstage for the next four weeks. Whenever the wrestlers were getting ready for their matches, Mr. McMahon would show up with the clip and show it to them as a joke. Jericho was obviously not amused and wanted to “slap that stupid face of yours (McMahon) for showing this over and over again.”
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4 Botching His Lionsault In AEW
In 2021, while performing his patented lionsault maneuver on AEW Dynamite, Chris Jericho botched the move. He went for the middle rope springboard but could not turn full 180 degrees mid-air and almost landed on his head. He somehow landed the move on his opponent, but it did not look perfect.
This came at a time when he was already facing a lot of harsh criticism from fans because of his deteriorating physique and age, and the botch did not do him any favors in this situation.
3 Barbed Wire Everywhere Death Match
Jericho faced Eddie Kingston in a Barbed Wire Everywhere Death Match in AEW. The match was gory, and both competitors were bloodied, but that was all that was good about the match.
It had numerous botches from both older gentlemen like Jericho barely touching Kingston with the barbed wire bat and Eddie missing his mark. The end was especially awkward when Kingston pushed Jericho towards Sammy Guevara and no one had a clue what to do next.
2 Falling Off The Cage On Cardboard
At AEW’s Blood & Guts event in 2021, Chris Jericho took a massive bump being thrown off the cage by MJF. It was a brutal spot, but only in theory as it was clearly visible that he had landed on cardboard sheets and a crash pad.
It did not go with the story that the commentators were depicting that Jericho’s career could be over as he fell on concrete. It was blatantly seen that he fell on cardboard made to look like metal. While nobody expected him to actually fall on the hard floor, this was AEW’s technical botch involving him. The whole spot became the butt of jokes and Jericho himself took it personally, venting out his frustration on his critics.
1 Botching His Lionsault In WCW
On December 29th, 1997, a young Chris Jericho was facing “Mr. Perfect” Curt Hennig on an episode of WCW Nitro. While the match was decent, the ending was anything but perfect.
Jericho attempted his lionsault on Hennig but could not rotate midair at all like he was supposed to. He was going to land on his neck but his quick-thinking opponent put up his shins cushioning him from the fall. Mr. Perfect might have saved him from injury that night and potentially saved his life in the process.
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An honorable mention in botches must be given to his botch at AEW: Double Or Nothing 2022. He had applied the Walls Of Jericho on Jon Moxley on top of a table and it broke, making both competitors fall. Everyone including the commentators couldn’t help but laugh out loud at the visual, adding one more botch to the illustrious resume of Chris Jericho's career.