Just some thoughts on his recent run with the title, which I feel has been more WWE Chump than Champ.
Jericho's reign was booked very poorly from beginning to end, and only served to make Jericho look like a weak champion who couldn't get the job done on his own. I had high hopes for his reign too, with HHH on Smackdown I figured he'd be given a fair shot this time around. If anyone needed a well booked title reign it was Jericho, after his horrendously booked Undisputed Title reign, alas it was not to be.
His reign started with a flukey victory in the scramble match, followed up by victories through nefarious means, any clean wins he managed to amass were like his inital win flukey by design, and his reigns were relatively short also. This culminated in his loss at Survivor Series to Cena, which was essentially meaningless as his reign had not managed to build any sort of prestige, and with a lack of clean wins, left Jericho looking like a second rate champ.
I'm not suggesting he should have been given the Cena style Superman push, but he needed to be given something to establish him as a valid champion, this didn't happen. I think one of the main problems is the WWE writers who have their background in soap operas rather than wrestling, and clearly seem to think that as a heel, he needs to cheat to win all the time, when this is just not the case. You only have to look at Ring of Honor to see a great heel champion. Nigel McGuinness is one of the guys in the RoH locker room most capable of garnering heel heat, yet he also manages to win most of his matches cleanly, which has helped cement his reputation in the company, WWE should take note.
Jericho was booked poorly, but he wasn't the first, his predecessor CM Punk received an equally poorly booked title reign, and i think it's about time WWE took a good hard look at the way they are booking a lot of their talent. Thoughts?
