#10 CHRIS JERICHO

Ring Performance - 8
Charisma/Mic Skills - 9
Overall Impact - 6

I bet that many of you thought that he would NEVER, EVER..be on this list but you were wrong. In doing my research for this article I found out that the name Jericho was inspired not by the Biblical city of Jericho but by the song "The Walls of Jericho" by Helloween. Now that is great. I became a fan of Chris Jericho in his run as a heel in the WCW. His gimmick was that he was a smart ass coward. He would constantly talk about how great he was and yet he would always find a way not to wrestle the guy that he was talking shit to. A truly great gimmick and it fit his personality to a tee. He is not the biggest guy ever (as a matter of fact he may the smallest guy on the list) so him being afraid of bigger, stronger men made sense. A personal highlight for me was his feud with Dean Malenko, a talentless midget who got promoted for some odd reason. Malenko was the "Man of a 1000 holds"..well Jericho thought it would be funny to start calling himself "The Man of 1004" holds. In a moment that could only happen on the overblown three hour WCW Nitro he proceeded to bring a list of the 1004 holds and started reading them. Nitro went to commercial and when they came back he was still in the ring reading the list, it was hilarious. Every other move was an armbar..and he called one of his holds the "Saskatchewan spinning nerve hold", amazing. He was able to make fun of himself and run his mouth at the same time. His non-existent feud with Goldberg was another classic Jericho moment. He would call Goldberg into the ring when he knew that he was not there and call him a coward for not coming to the ring. He then wrestled a midget dressed up like Goldberg and beat him so that he could say he was undefeated against Goldberg. Of course, they never wrestled, he would run away every time Goldberg came on screen.

In the ring he is a technically sound wrester having trained at the famous Bret Hart Academy in Calgary. His finishing move "The Liontamer" or the "Walls of Jericho" is a devastating maneuver that most wrestlers do not escape from. He also uses a variety of moonsaults and aerial skills to destroy his opponents. The best finishing move is not really a finishing move at all. After knocking someone down to the canvas he would proceed to put his foot on his opponent's chest and flex and scream "C'mon Baby!!"..makes me laugh still thinking about this little guy flexing and smiling.

His impact on the long term future of wrestling is not as great. He has made some appearances on VH1 and MTV usually commenting on metal. He is a huge metal fan which makes him even better. As a matter of fact, I was watching the top 50 metal songs ever on VH1 and after "Run to the Hills" he said that "Iron Maiden is intelligent metal, I always felt like I learned something after listening to Iron Maiden"..that's right Chris. He also sang "The Evil That Men Do" on the Iron Maiden cover album, Numbers of the Beast. That being said, I do not believe that people starting watching wrestling because of him. I think they were quite entertained by Chris's antics but he just does not transcend the sport. I also appreciate that he is a Christian and does not participate in some of the lewd storylines that dominate modern wrestling..that counts for something. This guy is one of my all time favorites but I could not place him any higher because he just has not made a huge impact on the sport and his career has been pretty short.

— arthur@arthurshall.com