The smart money for Elimination Chamber (sigh) and WrestleMania is that Chris Jericho will win the World Heavyweight Championship from Undertaker in the Smackdown EC. Then, Edge, holder of his own golden ticket to WrestleMania, will choose to exact revenge on Chris Jericho for talking mad shit on him ever since he got hurt, and it would free up Shawn Michaels to take up his fool's gambit against the Undertaker's streak with a little bit a' that Triple H sprinkled in. That's the smart money. That's what everyone is saying. EVERYONE. Undeniable truth.But what if it isn't? Remember what else was the "smart money bet", what else everyone was projecting? Christian as the "mystery assailant" on Jeff Hardy last year, and for that match to be the money at WM. Or what about Jericho vs. Austin or even better, Jericho vs. Mickey "Randy the Ram" Rourke at WrestleMania as the blowoff to the legends angle? Cena vs. Hogan? Yeah, thought so. Plans change all the time in the WWE, especially when it comes to things that are leaked or that seem commonsense for a WrestleMania main event or major match. While Vince McMahon is hardly Vince Russo when it comes to swerving the Internet (that is to say, VKM couldn't care less what the Net thinks while Russo lives and dies by what a small group of fans at a small sample sizing of message boards think), when it comes to WrestleMania, he seems to be very protective and wants things to be special. No spoiled surprises, builds that seem larger than life if the feud already happened or is ongoing.
So while I was watching RAW the last two weeks, something occured to me seeing the events unfold, seeing Sheamus confront Edge and then get beaten down without getting his heat back, then this week seeing Christian come out, lay the gauntlet down on Sheamus and getting beaten clean, watching the break-up saga between Big Show and Jericho take a turn for the fucking awesome with the awkward meeting at the Rumble and then Show's budding partnership with The Miz, how it seems a lot more "buddy-buddy" than Jericho's Napoleonic relationship with Show. I started getting this hunch. What if the Sheamus confrontation isn't a smokescreen? What if the Ginger Champion is planned to make it out of the EC and all the way to WrestleMania as Champion, only to close the show with his shoulders on the mat, surrendering the spinner belt to the Rated R Superstar?
This would leave the JeriShow dissolution as the main crux behind the Tag Team Championship build for WrestleMania. Think about it. Was what Jericho said about Edge really that inflammatory? He made a few offhand remarks about Edge's injury and Show being a better partner, but by my count, they were few, far between and mostly concentrated towards the build towards the Rumble, starting with the Slammy RAW, when the guys backstage started to get the idea that Edge was going to be ready. Many people said the only way to finish the JeriShow angle would have been for Edge and Christian to come back and defeat them for the titles at WrestleMania, but really, was there really enough heat that wasn't resolved with Edge tossing Jericho out at the Rumble for that to happen?
The dynamic between Jericho and Show since losing the tag belts and Jericho being booted off RAW, to me, is way more intriguing than anything between Jericho and Edge. Think about it. Jericho/Edge is more booking by numbers. It's the same feud dynamic that's been played over and over again. Yeah, we need more feuds like that, especially given the caliber of the guys involved, but when you have something like what's between Jericho and Show, you get something different, something with more potential, more subtext, nuance, something a little heavier than the normal faire. Of course, the retort to that is "it's wrestling, nuance is lost on crowds". To that I say it would show negative intestinal fortitude to give into that attitude all the time, especially when you have other well-done "traditional" style feuds. It's not every day you have a tag team breakup angle that mimicks the awkward relationship failure that you see in real life between couples and it not seem totally gay (okay, it's a little homoerotic at times, not that there's anything wrong with that).
But then, who's Jericho's partner, and who do you turn face? The likely answer would be ShowMiz, since people are already completing Miz's "I'm the Miz, and I'm AWESOME~!" catchphrase. Still though, there is one guy who needs to get his heat back against Miz in a big way, a guy whom Miz pinned clean at Bragging Rights and again was on the jobbing end against a Miz-led team at Survivor Series.
John Morrison.
Wait a second, John Morrison? He's a face, he's the next big thing over on Smackdown. Why would you team your best heel with a guy like that? Well, it might not be smart on the surface, especially since turning Jericho face would be a huge order given the way he's made crowds want to eviscerate all year, but it could be done. And it would probably be a lot more intriguing than the easy "turn Miz and Show face and have them face off against Jericho and heel du jour (Scrooge McPoyle, Mike Knox or even a guy like Ezekiel Jackson?). Another easy out would be to team Jericho with one of those heels and then enter Morrison into the equation with, say, R-Truth, in a three-way angle, but again, it's too easy and you're taking too many guys out of MitB that would and should possibly win (although as it stands right now, Morrison and McPoyle both being out of MitB would make a Kofi Kingston win automatic and probably predictable).
But taking the gamble, turning Jericho and teaming him with Morrison might just provide a spark that would make it the most talked-about match on the card. There's enough time to have Jericho search his soul, have an epiphany that his current character had the wrong attitude and go back to the wise-cracking, sarcastic pun dealing cheered-heel type he was when he first arrived in the WWF in 1999. Or who knows, Jericho's talented enough that he can fabricate an entire new face persona and get just as over as he was on the opposite side of the heat scale as he was heel.
Then again, I might just be rambling after buying a smokescreen that the WWE has set up the last two shows. For all I know, the plan could still be Edge vs. Jericho for the title, and the hints dropped on RAW leading to a tag team resolution to the JeriShow dissolution and a Sheamus/Edge showdown at WrestleMania is just a pipe dream for an overactive imagination.
But you gotta admit, Morrison and Jericho would make a pretty sweet team, right?
ETA: I haven't watched my Smackdown DVR yet, but apparently, they really made it evident that Edge is coming after Jericho on the show this past Friday. Okay, maybe I should watch all my DVRs before making big long posts like this, but then again, at this point, who knows. Michaels/JBL at this point in time last year looked like a WrestleMania match, and we all know how that turned out.
