AEW’s Chris Jericho, WWE’s Brock Lesnar Cementing Themselves Among Greatest Ever

When WWE and pro wrestling fans talk about the greatest in-ring performers in company history, they typically mention names like The Undertaker, Ric Flair and Shawn Michaels, but two stars who are currently still performing have now joined that conversation.

During an interview with Sports Illustrated earlier this year, John Cena, arguably WWE’s most decorated world champion ever, said he believes that Brock Lesnar is the “best in-ring performer” ever: “And I can say with the utmost sincerity that I believe Brock Lesnar is best in-ring performer that I’ve seen and I know it’s an opinion, and if you want a cool quote, here it is: I think he’s the best in-ring performer of all time…I really do think so. I genuinely think he has a good understanding of who he is. I think he’s the best at when he needs to be dominant, he’s the best in situations of jeopardy. He makes people better. He still has a mystique about him that will draw eyeballs to watch him and when he does he never disappoints.”

Within a week of Cena making those comments, former WWE star and current AEW talent Jon Moxley, a.k.a. Dean Ambrose, told Bleacher Report (h/t Cageside Seats) that current AEW World Champion Chris Jericho deserves to be in that conversation as well: “You can’t ever really pick a greatest of all time in wrestling, it’s just too long of a discussion, there’s just too many people on the list. But for me, for my money, Chris Jericho is really making a case for being the greatest of all time. He’s done it in the 90s, and the 2000s, and the last two decades, he’s doing it again, he’s doing something completely new, and breaking new barriers still here in 2020 in AEW.” 

Last month, former WWE star Rusev echoed that statement during a live stream on Twitch (h/t Pro Wrestling Sheet): “He [Jericho] has to be considered one of the greatest professional wrestlers ever. If not, I mean, I don’t want to say if not the greatest…But just thinking about it. From where he has come to where he’s been. Through all the companies and being champion everywhere that he goes. And how many times he reinvented himself too. Chris is definitely one of the greatest of all-time.”

The debate about the greatest professional wrestler is one that’s never-ending, and truth be told, it’s all subjective in an industry in which statistics and accolades don’t always tell the whole story. If you’re talking mainly about drawing ability, names like Bruno Sammartino and Hulk Hogan are among the stars who are in a league of their own. If you’re talking purely about in-ring skills, names like Michaels, AJ Styles and even NJPW’s Kazuchika Okada would have to be at or near the top of that list. If you’re talking about all-around performers, many of those names would be under consideration as well.

Jericho and Lesnar, however, are two names who haven’t typically been a part of that conversation. It seems the lone knock on Jericho is that, until his current AEW run that has only been televised for a handful of months, he has never really been “the guy” for an extended period. During his prime years in WWE, he was usually behind the likes of Austin and The Rock in terms of his positioning on the card, and though he’s got a long list of accolades that includes title wins across several major promotions, being the face of WWE isn’t really one of them. Outside of his lack of elite promo skills, the main knock on Lesnar, meanwhile, is that he was gone from WWE from 2004 to 2012, which means that he spent much of his prime out of WWE altogether, which limited his longevity and career accomplishments that he would have racked up had he stayed in WWE during that span.

Y2J is one of the biggest stars in pro wrestling history, but he’s never been considered to be the massive draw that Lesnar has been, even though WWE’s Key Performance Indicators cast doubt on whether “The Beast” is truly the attraction WWE believes he is. In terms of aura, one could make the case that no star in WWE history—outside of maybe The Undertaker—has the sheer star power Lesnar has, the type of jaw-dropping mystique that only a select few stars in pro wrestling history have ever possessed. Lesnar’s dominant performance in the 2020 Royal Rumble and the continuously loud crowd reaction he has generated during his current WWE run are proof that, when Lesnar is on his game, there is no more awe-inspiring performer currently working in all of pro wrestling.

In 2016, the Wrestling Observer’s Dave Meltzer labeled Lesnar as WWE’s biggest draw,alongside Cena, of the current generation of superstars, but today’s era of pro wrestling (especially since the launch of the WWE Network) is markedly different from previous ones. Almost every star who has been pushed as a top guy or world champion has struggled to truly draw, a reality that has affected names like Roman Reigns, Seth Rollins and Kofi Kingston. WWE’s Key Performance Indicators for 2019 showed large drops in key metrics like live event attendance and TV ratings, which indicate that virtually no WWE star can move the needle these days during a time in which WWE relies heavily on all of its stars and its brand as a whole rather than one particular talent, Lesnar included. Jericho, on the other hand, is—unlike his run in WWE—clearly positioned as the face of AEW, and even though he’s propelled AEW Dynamite to consistent ratings victories over NXT for much of 2020 (a streak that recently ended), comparing him to Lesnar in terms of drawing ability is like comparing apples to oranges because AEW and WWE are at different stages as pro wrestling promotions.

The one advantage Jericho undoubtedly has over Lesnar is longevity. Y2J’s career spans more than 30 years and is now in its fourth decade. He has performed for most of the world’s top wrestling promotions, including WCW, ECW, WWE, New Japan Pro-Wrestling and now AEW. NJPW is the one place where he seemed to have the most impact as a draw as his match against Kenny Omega at Wrestle Kingdom 12 in 2018 resulted in undeniable and substantial increases in attendance and NJPWWorld subscribers. Jericho’s ability to reinvent himself and stay relevant for 30 years is unparalleled, and it’s catapulted him to seven world title reigns, nine Intercontinental Championships and a slew of other accomplishments that go beyond what you see on TV. In addition, Jericho has a long list of stellar matches, highlighted by his No Mercy 2008 ladder match against Michaels and his Wrestle Kingdom 12 match against Omega, among a boatload of others.

Lesnar has had a slew of phenomenal matches as well, having all-time great battles with everyone from Kurt Angle to Cena to Rollins to CM Punk to Daniel Bryan to Styles. Both Lesnar and Jericho certainly rank among the greatest in-ring performers of all-time due to their abilities to perform when the stakes are the highest and when the spotlight is shining brightest. Lesnar has more world title wins than Jericho (nine counting NJPW) and has done things that Jericho never did, like win the Money in the Bank briefcase and the Royal Rumble. But Lesnar’s status as a part-time star and the eight years he spent away from WWE while in UFC have limited the impact he could have had if he had spent his prime in WWE.

There has never been a star like Jericho, who, at 49 years old, is the face of a brand new company that already has a strong TV deal with Jericho as its biggest star and is continuing to put on consistently great in-ring performances at an age when most stars are washed up or retired. Jericho’s ability to reinvent himself, from “The List” to “The Ayatollah” to “The Painmaker,” and his longevity are two things that very few stars have been able to match during their careers, and for those two reasons, Jericho has a stronger claim to being the “GOAT” than Lesnar does.

While Lesnar may possess a more impressive aura and be a more athletically gifted performer, few have been able to do what Jericho has done over the span of four decades no matter what his character is or where he is on the card. When it comes to calling either star the “GOAT,” names like Flair, Hogan and Steve Austin would certainly have something to say about that.

But as Y2J continues to make waves so late in his career while Lesnar does the same, both stars have worked their way into the conversation regarding “who’s the greatest wrestler ever?” and still have plenty of time left to improve their already impressive resumes.