Make me love Chris Benoit

I don't think Jericho's that great a worker, his RAW/Smackdown matches were always fairly predictable with a limited moveset (missile dropkick to bulldog into springboard flip off the ropes to power bomb combo to Walls-o-Jericho) and sometimes an outright sloppy wrestler.

Jericho has been plagued by a bit of sloppiness throughout his career. In general, movesets become predictable when the wrestler isn't motivated, or has to face a series of shitty opponents. There was a long run on Raw (from around Jericho's jump from Smackdown right up until Benoit's jump this past January) when Jericho was just about the only reason I kept watching Raw. He was dynamite on the mic, had to feud with a never-ending stream of lunkheads from Kane to Nash to Mark Henry to Scott Steiner to fucking GOLDBERG -- and worked his ass off to pull decent matches out of all of them. Remember the time around WM XIX? Jericho was feuding with Test, Jeff Hardy and Shawn Michaels simultaneously. He got decent feuds and matches out of all of them, including the show stealer at Mania with a still-shaky-post-comeback HBK. Then he moved on to carrying one of the best-built stories the fed had seen in a while -- the Trish (tri)angle -- while still finding time to "feud" with Austin to set up the main storyline at Survivor Series 2003.

All this time, very few feuds with high-level opponents who can work, and yet he's stayed motivated in the ring. I respect the hell out of Jericho. But I grant that for the last couple of months, despite being involved in decent storylines for ones, his in-ring work has been a bit sluggish. But when he gets in there with decent opponents such as Benoit or Rock, he tears the house down, with matches that are anything but formulaic.

Interview with Benoit in the Sun:

http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2003560001-2005042323,00.html

The Sun's wrestling coverage is surprisingly good.

Yeah, they print interviews with WWE wrestlers quite a bit, and I can't recall ever reading one that wasn't good.