The Post Y2J Crisis: What Happened After Chris Jericho Made His WWE Debut - Part 2

For those who missed it, part one is here.

When we last left Chris Jericho's run in WWE, he had just ended Ken Shamrock's career on a random episode of Smackdown. That was his most notable feud as he had also injured Road Dogg earlier in his run, but he had already gone a long ways down since going toe-to-toe with The Rock. Sadly, things were about to get a whole lot worse before they were going to get better.

First off, he went to Unforgiven, and since he had ended Shamrock's career, it was time to move on, so he fought X-Pac. Jericho lost when the Road Dogg came out to help out X-Pac.

The next night he took a giant step up in competition when he faced Big Show. But he lost by disqualification when Prince Albert interfered. Yep, Jericho was a side character in a Big Show/Prince Albert feud. On top of that, Jericho did the most painful move in pro wrestling to Big Show behind the ref's back, the low blow, and Big Show shook it off three seconds later. The low blow is enough to knock out Brock Lesnar, and Jericho couldn't even take Big Show off his feet with it. That's bringing incompetence to a new level.

Later that week, Jericho and Hughes took on the New Age Outlaws, and yet again, they were just there to set up the Outlaws for their illustrious feud with The Super Heavyweights, Crash and Hardcore Holly.

But Jericho flashed again with main event talents, as he interrupted The Rock n' Sock Connection.

Outside of dropping a hard R on Mankind, this was the most entertaining thing that Jericho accomplished in his early run in the WWE. It even had The Rock dropping shade on Juventud Guerrera, which may have sparked him to turn into Juvy Juice. But it set up a match between The Rock and Y2J, which at least made Jericho seem important again. Unsurprisingly, The Rock won, and also unsurprisingly, this match was more done to further the feud between The Rock and the British Bulldog as the Bulldog immediately ran down at the conclusion of the match. Yes, yet again, Jericho was the third wheel in a feud for two.

but Jericho would not stay down for long as he tagged with his new best friend, Curtis Hughes, to take on the newly reformed Headbangers. I thought about embedding the link to this match, but it was awful. Jericho got mad at Curtis Hughes, left the match, and the Headbangers had their triumphant return.

Finally, Jericho's attitude caught up to him as he brawled with Curtis Hughes in the locker room at the next Smackdown. They then had a match where they brawled some more, but Jericho got the upper hand when Howard Finkel distracted the ref so Y2J could hit him with a chair. Since Jericho is such a gracious winner, he gave Curtis Hughes a consolation gift after their match, the services of Harold (Jericho could never remember his name) Finkel. And most importantly, Jericho was back in the win column and would surely use this for unstoppable momentum.

At the No Mercy pay per view that week, Jericho stole the show by...not appearing or even being mentioned. He was instead downgraded to a Sunday Night Heat match against D-Lo Brown. Y2J did not win.

Somehow, someway, Jericho made it through all of this and would begin his first run to a title, but we'll get to that next time.