Last night on WWE Monday Night Raw weeks of cryptic messages paid off when Chris Jericho made his return to professional wrestling.  If you didn’t get to see it, look here.

Now a lot, and I mean A LOT of people have contacted me since this aired asking WTF happened.  They hated it.  I thought the whole angle was brilliant, and here’s why.

Chris Jericho has been gone for awhile. He danced with the stars, toured with Fozzy, wrote two books, and has been on a worldwide mission of metal.  His return was already spoiled by a mark fan at the airport.  So even if you didn’t know weeks earlier that he was coming back there’s no way you didn’t know on the date of Raw.  Everyone was excited about his return.  Jericho was going to be given a hero’s welcome.  However, he is better and more ground breaking as a heel.  To have Jericho be around and have an effect he needs to be a bad guy.  But how?

He’s going to be cheered when he shows up.  Usually the best way to make someone heel is for them to attack a face.  But there is no face available to feud with him.  CM Punk and Daniel Bryan need to set up their Royal Rumble matches.  Randy Orton is injured.  John Cena is just starting a program with Kane.  Everyone else is either a heel or not in the main event and thus Jericho would be stepping down to feud with them.

So he cant be a face, there’s no faces to put him in a program with right now.  What to do?  He could come out and say he’s going to win the Rumble but everyone will be saying that over the next few weeks.  Who is left to feud with?

The fans.

WWE is dragging the fans into the stories, kicking and screaming.  Zack Ryder’s elevation.  John Cena’s dueling t-shirts.  And now, Jericho fucks with you.  He played to the fans.  Everyone wanted him to speak, but what did you want him to say?  He cheered and yelled come on and parroted the fans chants.  When he left WWE it was as a heel.  He left as a bad guy, why are you cheering him?  Without saying a word, without doing a thing, he turned all of the fans against him.  He came in as a returning hero and left as a “fuck this guy!” heel.  Who the hell else can you think of that is so good on the mic, they don’t even need a mic!

He can go anywhere with this.  He can milk it in different arenas, come out with a scowl, mess with fans, mess with other wrestlers.  Its ground breaking.  I don’t know what the inspiration is (all of Jericho’s personas have been inspired by something he watched, see No Country for Old Men)  but I cant wait to find out.