WWE: Ranking the Top 10 Greatest Promos of All Time

The Festival of Friendship

The Festival of Friendship was perfect in every way. This segment was constructed and put together so well, and watching it back now, it absolutely holds up to how great I thought this segment was a year ago. What began as a funny, over the top celebration set up by Chris Jericho, would take a dark turn into a heartbreaking betrayal.

With Kevin Owens defending his Universal Title at the next PPV Fastlane against Goldberg due to a challenge made by Jericho, Chris would attempt to put on a display of how much his friendship with Kevin Owens meant to him. With Jericho’s character at the time, it wasn’t surprising that this would be way over the top and very entertaining.

Photo Credit: WWE Network

Jericho had arranged many gifts for Owens, the most outrageous of which would be “The Creation of Kevin” which is shown above. Jericho also had a $7,000 sculpture made by Ralph Guggenheim on display here, and would also bring out “Friendship the Magician” who he found on Craigslist.

Jericho’s final gift would be to call out Goldberg to the ring, so that Owens and Jericho could beat him to the point where he wouldn’t be able to make it to Fastlane. The thing was though, it wasn’t Goldberg, and instead it was Gilberg. Owens had finally had enough of this, and after quickly beating down Gilberg, Owens would question Jericho’s intention for all of this.

Jericho would essentially break character here, as his tone changed, and he explained to Owens that this run has been the most enjoyable run he has had in his career. Jericho would thank Owens for that, and say that Kevin is like a brother to him, and he loves him. Owens would seemingly embrace Jericho, and go on to say that he actually got a present for Chris as well.

Jericho would open his present to find a new list. Which was perfect for him, because the old one was getting beat up, and it was getting full. Then Jericho would pause for a moment, lifting the list out of the box and ask the heart breaking question “How come my name is on this?”

As the crowd could see by the bottom of the list, this was not the List of Jericho, it was the List of KO. The use of dramatic irony here was perfect, being that we as the audience could see “The List of KO” before Jericho would eventually flip it over to see for himself.

Owens would then drop his microphone and go right for the attack on Jericho, beating him down and eventually hitting him a power bomb onto the apron, and throwing him into the glass projector in the ring.

This segment, as I said earlier, was perfect. I don’t even think the biggest knit picker in the world could find issue with this. I was extremely tempted to put this as number one on my list to be honest with you, but the true number one could not be denied here.