AEW and NXT Wednesday Night War: 3 winners of night #13

Jon Moxley and Chris Jericho

If you’ve watched any wrestling over the last 30 years or so – particularly WWE – then you probably knew how Dynamite’s show-closing segment, where Chris Jericho attempted to recruit Jon Moxley into the Inner Circle, would turn out.

It makes sense given that Moxley appears to be in line for an AEW World Championship match and that Moxley and Jericho’s respective characters are incompatible for co-leadership of a faction, but the predictability of the payoff didn’t make it any less satisfying. But AEW certainly tried to make you think that Moxley was legitimately joining Jericho’s faction.

The bulk of the credit for this angle’s success belongs to Jericho and Moxley – though some does need to go to Sammy Guevara for not only his mannerisms throughout the “celebration”, but also his outstanding sell job for Mox’s Paradigm Shift DDT.

Going all the way back to their 2016 feud in WWE, these two’s chemistry always shined through, even among the bleakest drivel creative would hand them.

Here, Jericho and Moxley used that comfort with one another to enhance an otherwise basic segment, which is why we get things like Moxley winking at the camera to subtly let the viewers at home know that he’s duping Jericho or Moxley matter of factly stating that the Inner Circle is stupid.

Sure, it ran a bit too long (I kept looking at the clock waiting for Moxley to reveal the swerve), but the two stars made this memorable.