Wrestling fans have often wondered what social media would have looked like during the Monday Night Wars. It would be hard for anyone to imagine Shawn Michaels and Scott Hall trading jabs about ratings over Twitter, but that's what Chris Jericho and AEW are doing during the Wednesday Night Wars. Now, he's taken it all a step further by adopting a new nickname that brings ratings into the ring -- and it's a rare misstep for one of the best mic workers in the business.
Anyone who has been following wrestling in the last three decades should know Chris Jericho. His runs with ECW, WCW, WWF/E, NJPW and now AEW are nothing short of legendary. Not only is Jericho one of the best to ever lace up a pair of boots, but very few people can touch him on the mic. He is, without a shadow of a doubt, one of the top five best promo guys of all time. There's a reason many fans and critics put him on their wrestling Mount Rushmore.
With all that experience, skill and talent behind him, it's rare that Chris Jericho makes a misstep -- especialy in his promos. He sure chose the right time to walk away from WWE, heading back to NJPW and jumping on board with AEW alongside his fellow hometown boy from Winnipeg, Kenny Omega. But the G.O.A.T. may have made his first major mistake in a long time.
Ratings have always been a factor in televised wrestling events, as they are for everything else on TV. Those numbers inform virtually every decision made by each company, as well as their respective broadcast partners and advertisers. In recent weeks, some wrestlers and fans have been arguing on social media about what those numbers mean in the battle between AEW and WWE, with Chris Jericho at the center of it all on Twitter.
Rather than sticking to the broad strokes, he's gotten really specific about demographics, sending out multiple tweets on the subject. It's honestly been quite boring to read. Jericho has even started bringing it into the ring, discussing ratings and demographics as part of his promos. It's gone so far that he's even given himself a new nickname, Demo God -- a play on the term "demigod" and how well AEW is doing in certain key demographics.
While there are certainly some hardcore fans who are happy to argue numbers with Jericho on Twitter, the vast majority of fans do not care at all. Many of those fans probably don't spend a lot of time on social media, so talking ratings there isn't all that distracting -- people who want to parse ratings on Twitter can do so, and people who don't care can easily avoid the discussion. But bringing that conversation into the ring is just boring TV. Ross never dragged an episode of Friends to a screeching halt to brag about how well they did with 18 to 49 year olds.
Frankly, it's also extremely confusing for Jericho's character. This is not someone who needed another nickname or gimmick at this point. Le Champion has been wandering around for the past few weeks in an orange juice soaked coat, screaming at Santana and Ortiz about how it smells. It's a funny way to extend his larger feud with Orange Cassidy, and consistent with the heel Jericho AEW fans know and love. Demo God, on the other hand, is an inside reference to a conversation about ratings on Twitter. That's not funny at all.
Are fans supposed to call him, "Le Champion, the Demo God, leader of the Inner Circle and member of Le Sex Gods, Chris Jericho?" This is an angle AEW needs to be steering clear of. It's by no means an iceberg that's going to sink their company, but as a wise man once said, it's a stupid idea from bad creative -- and it needs to be put to bed.