Being Le Champion and a long-time veteran in the AEW locker room, Chris Jericho's words hold plenty of weight. So, when he sees something he doesn't like, he is going to address it with those who need to be spoken to.
While AEW has received critical praise nearly every week for their Dynamite shows, one thing that has stuck out has been the lack of rules in tag team matches. Referees would often be confused on when to enforce the rules as wrestlers would go in and out of the ring without tagging or remain in the ring while ignoring the referee. Jim Ross was often frustrated over the rules on commentary. After a while, Jericho stepped up to get everyone on the same page with the rules, specifically singling out The Lucha Bros (Pentagon Jr & Fenix) for not sticking to the tag team parameters.
"I called a team meeting -- the lack of tags and normal tag team wrestling psychology drove me nuts, to be the point where that was one of the big knocks against our company in about week three or four," said Jericho on the Keepin It 100 podcast. "It's sort of making excuses for the Lucha Brothers because tagging in and out, they're lazy, they don't care. They walk in and out whenever they want and it's not right. They would make excuses where they would say, 'Oh it's Lucha Libre style.' Huh, that's funny, I worked in Mexico for two years and guess how you make a tag in a Lucha Libre match? You stand in the corner and you wait for a guy touch you and you walk in. That's Lucha Libre rules aka tag team rules."
Jericho continued, "I called a meeting with the whole crew and said, 'You're burying the ref, if you don't have any rules, you don't get any heat. And it's killing our show because our honeymoon period is over and now people are watching us and they're being confused by the lack of rules.'"
Jericho stated that he thinks Fenix and Pentagon Jr are amazing and that it's possible they weren't aware of the rules until someone told him.
"And once we had a couple of talks with them, guess what they started doing? They started tagging. Maybe it was a habit or maybe nobody told them. You have a whole locker room of guys that have just worked Indies their whole career and they don't know little things. I've told guys, 'Change your gear, your gear looks bush league' and they come back with new gear. Once we told the guys to concentrate more on tagging in and out, they've been doing it. Everyone is working together about what we're looking for in the company," he said.
At AEW Full Gear in a match between The Young Bucks and Proud N Powerful, it was hammered home early in the match that the referee knew the tag team rules and would be enforcing them.
Two tag team matches are set to headline the Dec. 18 AEW Dynamite as SCU will take on The Young Bucks in an AEW Tag Team Title bout and Hangman Page & Kenny Omega will battle The Lucha Bros.
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