The Wednesday Night War might not have officially begun quite yet, but Chris Jericho is already out here taking shots.
With the final week of NXT's two-hour show being split across two networks in the books, we are now just days away from the start of the Wednesday Night War. Starting next week, NXT and AEW's Dynamite will go head-to-head and compete for ratings between 8 and 10 pm EST every single Wednesday night. However, Chris Jericho has decided to take an early shot.
In the early hours of Thursday morning, Y2J tweeted "I’m just gonna leave this here.....WALTER=worst wrestling name ever." That seems pretty unnecessary, but the good news for WALTER and NXT is that clearly, Jericho watched the show this week, even if it wasn't live. Since tweeting, fans have been offering up potentially worse names, but so far, Jericho still believes WALTER to be the worst.
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A couple of the alternatives offered up by fans have been Beaver Cleavage (remember him?) and Bastian Booger. The AEW Champion is of the belief that both of those, and every other wrestler's name ever, is more imaginative than WALTER. Perhaps our favorite response up until this point from Y2J has been "No lazier than naming yourself WALTER. Was LARRY or WARREN taken?' in response to a fan labeling the Judas Effect lazy.
Despite pretty much everyone involved asking fans to stay calm and refusing to label this a war, performers continue to take shots. Kenny Omega recently doubled down on his comments claiming if he was on the same roster as anyone in NXT, they would be the dark match to his main event. Then there was the whole sledgehammer to the throne thing at Double Or Nothing.
At the time of typing this, WALTER has not replied to Jericho's slight. Chances are he won't bother. You'll notice in all of the examples above, it is an AEW star trying to get a rise out of someone, anyone from NXT. If this is indeed a war, all of the above highlights that there is already a clear number one and number two. As with Coca Cola versus Pepsi, and McDonald's versus Burger King, you'll find second place taking shots at first, but rarely vice versa.