This installment of our Statistical Analysis examines the ‘sanctioned’ main event of AEW Full Gear, the highly anticipated AEW World Championship bout between Chris Jericho and Cody Rhodes. (7 Takeaways From AEW Full Gear)
AEW World Champion Chris Jericho
AEW Full Gear (November 9th, 2019)
The first AEW Pay-Per-View to have a weekly television build has been built around the main event rivalry of the ‘American Nightmare’ Cody and ‘Le Champion’ Chris Jericho. This rivalry has reached levels of animosity rarely seen, even in the competitive world of professional, in recent weeks seeing Cody even feel the need to put his eligibility for future World Championships opportunities on the line.
This match has dominated Dynamite on TNT over the last six weeks with fans enjoying some of the hottest confrontations and promos in the entire industry. The magnitude of this match was heightened by the big match feel added to by the addition of time limit draw separating judges. For this match they were revealed to be legendary wrestlers Dean Malenko, Arn Anderson and The Great Muta!
Cody vs. Jericho: By The Numbers
In a contest lasting almost half an hour, coming in at 29 minutes and 35 seconds, 141 offensive manoeuvres were hit with a further 37 being reversed and another 18 classified as fouls. This meant viewers saw an offensive move every 12.5 seconds. The majority of which came from Chris Jericho.
Jericho was the dominant force in this match, with 77 offensive actions to Cody’s 64 giving him 55% of the matches offence which does not take into account the 17 fouls, he and Hager managed to get away with.
The majority of Jericho’s offence came from strikes and submissions. He won the striking battle 56 to 49 with 6 knockdowns to Cody’s 4. He contained Cody in submission holds for 59 seconds longer than the reverse, 74 seconds in comparison to 15.
Cody was very much fighting from underneath for a significant amount of this match. This was illustrated by Jericho’s advantage in overall offence delivered. Cody dealt with this admirably and reversed more manoeuvres than Jericho, 20 compared to 17. Offensively he dealt more damage from grapples and dives however his exploits with the latter may have led to his eventual downfall.
The Margins of Victory
Commentary teams across the many arenas of professional wrestling draw attention to the risk taking nature of competitors who employ diving manoeuvres in their in-ring repertoire. Cody hit four of these attacks during the course of this match but it may be the one that he missed that cost him victory and any future chances at the AEW World Championship.
A mere eight minutes into the contest, Cody attempted a dive over the top rope but crashed face first into the elevated entrance ramp. This bloodied the challenger and supplied Jericho with a target for the remainder of the match. This mistake from Cody allowed Jericho to dominate the match to such an extent that ultimately it led to his downfall.
When a match is decided but the duplicitous actions of an outside party, it is hard to point to a competitive factor as being the margin in the competing performances that led to the victory. MJF threw in the towel at a moment during which it would be believable for an ally of Cody’s to do so.
For MJF to believably throw in the towel, Cody had to be losing and in this match it was not a guarantee that he would end up with a loss but at this stage in the contest he certainly was losing. Jericho was able to beatdown Cody to a stage where he was able to apply his submission finisher not once but twice.
All this can be traced back to that early missed dive at eight minutes and two seconds.
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