Fans are ripping apart Chris Jericho's take on his WWE feud with The Rock

Another day, another nostalgic debate

It is March 29, 2026. Tomorrow night, AEW heads into Kansas City for Dynasty. The card is loaded. The tension is high. So naturally, the entire internet wrestling community spent their Sunday morning violently arguing about something that happened in the fall of 2001.

This is the beauty and the curse of being a professional wrestling fan. We are physically incapable of living entirely in the present. The catalyst for today's timeline implosion? Chris Jericho. According to a recent piece from Wrestling Inc, the AEW veteran decided to casually drop the opinion that his legendary late-Attitude Era program with The Rock simply doesn't get the respect it truly deserves from the modern fanbase.

Look, we all know Jericho loves a good narrative. He has built an entire, Hall of Fame-caliber career on being able to steer the conversation exactly where he wants it to go. But dropping this specific nostalgia bomb right now? It was like throwing raw meat into a shark tank. The reactions across Reddit, X, and every message board in between instantly fractured into three highly aggressive, distinctly different camps. It is fascinating to watch the revisionist history unfold in real time.

Let's break down the chaos.

The Diehard Defenders

First, you have the Jericho loyalists. These are the fans who still have their original Y2J Monday Night Jericho shirts folded carefully in a dresser drawer. For them, this isn't just a wrestling opinion; it's a fierce defense of their childhood memories.

They are quick to point out that stepping into the ring with Dwayne Johnson in 2001 was the ultimate sink-or-swim test. You either held your own on the microphone against a guy who was literally weeks away from becoming a massive Hollywood movie star, or you got eaten alive and sent back to Sunday Night Heat. Jericho swam.

Here is a pretty solid summarization of this camp's energy from a top-voted comment on the main wrestling subreddit this morning.

"People act like Jericho wasn't going toe-to-toe with the biggest star on the planet. The promos leading up to No Mercy were unbelievable. The Rock was roasting everyone in the Invasion angle, and Jericho was the only guy who actually fired back and made you believe he wasn't intimidated. Getting the WCW Championship off him was a massive deal at the time. It made Jericho a made man before the Undisputed title stuff even happened."

They aren't entirely wrong here. The build to their match at No Mercy in October 2001 was phenomenal television. The tension between two guys who were technically on the same Team WWF side but despised each other's egos was incredible booking. It was frankly the only part of the Invasion angle that actually felt dangerous and unpredictable.

The 'Read the Room' Brigade

Then we have the second camp. This group couldn't care less about what happened a quarter of a century ago. They are firmly planted in the year 2026, and they are utterly exhausted by veterans bringing up the glory days when there is a major pay-per-view happening tomorrow.

This segment of the fanbase is highly critical of Jericho's current run. They feel he takes up too much television time, constantly re-invents himself just to stay in the orbit of whoever the hottest young star is, and uses his media appearances to constantly remind everyone of how great he used to be. For them, this quote was just another example of Y2J trying to steer the spotlight back to himself right before a major company milestone.

One user on X laid it out with zero hesitation.

"Chris, my brother in Christ, AEW Dynasty is literally tomorrow. We are 24 hours away from a massive show in Kansas City and you are out here begging for flowers about a feud from the Bush administration. We get it. You were great. Now please let us focus on the current roster who are actually trying to build their own legacies right now."

This is a harsh assessment, but it reflects a growing sentiment. The patience for nostalgia acts in modern wrestling is wearing incredibly thin. Fans want forward momentum. When a legend randomly brings up a twenty-five-year-old feud out of nowhere, it feels less like a fun retrospective and more like a desperate plea for relevance in a rapidly moving industry.

The Workrate Snobs

Finally, we reach my personal favorite group: the historical revisionists and match quality critics. These are the fans who immediately booted up the WWE Network, skipped the promo packages, and watched the actual bell-to-bell action before rushing back to the forums to deliver their verdict.

Their argument? The feud is rated exactly right. It was a spectacular promo battle attached to some very good, but ultimately flawed, professional wrestling matches.

They argue that Jericho and Rock never quite found that magical, effortless in-ring chemistry that Rock had with Steve Austin, or that Jericho had with Shawn Michaels a few years later. The matches were entirely reliant on heavy brawling, referee bumps, and massive finisher kickouts to generate heat.

A prominent user on a popular wrestling message board broke down the technical flaws with ruthless efficiency.

"I just rewatched the Vengeance match where he wins the Undisputed belt. It's a fun brawl, sure. But from a pure wrestling standpoint? It's clunky. The timing is off on half the reversals. Rock carried the emotional weight of that match while Jericho was just kind of spamming his signature moves. It was a great moment, but the match itself is maybe three and a half stars on its best day. It's not underrated. It's correctly remembered as a great angle with decent matches."

This is the critical observation that usually gets buried in the nostalgia. The actual wrestling wasn't always smooth. The finish to their No Mercy match involved a steel chair onto a steel step, a breakdown of the referee, and Stephanie McMahon interference. It was peak Attitude Era overbooking. It was incredibly entertaining, but it wasn't a technical masterpiece.

The Verdict

So, who is actually right here? Does the feud deserve more respect, or is Jericho just shouting at clouds?

Honestly, it is a little bit of both.

Jericho is absolutely correct that his work in the fall of 2001 was the definitive turning point of his career. You do not get to Vengeance 2001 and the undisputed championship without surviving that trial by fire against The Rock. He proved he belonged in the main event scene. The verbal sparring alone is worth revisiting. The insults, the sheer arrogance radiating off both men—it was spectacular character work that holds up perfectly today.

However, the fans telling him to read the room are also entirely justified. Timing is everything in this business. Dropping this quote right before AEW Dynasty just feels unnecessary. It feeds into the existing narrative that Jericho is more concerned with his own historical standing than the current product he is supposedly helping to build.

The feud isn't underrated. It is widely acknowledged as the exact program that solidified his main event status. It simply gets overshadowed by the sheer volume of chaotic, generation-defining television that WWE was producing at that specific time. When you are sharing a calendar year with WrestleMania X-Seven and the disastrous but fascinating WCW buyout, some things are naturally going to fall down the pecking order.

Jericho gave us an unforgettable rivalry. But the fans are right to demand that we leave it in the past, at least for this weekend. There is a whole new generation of wrestlers stepping into the ring tomorrow night, trying to build feuds that we might be arguing about twenty-five years from now. Let's give them the floor.