This past week on RAW, Chris Jericho and AJ Styles teamed up for the second time and defeated a pair of members from The Social Outcasts. On Smackdown this week they teamed with Mark Henry and as a trio they defeated The New Day, specifically with Styles getting the win by making Xavier Woods tap out. Interestingly, before they chose Henry as a partner Jericho seemed to be very insistent on teaming up with Styles, even outwardly stating that a victory in the six-man tag match could get them into the running to take on The New Day for the WWE Tag Team Championship.
There are a few ways to go with this, with the first one I’ll throw out there being the one that really should not happen. Styles and Jericho continue teaming up and find themselves in a four-way (maybe five-way) tag team match at WrestleMania for the titles currently held by your world famous two-time champs. The other teams would be of course The New Day, along with The Dudley Boyz, The Usos and a pair from the League of Nations.
It would be a shame to have The Phenomenal one start off in WWE relegated to a tag team, especially if he’s going to be part of a multi-team “get everybody on the show” match at WrestleMania. That is also very unlikely. It wouldn’t be shocking to see that same match from above, just without Y2/AJ in the mix. Instead, the newly formed team may get their shot at the tag belts before WrestleMania. The match would make sense as the main event of an episode of Monday Night RAW, with the conclusion seeing miscommunication between the men that allows the champions to hold onto the titles and fight another day. Jericho could then solidify the heel turn that has been teased for the last few weeks and go into one more match with Styles at WrestleMania with the heel-face dynamic that the previous three matches lacked.
Speculation has put Styles in the ring with Kevin Owens at WrestleMania, and that idea is bolstered by the fact that they are scheduled to wrestle each other on the March 25 house show at Madison Square Garden just nine days before ‘Mania. Doing that might leave Jericho out in the cold. Where would he fit in? A match with Dolph Ziggler? How about a United States Championship match with Kalisto? That would actually be a pretty cool idea.
The eventual outcome is going to happen sooner rather than later, possibly as soon as this Monday on RAW or Thursday on Smackdown. WWE has thus far done a very good job (outside of Roman Reigns vs. Triple H) of making the WrestleMania card unpredictable and exciting, so anything is possible.
