#2 – Chris Benoit, WWF Royal Rumble 2001
Benoit and Jericho’s legacy stretches all the way back to his brief stint in ECW. Benoit was actually one of the influential voices who convinced Paul Heyman to take a chance on Y2J. Through the years they were opponents and partners alike, wrestling in some of the best matches, with the best stipulations. It was Benoit who faced Jericho in his first ever WCW PPV match.
It could be argued that the match below – a ladder match for the Intercontinental Championship at the 2001 Royal Rumble PPV – is the greatest Chris Jericho match of all time. The two would face each other 6 times on PPV in 12 months, with even more matches on Raw and Smackdown. This was their crowning achievement. In the years to come, and with the creation of the Money in the Bank match, the ladder would be used for all kinds of ingenious high flying maneuvers – moonsaults, sentons, finishers of all kinds. But this rivalry was personal, and their goal wasn’t to innovate, but to take big hunks of steel and bash them into each other’s faces over and over again.
