The thing I love most about my favorite wrestlers are how well they adapt to situations and display their versatility. Like how well a main event talent adjusts to being pushed back to the midcard to give someone else a chance. In 2009, Chris Jericho was still in the midst of his best character, in my opinion of course. The year prior, he was the World Heavyweight Champion on Raw. He was drafted to Smackdown and engaged in one of the best feuds of the year with Rey Mysterio over the Intercontinental Championship, thus showing his versatility. Leading up to their partnership, The Big Show was in a feud with John Cena (Sidenote: I hate when WWE makes feuds like these because of the outcome. For example, Cena definitively beat Show twice on PPV but Show beats Cena on Raw and he's declared the winner of the feud. Makes absolutely zero sense). However an untimely injury would bring these two stars together.
At The Bash, Chris Jericho and Edge were surprisingly added to a tag team title match with the Colons and Legacy for the Unified WWE Tag Team Championship. (Sidenote: Teddy Long was pressured by Vince to improve the quality of matches on Smackdown so that's why Edge and Jericho were added. All in storyline of course). Edge and Jericho would go on to win the titles but shortly thereafter, it was announced that Edge had suffered a torn Achilles. So without a partner, Teddy Long tried to strip Jericho of the tag team titles but Jericho had a loophole in his contract which would give him time to find another partner.
At Night of Champions, Jericho was set to defend the titles with his mystery partner against Cody Rhodes and Ted DiBiase Jr. Jericho revealed that The Big Show was his new partner and they defeated Legacy to retain the titles. With Big Show on Raw and Jericho on Smackdown, holding the Unified Tag Team Titles allowed for them to travel across brands. Their first feud came against Cryme Tyme, who they went on to defeat at SummerSlam to retain their titles. Then they faced MVP and Mark Henry, who proposed a very formidable challenge for the Tag Team Champions. Like Cryme Tyme, they too would fail to win the titles at Breaking Point.
Their next short feud would come against Batista and Rey Mysterio, and they too were defeated by Jeri-Show at Hell in a Cell. Before Bragging Rights, the champions started a feud with DX after losing a non-title match. The feud would be put on pause for a while as the two teams competed at Bragging Rights in a Team Smackdown vs Team Raw match. Then, Jeri-Show would be placed in a triple threat match with the Undertaker for the World Heavyweight Championship while DX was placed in a triple threat with John Cena for the WWE Championship. Both Teams failed in their quest to become World Champions thus allowing them to continue their feud. At the TLC PPV, DX beat Jeri-Show to become the new Unified Tag Team Champions. A night later, Jeri-Show was awarded the Slammy Award for Tag Team of the Year and beat DX by Disqualification. DX granted Jeri-Show a rematch under the condition that if DX wins, Jericho is banned from Raw. Jeri-Show would lose this match, marking the end of the team.
I wasn't big on these guys as a team but looking back at it, Jeri-Show had 2 stars who were already well established as decorated world champions. I can't really think of another team that was paired up together this late with careers more successful than these two. That's not counting teams who later got back together after going on hiatus like DX and The Brothers of Destruction.
Anyways, I mentioned versatility in the beginning and Chris Jericho's run from 2008-2010 is my favorite example. He was World Heavyweight Champion, then fell out of the main event scene to elevate the midcard with Rey Mysterio for the Intercontinental Championship, and after all that, he gave the Tag team division a much needed boost of fresh air. Show, who was originally placed in the WWE Championship 6 Pack Challenge and would likely have lost, was given a new direction to go in. Jericho's sneaky and cunning tactics combined with Show's brute force made for a very deadly combination which could have been even better to showcase if they had better teams to work with back then. The split also didn't hurt either star as Jericho would go on to regain the World Heavyweight Championship while Show formed Show-Miz with The Miz and that team went on to defeat DX to win the Unified Tag Team Titles.
-Ameen
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