After dropping a stunner – and his eighth World Championship belt – to Claudio Castagnoli at Ring of Honor Final Battle, Chris Jericho was asked by Tony Schiavone had he had planned next on AEW Dynamite. Would he turn his attention to MJF's AEW World Championship? Or maybe one of the two belts held by his former WWE colleague “The King of Television” Samoa Joe? Could Jericho push Daniel Garcia – who now has to work as Sammy Guevara's young boy – aside and take a shot at Wheeler Yuta's Pure Championship?

For better or worse, Jericho decided that he wanted to take another swing – too soon? – at Castagnoli and the Ring of Honor World Championship, but first, he wanted to have a tune-up match against “some jobber” on Dynamite to get his head back in the game.

Unfortunately for “The Ocho,” he ended up wrestling the wrong jobber, as, for one reason or another, he was booked to face off against Action Andretti, the Philadelphia native who took QT Marshall to the absolute limits on AEW Dark back on October 7th and has since gone on to wrestle for PPW, MCW – his home promotion where he is currently the Heavyweight Championship – GCW, and CZW, before making his return to Dynamite for a very special match at Winter Is Coming. Would Jericho pick up his easy win to re-tool his game ahead of another match with the “Swiss Superman?”

Nope, in a twist of fate few saw coming, Andretti took on Jericho for almost 10 minutes, hitting the sorts of acrobatic maneuvers that would make the Martin brothers proud, and in the end, secured the victory with a Standing Shooting Star Press for the 1-2-3. The match was incredibly entertaining, Jericho looked truly shocked, and in the end, Andretti's win went over incredibly well with the fans assembled within the Curtis Culwell Center in Garland, Texas, with Action feeling himself so much that he jumped into the crowd Lambeau Leap-style to celebrate the occasion. And the best part? Fans online were just as stoked to see Andretti, a performer who began the match with 2,134 followers on Twitter and ended Dynamite with 5,607 and counting, do the unthinkable, as he's gone a bit viral on social media as a result of his match.

Action Andretti has become a new viral sensation in AEW.

First and foremost, one can't talk about the reactions to Andretti's win without first addressing that of Jericho, who opted to forgo the typical post-match interview with Renee Paquette, Lexy Nair, or even Alex Marvez to instead run around the backstage area like a chicken with his head cut off, throwing anything in his path and shouting “I'm the Ocho.”

Poor guy, after suffering a huge loss to Castagnoli at Final Battle, now he has to live with the fact that a performer who has appeared in just 87 matches – 2,418 fewer than Jericho, according to Cagematch – just beat him in his tune-up match. Fortunately, fans across social media were far more complementary of Andretti's performance, and some even complimented Jericho for putting him over, too, with The Ocho retweeting those to take in some secondhand glory.

 

Destructivous Herbivorous' take is probably the prevailing one, with fans across the social media landscape already – plus Excalibur, Taz, and Schiavone on commentary – already calling the match AEW's upset of the year. Other fellow AEW employees used Andretti's win as a way to believe in the spontaneity of professional wrestling again.

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Chris Jericho with a text bubble reading " He is the right guy for the job" next to Swerve Strickland with the AEW Dynasty logo as the background.

Matty Breisch ·

Will Ospreay and Bryan Danielson in front of the AEW Dynasty logo.

Matty Breisch ·

Will Ospreay with a text bubble reading "You have no idea what I fight for!" with Triple H on his left and Dave Meltzer on his right and the AEW Dynamite logo as the background.

Matty Breisch ·

Could Andretti be the next guest on “Hey! (EW),” joining the ranks of Danhausen, Arn Anderson, and “The Ocho” himself on RJ City's show? Regardless of his booking, Andretti did land arguably the greatest endorsement of all for going from presumed jobber to future in-ring star, as none other than Sean Waltman, the former X-Pac who began his career as The 1-2-3 Kid, gave props to Andretti for following in his footsteps on the way to a professional wrestling career.

While Waltman is more or less back in WWE full-time, as he helped to pick the participants for the NXT Iron Survivor Challenge, it's still nice to see one of the most prolific jobbers-turned-Superstars represent the game of another, even if Andretti has turned in a pretty impressive resume over the last year, with wins over “Speedball” Mike Bailey, Lince Dorado, Fuego Del Sol, Zachary Wentz, Rich Swann, and Ninja Mack. Still, the only social media interaction Andretti really wanted to see after his match was a tweet from Tony Khan celebrating his match and maybe even an “Is #AllElite” graphic to announce his signing to the world. Fortunately, he didn't have to wait too long for that to happen and even tweeted out a reaction of his own to commemorate the occasion.