WWE Monday Night Raw: Why Chris Jericho's Return Was One of the Best of All Time

As Jericho posed on the entrance ramp with a sparkling blue vest upon his return on Monday night, he had everyone fooled.

The fans went ballistic for "Y2J's" return on Monday night. In this day and age, where the Internet is such an integral part of our lives, nobody was really shocked that it was Jericho who was behind all of these "01/02/12" promos over the past couple of months. There were numerous Jericho and Y2J signs littered throughout the crowd.

That's what makes it even better that the fans were so elated for Jericho's return. This is the same Jericho that for the last two years of his WWE career, was quite possibly the biggest heel in the company. He was the prototypical narcissistic heel, who had felt the fans had turned their backs on him. No matter what he did, the fans would never love him as much as guys such as Shawn Michaels.

Along the way, one of his favorite terms of use was the word "hypocrites" to describe that of the WWE audience.

Through 10 minutes of his return on Monday, he just about proved everything that he had said previously before to be true.

Jericho's return was one of the greatest that I have ever seen. For a minute in time, he actually had the audience and I believing that Y2J was back. That the smart ass, pandering, joking Jericho was back yet again.

But what started as something that appeared genuine, quickly turned into a "message".

Jericho continued pandering to the crowd with over the top shenanigans, such as carrying a camera around, repeatedly yelling and screaming and soaking up the adoration from the fans.

By the time he was done as he was on the entrance ramp, Jericho gave a smirk that just screamed, "I told you so."

At the start of his return, the fans gave him one of the loudest ovations in recent history.

By the time he was done pandering to the crowd, the cheers had turned into boos.

That is the definition of control, which was one of the key words used throughout Jericho's return promos.

The narcissistic Jericho that we had grown to hate over the last several years had repeatedly stated that Y2J would never return. He wouldn't be "anyone's monkey" ever again.

What we're about to witness over the next several weeks is an evolution yet again of Jericho's character. Nobody knows for sure what to expect. No one knows the exact plans of this evolution except for Jericho and the creative team themselves.

However, the seeds were planted on Monday for something big. I don't expect to see just the same narcissistic Jericho that we saw from 2008-2010. I expect to see an upgrade over that character. An even better version of that Jericho, so to speak.

Jericho has repeatedly stated through interviews, that you have to constantly evolve. You have to change things up or things will just get stale and old. In his DVD, Breaking the Code: Behind the Walls of Chris Jericho, he talked about how his return in November of 2007 as Y2J left more to be desired.

Quickly upon his return, he became an afterthought. He was jettisoned to the mid-card division to compete for the Intercontinental Title. It wasn't until his re-birth, that Jericho re-established himself as a main eventer.

Make no mistake about it, Jericho won't make the same mistake that he did upon his last return. He is evolving his character yet again, and he did it in the best way possible last night.

For the first time in awhile, I am actually interested in tuning into the next several weeks of Monday Night Raw to see just what Jericho does. To see how his character evolves. To see him actually speak and explain his actions during his return.

It's just another example of Chris Jericho proving why he's the "best in the world" at what he does.