When Chris Jericho was last seen in WWE 2 years ago, he was carried kicking and screaming out of the arena, "fired" by then-Raw GM Eric Bischoff, because he didn't fulfill Bischoff's goal of eliminating then-champion John Cena. Bischoff himself was "fired" by Vince McMahon a little more than 3 months later, and except for a couple of spot "guest appearances", was allowed to collect his pay at home while his contract expired. Jericho? He's been a regular on VH1 and used the downtime to expand his horizons, becoming an actor and becoming involved with the Groundlings comedy troupe in Los Angeles, in addition to a now-defunct satellite radio show.

For the last several weeks, some cryptic messages have appeared during WWE programming, and sharp-eyed fans have deduced the clues, figuring it adds up to Jericho's return from a 2-year sabbatical. The time is certainly right, what with injuries to several performers, including Cena. Triple H & Shawn Michaels, collectively DX, have recently come off the disabled list themselves, but Cena's going to be gone for as much as a year, if Vince McMahon's announcement was accurate. However, those same fans noted that Jericho's book tour, in support of his autobiography, "A Lion's Tale", dovetails with WWE in several places, especially on Mondays, leading them to assume that Jericho can swing over to the arena after the book signings. It doesn't work that way, kids. That Jericho was in Philadelphia on Monday happened to be a mere coincidence that people, desperate to see Raw get a kickstart to get the ratings back up, read too much into. More fools they, then, for thinking they could outsmart the usually erratic WWE Creative team. Granted, the High Priestess of Creative herself, Stephanie McMahon-LeVesque, was angry over supposed leaks. But, hey, she likes a good mystery like the rest of us, and once she calmed down, she probably realized that it took some simple detective work on the part of viewers, not a banana-brained writer with a major case of brain cramping, to determine that the "Save_us22" videos had to do with Jericho.

Now, we're getting into the November sweeps period, where networks set advertising rates for the next quarter. It's for this reason that they held off on a confrontation between Santino Marella and Stone Cold Steve Austin until the 11/5 Raw, and instead had Marella tape a video promo as a poorly disguised impersonation of Austin. The same rationale applies to Jericho. WWE wants to hold off his return as much as possible to milk the fan interest---and in turn, the ratings----as much as possible. I'm going out on a limb here, but I'm going to say they'll wait until after the Survivor Series to bring back the "Ayatollah of Rock & Rollah". That gives Vince, Steph, & Jericho plenty of time to outline the path Y2J will take for the winter. It's almost a lock Jericho will lock horns with current titlist Randy Orton, falling into line behind HHH, HBK, Jeff Hardy, and the rest.

And there will be some fresh opponents for Jericho, too. He's never met Ken Kennedy, Marella, or Bobby Lashley, for example. However, if they do swerve and send Jericho to Smackdown or ECW, there's some new faces there, too, like Elijah Burke, Kevin Thorn, and Great Khali, to name a few. For now, the speculating game will continue to be played by the desperate, unenlightened majority of wrestling fans who are reading between the lines, but in the wrong context. They're dancing to the fiddler's tune, with Jericho and the McMahons calling the tunes.

And isn't that how the game should be played?