2014 Awards: Show of the Year

We’ll wrap it up with another few horses race.

To begin with, I have to skip the ROH shows because I didn’t see most of them. I’ve heard they were good to really good, but I haven’t seen them.

We’ll start things off with a show that gets a lot of hate: the Royal Rumble. Unfortunately the only thing people remember about this show is the really questionable ending, along with the crowd’s reaction to it. What they forget is a great opener between Bryan and Wyatt, Brock Lesnar just DESTROYING Big Show and not even going down from the KO Punch and a good Cena vs. Orton match that the fans didn’t want to see.

What people also forget is a good Rumble for about 95% of the match before Mysterio’s music hit. Those last three or so minutes crippled what was going to be a good to very good match with Reigns breaking what was seen as a fairly untouchable record and some other entertaining parts. All people remember about it is no Bryan and Batista winning though and that ruins the memory of an otherwise great show.

Before we head down to developmental, I have to at least mention the post Wrestlemania Raw. It didn’t have the best wrestling, but the moments on that show carried it to greatness. You have the fans singing JOHN CENA SUCKS to the tune of his theme song to get the show going. That alone should tell you that we’re in for something special. Rob Van Dam returned, Rusev had his real debut, Warrior had his incredible farewell promo, Paige debuted and won the title and Shield turned face to end the show. The wrestling wasn’t great, but it was such a fun show that it warrants a mention.

That brings us to NXT, which set one heck of a standard this year with the Takeover shows. We’ll start at the beginning with the beginning at Arrival. This was back when we didn’t know what was coming with these shows and had our minds blown. Cesaro vs. Zayn was a classic and showed what Zayn and this promotion in general were capable of. You couple that with a really good ladder match main event where Adrian Neville took the title from Bo Dallas. This show would be up there for surprise of the year but it’s worth mentioning here too.

Now we get to the big shows, including Takeover: R-Evolution which blew the doors, roof, windows and pretty much everything else off the house. The show went from Kevin Owens being somehow even better than we were expecting to Finn Balor being a freaky dragon thing to Charlotte and Sasha Banks continuing the tradition of great women’s matches on these shows. Somehow that all paled in comparison to the main event though, as Sami Zayn defeated Adrian Neville for the NXT Title in my Match of the Year. Couple all that with the excellent surprise ending of Owens turning on Zayn and you have one of the best shows of the year.

I think the winner should be obvious at this point. When WWE actually puts an effort into the big shows, they know how to hit them out of the park. Well this year, they put a lot of effort into Wrestlemania XXX and the show was one of the best of all time. After an excellent pre-show match for the Tag Team Titles, Hulk Hogan, Steve Austin and The Rock appeared in the ring at the same time. I remember saying to a fan next to me that I could go home now and get my money’s worth.

This was followed by some excellent music video packages for the major matches, Daniel Bryan having the performance of a lifetime, Cesaro having what should have been a career changing performance, an incredible entrance for Bray Wyatt and the Streak coming to an end. What else could you possibly ask for from a major show? It was outstanding stuff and one of the best shows I’ve ever seen.

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