2015 Awards: Wrestler of the Year
We’ll wrap it up with the biggest one of the year.
We’ll start with one of the last remaining worldwide talents in AJ Styles. The guy goes around the world and has great match after great match. He was a huge star in New Japan and fought almost anyone you could ask him to face. Styles has earned the WWE run he’s about to get and 2015 was a big part of that.
You also have to consider Kevin Owens for how far he’s come in just a year. People kind of forget that he made his WWE debut at the end of 2014 and was pinning John Cena about six months later. Couple that with a dominant performance against Sami Zayn and the Intercontinental Title and it’s hard to argue anyone having a stronger debut year in a very long time.
Also out of NXT you have Bayley, who rose up from a good but not great NXT woman to the most over person in the hottest promotion in wrestling. Watch her come out on NXT and just take in how much the people love her. She’s on a roll in the ring too and is a genuine character that young girls can get attached to. I honestly don’t remember the last time that happened in wrestling and it’s amazing to see it happen right before your eyes.
That leaves us with the main two options and we’ll start with the younger. Seth Rollins threw in a legitimate surprise finish to Wrestlemania when he cashed in and went on to have one heck of an in ring year. Rollins’ biggest problem came down to his horrible booking. There’s only so much you can do when you’re treated as HHH and Stephanie’s kid and get stuck trying to carry Kane to a serious World Title match at a major show.
This is a situation where someone was doing the best with what they were given and Rollins did everything he could. It’s not his fault that WWE doesn’t know how to book a heel as anything but a coward or subservient to the Authority. Rollins did his best and it’s clear that he’s going to be a huge deal when he comes back (hopefully not being associated with HHH) with his knee all fixed up.
Finally, as always, there’s John Cena. This was an odd year for Cena as he started off hot against Lesnar and Rollins, went into a very hit or miss feud with Rusev (more miss than hit unfortunately), how an awesome feud with Owens, disappeared for a few weeks due to his reality show, then had another hit or miss feud with Rollins (though it was much more the booking missing than the wrestlers). Then he came back for like five minutes but got hurt again and is out for the next several months.
However, there’s a major weight in his favor and that’s the US Open Challenge. This is what separated Cena from the rest of the pack all year as it was one awesome match after another with any and all comers. The question became who was going to walk through the curtain, making every week a big surprise. Some of them were better than others, but you knew you were going to get something special. This series of matches impressed even some of Cena’s harshest critics as Cena just could not have a bad match during this thing. At the end of the day, good wrestling is more important than anything else and no one did that better week in and week out this year that Cena.
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