2017 Awards: News Story of the Year

There’s a lot more to wrestling than just wrestling.

I know most of the focus in wrestling goes on wrestling (kind of makes sense if you think about it) but there’s other stuff going on around the wrestling world. While some of these might not be the most thrilling stories in the world, a lot of them could have quite the impact on the wrestling world, either short or long term.

In no order, which shouldn’t be news to you.

We’ll start down in Mexico where Sexy Star apparently went into full on shoot mode on Rosemary in a match. While Star went into a variety of explanations for what happened, I’m not sure how many people actually bought what she said. Star is a big name in Lucha Underground but at the same time she’s not exactly big outside of there. However, anytime something like this happens, it’s a big deal almost by definition.

Sticking with the women, WWE ran the Mae Young Classic. The Women’s Revolution has been in full swing for well over a year now but the idea of running an all women’s special was rather unique stuff. It might not have been the most eventful tournament in the world but that doesn’t mean that it wasn’t a big deal. At the end of the day, this was being held by WWE. Not Stardom, not Shimmer, not Ring of Honor, but the biggest wrestling company in the world. Imagine that three years or so ago and you’ll see why it’s a big deal.

In something that may not be guaranteed but seems to be as close as you can get to it, Vince McMahon might be bringing back the XFL. While this has very little to do with actual wrestling, it does have to do with the WWE. Vince is going to be distracted by another outside project and that could mean a lot of different things for the promotion. Odds are they won’t be good ones either, but this is the chance to see what happens when so many fans scream about how much they want Vince gone. Be careful what you wish for people.

Then we’ll go up north, along with TNA. Yeah, at least for a little while, TNA seemed to become a Canadian promotion (and not a very good one at that). It begs the question of how much lower can they get, because at the moment they’re the Prairie Wrestling Alliance with a TV deal. It’s lead to stuff like Petey Williams as a featured player and I’m not sure how well that’s going to go over with the masses (or at least the people who actually watch TNA). They already seem to be heading back to Orlando, but it’s hard to say what’s after that for these people.

Speaking of going foreign, we have the proposed expansion of WWE into the United Kingdom. This one has kind of happened and kind of not happened, as we have a United Kingdom Champion but we don’t have the weekly United Kingdom TV show that was mentioned multiple times. Maybe it’s WWE’s anti-cost crusade (just give us pyro at Wrestlemania at least) but for now, this is just the start of something. It’s worked while it’s lasted, but for now it doesn’t mean much.

Finally, and probably by default, we have the winner (or at least the one that had the biggest impact at the time): the illnesses that plagued the locker room around Tables, Ladders and Chairs. This sent the entire card into upheaval and gave us some pretty big matches in the process while also keeping a ton of talent off the shows for weeks. It’s not the biggest long term deal in the world, but for a week or so this was the update to watch.

So yeah, nothing exactly bombshell level yet, but that XFL thing could get big in a hurry.