2017 Awards: Wrestler of the Year

I’m running out of big awards.

This is where the whole thing comes together. The entire point of wrestling comes down to the wrestling itself (close enough at least) and some people just do it better than others. It’s been a great year for both men and women, hence why they’re put together here. If they’re both doing the same things, there’s no point in not judging them the same way.

I won’t be including Pete Dunne, Tetsuya Naito, Kazuchika Okada or Kenny Omega here as I just haven’t seen enough from any of them. That being said, if I had seen more from Okada, there’s a very good chance that he would run away with this thing. He’s one of the best I’ve ever seen and the fact that he’s just thirty years old is amazing.

We’ll start with one of my favorites and someone who seems to always be a dark horse in something like this. That would be the Miz, who won the Intercontinental Title, consistently entertained and had me in stitches during the Total Bellas stuff. I’d have been much happier to see he and Maryse win at Wrestlemania but the performance leading up to it was good enough. Hopefully he’s featured even more this year as he’s one of the best around.

Next up we have a newcomer who had one of the biggest rookie years (eh ok that’s a stretch) in a long time with Samoa Joe. He showed up early in the year and took the Raw roster by storm, feuding with and beating Seth Rollins and Roman Reigns. There was also a one on one pay per view title shot against Brock Lesnar and then being in the main event of Summerslam, which certainly isn’t bad for a debut year.

We’ll go to the ladies next with Charlotte. She started and end the year with some gold while having some awesome performances in between. It might not have been as great a year as she had in 2016 with the pay per view main event but Charlotte is so great at what she does with a great mixture of smoothness and poise that it’s impossible not to include her on here.

The other woman on the list is of course Asuka, who not only dominated NXT but is being treated as a big deal on the main roster as well. That sendoff she got from NXT was great stuff and really did showcase how good she had become over the years. She even mixed in some fun with the dancing, which is a very nice bonus. I’m a bit worried about what’s going to happen to her in the coming year but the previous year was very impressive.

In a very different side of the spectrum, there’s Braun Strowman, who went from a glorified lackey to getting multiple World Title shots on pay per view and winning a feud against Roman Reigns (that’s a rare thing to say). It’s hard to imagine him not being a World Champion at some point in the coming year and that’s a very interesting idea indeed.

For the winner, I’ll go with the safest pick I could possibly choose and say AJ Styles. He came into the year as World Champion and left as World Champion, plus picked up a US Title in the middle. Throw in getting good matches with Shane McMahon and Jinder Mahal plus having a Match of the Year candidate with John Cena and yet it still somehow feels like any run of the mill year for Styles.