Best Of 2019: Surprise Of The Year
IMG Credit: WWE
I bet you didn’t see this one coming. As the name suggests, this one is about the best moment you didn’t expect throughout the year, which could be either good or bad. It might have been a turn, a win, a result or something else, but there are a few options to pick from over the course of 2018.
Note that I’m intentionally omitting Roman Reigns’ Leukemia announcement. The idea of a man telling us he has what could be a life threatening illness doesn’t scream SURPRISE to me for a variety of reasons.
Who’s That Entering The Rumble?
We’ll start with an easy one here. Every year someone returns in the Royal Rumble and it can be rather well done. This was Mysterio’s first match with WWE since 2014 and it’s really nice to see him back. He’s healthy and is moving better than he has in a long time. That’s the kind of big return that the Rumble needs and it didn’t exactly what it was supposed to do: pop the crowd and give the match some energy.
There’s something about Mysterio that is always going to work. He’s high energy and the kind of star who is going to blow the roof off the place every single time he shows up. The fans see him as a superhero with the mask on and while he did some good stuff in the indies (including Lucha Underground), he’s the kind of guy who belongs on the big stage, especially in the twilight of his career.
Ronda Rousey Is Awesome
Now notice the way I worded this. Given Rousey’s background and love of the sport, I don’t think anyone expected her to truly be terrible. She’s a natural athlete and could just do judo/MMA stuff to get by for years. That’s not what we got though. Instead, she showed up at Wrestlemania 34 in front of 65,000 people and beat the heck out of HHH (not so lucky with noted armbar defensive specialist Stephanie McMahon but I’ll take what I can get).
Think about all the rookies that have shown up over the last several years, especially in the women’s division. Sasha Banks was just a person, Bayley was a superfan, Charlotte was sloppy and Dana Brooke….has actually gotten worse. Rousey showed up, gets to fight HHH in her rookie match, and has taken to wrestling like few I’ve seen in a long time. That’s a surprise if I’ve ever seen one, because she’s great.
I would have bet money that Daniel Bryan’s return won this.
LOL! Just saw that there was a page 2!! Disregard!
Yeah I need to stop doing those.
Finisher Of The Year, again?
What’s with this pages thing? Not a fan. I like how everything with you is usually on one page. I almost didn’t click on the second page because I thought this was an ad hidden as content due to it.
Just something I was trying. I’ll drop them.
I stopped looking at Whatculture a long time ago due to this. They had ads upon ads and you have to click for each page. Couldn’t stand it. I love your format. Ads that aren’t annoying. Everything is on one page. Straightforward. No clickbait.
Yeah I wasn’t wild on it but someone mentioned it was an easy way to make the revenue go up. That….hasn’t really been the case yet so it’s not worth it if people don’t like it.