1.Wrestlecrap – R. D. Reynolds. This one didn’t do much for me as it can basically be summarized as “and then the WWF and Hogan did this stupid thing and this stupid thing and this stupid thing while real wrestlers like Ric Flair are the most amazing things ever.” Couple that kind of narrative with a bunch of basic factual error, such as saying Greg Valentine was a two time Intercontinental Champion. I know it’s minor but they’re very annoying to read and know it’s wrong. This is fine for a quick read but don’t expect anything great.
2.A Lion’s Tale – Chris Jericho. Somehow I had never read this and it more than lived up to expectations. Jericho writes like he talks on TV and that makes for a very entertaining book. The guy has been everywhere and it’s a lot of fun to hear his stories from around the world. I really don’t think this needs a recommendation as I’m probably the last wrestling fan to read it.
3. Pain and Passion: The History of Stampede Wrestling – Heath McCoy. Stampede is one of the promotions I don’t know a lot about and this book fixed that problem. This is one of the best put together wrestling books I’ve ever seen and is all the way up there with Foley’s stuff. If you want to see everything there is to know about the promotion, including some amazing stories and background on the Hart Family’s inner workings and the drama involved, check this out as it’s a great read.
Checked Out The Resurrection Of Jake The Snake Roberts
It’s actually better than it was advertised. If you’re interested in seeing someone completely broken and brought back to what he should be, this is more than worth checking out. The scenes with Jake breaking down about how much he’s wrecked his life just like his dad did are amazing and really do make you see how bad it was for him.
Above all else though, it shows you that Diamond Dallas Page might actually be a saint. You can put people in rehab all you want but there’s something about that personal connection and individual work that makes this come together. Yes Roberts and Scott Hall have had some issues since but they’re both so far and away ahead of where they were that it’s almost impossible to believe. This really does make you believe that anyone can get better and that’s the important thing.
Happy Birthday
To the NWO, born 20 years ago today. I say born because the Bullet Club is still ripping them off to this day.
Assuming this is true, this is another tragedy in a long list of them this year. As I said about Mahoney, that’s WAY too young no matter who it is.
Balls Mahoney Passes Away At 44
I’m sure you’ve heard about this by now. I never was a fan of the guy but 44 is too young for anyone.
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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This is one of the hardest ones to pick because it’s one of the two biggest awards of the year.
We’ll start over in Japan with Shinsuke Nakamura vs. Kota Ibushi in the WON Match of the Year. I didn’t remember this being as awesome as it was but I gave it an A and you have to mention it after winning such a big award. Ibushi made this a war and came so close to the huge upset in a great story with great action but he just couldn’t pull it off. Still great though.
Reigns vs. Lesnar from Wrestlemania was better than I was expecting as they just beat the tar out of each other for a long time until the big screwy ending. That ending is what holds it back for me as it turned into more of an angle than a match. What we got until that point was more than worth seeing though and it far exceeded most expectations. It’s the main event of Wrestlemania so you have to at least give it a mention.
In another surprise, Kevin Owens pinned John Cena at Elimination Chamber. This was the big trading finishers showdown with both guys hitting each other with bigger and bigger shots to set up the big surprise finish with Owens winning. This was built up with weeks of great promos and then gave us a great match. What more can you ask for than that?
There’s another match from outside WWE with Mil Muertes vs. Fenix in a Grave Consequences (casket) match. It’s not the match of the year, but it runs away with the award for having no business being awesome but blowing the roof off the place. Casket matches are some of the goofiest gimmick matches you’ll ever find but these two turned it into one of the most dramatic things I’ve seen in a very long time. Given how bad the gimmick was holding them back, this was a borderline miracle.
We’ll go in reverse for a second and mention the Iron Man match at Takeover: Respect. It’s not quite the first match but the ending with Bayley KICKING SASHA IN THE HEAD to win and Banks making Izzy cry were things of beauty. These two have mad chemistry together and the rematch even being near the level of the original is the highest praise.
That leaves us with the final two matches that everyone knew we were coming to. First up there’s the amazing triple threat from the Royal Rumble with Brock Lesnar vs. John Cena vs. Seth Rollins. I rewatched this a few days ago and good night it was something to see. All three guys hit everything they could and the story of Lesnar having to be double teamed to leave the other two fighting was great stuff.
The things Lesnar was doing and was being put through by the challengers were awesome and the ending with Brock going Beast Mode to beat Rollins left me out of breath. This was the most action packed match of the year and the clubhouse leader for a very long time. It was going to take something special to come close to it and that’s what we got about nine months later.
Women in wrestling get a lot of flack. They’re treated as eye candy, sideshow acts, popcorn breaks and second class citizens who do some of the dumbest things imaginable. That’s what makes the NXT women’s division so much fun. Instead of being treated like morons, they’re treated as serious competitors who happen to be women. The idea of a Women’s Title match being the main event of a random week of TV doesn’t even make NXT fans think twice these days and that’s a really good sign.
That’s what makes Bayley vs. Sasha Banks so important. This wasn’t just a great match but it was also a great moment. The wrestling, the emotion and the post match scene all wrapped this up into one of the greatest things I’ve seen as a wrestling fan. This was a moment for wrestling and had me losing my mind every single time, even though Bayley winning wasn’t exactly a shock.
So that brings up the big debate that never ends in wrestling: action vs. emotion. The triple threat was non-stop insanity with one big spot after another. The women’s match on the other hand was all about Bayley’s journey from the goofy fangirl to the serious competitor who was the best in the company. However, it didn’t have Brock Lesnar breaking stuff, including various people for twenty minutes.
I keep going back and forth on this but the more I think about that sequence with Sasha getting Bayley in the Bank Statement and stomping on her hand, only to have Bayley reverse it into a Bank Statement of her own, the more I have to go with the women. For my money, the hardest thing to do in wrestling is to convince fans that something they know is happening isn’t going to happen. Like I said, Bayley was the obvious winner but they managed to convince me that it wasn’t going to happen for that split second.
The thing is though the match kept going and had one heck of a finishing sequence with Bayley hitting a great looking reverse hurricanrana to knock Banks senseless. That’s where the match got even better for me: Bayley had Banks beaten before the Bayley to Belly, which really just put her out of her misery. In other words, Bayley looked like the decisive winner instead of someone who happened to win. It felt like an actual changing of the guard and a moment, which is what it was supposed to be. Couple that with the Four Horsewomen post match stuff and this beats anything else in the year in a big milestone.
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We’ll start up north with Takeover: Brooklyn which had one of the best one-two main events I’ve ever seen, though Bayley vs. Sasha still should have gone on last. The crowd helped this one a lot as everyone was losing their minds over what they were seeing. It’s a great show and the real main event is probably the match of the year.
There’s also Wrestle Kingdom IX which was the usual stacked New Japan card with one great match after another. The problem here though, as usual, is how long the show is. I really liked the action but they could have cut at least half an hour off. The show was shorter than usual but it still felt long, which isn’t a good thing. This is way up there for the action alone.
Speaking of action we have Ultima Lucha, which combined to go three hours and had some great culminations to some awesome feuds and stories. Believe it or not it was probably the Vampiro match that stole the show with the old retired Vampiro going full on insane one last time before revealing that he had been Pentagon’s master the whole time. The rest of the card is (mostly) awesome and it was a great cap to one of the biggest surprises I’ve ever seen with Lucha Underground.
Now we have one of the usual suspects in Wrestlemania. You can’t have a discussion of major shows without looking at the biggest show of the year and Wrestlemania was a shocking surprise. The thing is, people said that it probably wouldn’t hold up as well on a second viewing and that wound up being the case as the redo dropped a little bit. The thing with Wrestlemania XXXI was how low people’s expectations were coming in. Most people, including myself, thought the show looked like a disaster on paper but it wound up being a really strong outing.
Finally though, there’s Takeover: London. I think the subtitle I used for this show sums it up better than anything else: what a great night of wrestling matches. The worst match on the card was totally fine (Crews vs. Corbin) and the next worse match received a strong B. NXT is the it promotion for a strong card with well built stories that pay off in the end and London might have been the strongest. Anytime you get a Sting vs. Vader story like they had in Bayley vs. Jax, you know you’re in for a good night. This was my favorite big show of the year and I’m almost certain it’s going to have the required staying power.
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This might be the trickiest of all as you could say Sting is a rookie as he had his first WWE match in 2015. Since that could make things really complicated though, we’ll go with people I consider rookies, meaning I might not consider some of your choices.
We’ll start with someone outside WWE because I’m a WWE mark or something. ROH’s Dalton Castle had debuted a few years earlier but changed his gimmick and debuted in the Top Prospect Tournament in the early part of the year. This turned into a great run for him as he became one of the more entertaining guys on the roster with a surprisingly strong offense and a great character. He’s one of the people I enjoy most when watching ROH and his charisma alone will take him a long way.
Asuka is really kind of cheating as she’s been wrestling for over ten years. However, she debuted in NXT and was instantly the second (at worst) woman on the roster. It’s pretty clear Asuka vs. Bayley is coming at Takeover in Dallas and it should be one of the most awesome matches they’ve had…..well since the last time Bayley had a big showdown match. This is a stretch but she’s a rookie in WWE at least and that’s close enough.
Speaking of rookie women in NXT, we have Nia Jax, who actually did debut in 2015. I know her character is limited and I still don’t get why she and Eva Marie are teaming, but she played a perfect Vader to Bayley’s Sting, which is really impressive given that she was debuting six months prior to that. I don’t know how far she can go, but Nia is a great monster with a great look.
However, we finally have the runaway winner in Chad Gable. This is a guy who just gets it and was ready for the main roster about ten seconds after he debuted. Gable is the closest thing to another version of Kurt Angle as he went from the Olympics to the WWE where he’s a comedic goon who was capable of out wrestling anyone. This guy could be something very special in the future and he’s just fun to watch, especially when he’s with Jason Jordan.
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This is another one that doesn’t have a lot of options this year but the top choices are good.
As usual, we’ll knock out the honorable mentions first.
Brock vs. Undertaker had two good to awesome matches with a Match of the Year candidate inside the Cell. My big problem with this one is how it started up again. The Undertaker coming out and costing Brock the title didn’t work for me as it took him a year and a half to come back and go after Brock with the World Champion getting sacrificed to set it up. That and the messy ending to their Summerslam match. It was such a disaster.
That’s about it for the honorable mentions actually. Like I said, it’s not the best year.
One of the two big ones is of course Kevin Owens vs. John Cena with the whole battle of different roads to get to the top level. This one was carried by the promos but Owens winning made the whole thing a huge success. I know a lot of people say that Owens losing the last two matches killed it, but Owens would win the Intercontinental Title later in the year and could easily be a main event player by the time Summerslam rolls around. How much of that do you think is due to the first win over Cena?
The other option is Sasha Banks vs. Bayley, which just worked on every level. You had the perfect good vs. bad style with two awesome matches (I still swoon over that Bank Statement reversal) and it main evented a Takeover. That alone is remarkable and the fact that they brought Izzy into it and MADE HER CRY was one of the best heel moves I’ve seen in years.
Picking a winner here is splitting hairs, but I have to go with Owens vs. Cena, just due to the shock of that first win. Bayley winning was an amazing moment but it was also obvious from the second she got the title shot. The surprise of Owens pinning Cena in a great match on pay per view was such a stunning moment and is enough to pull this forward.
That being said, it’s rather sad that there are so few feuds these days. Everything is about setting up a rubber match or for a title. It’s so rare to see a good personal feud but when they work, they’re as entertaining as anything wrestling can produce. Now why can’t WWE produce more of them?
Remember to follow me on Twitter @kbreviews and pick up my new book of the Complete Monday Nitro Reviews Volume IV at Amazon for just $3.99 at: