What a group of nominees to pick from.

Now this one almost completely depends on your definition of bad. There are some people who don’t belong in a ring no matter what they do and there are some people who just don’t ever change and serve very little purpose other than being a warm body. At the same time, there are people who I just don’t like who will be on here as well. It’ll be a mix of all three as this is really hard to define.

Before we get into this, I’m going to leave Shane McMahon off because I consider him to be someone who wrestles on occasion rather than a wrestler.

We’ll start with Tamina, who has been around forever and yet still has almost no reason to be there. Considering she debuted at the same time as the Usos, you really would expect her to have gotten at least somewhat better now. Her Superfly Splash isn’t terrible but there’s a gaping hole of charisma whenever she’s in the ring and I often forget she’s out there.

Sticking with the women there’s Lana, who is managing to set new standards for bad wrestling. At the end of the day though, I really can’t blame her for this one. She’s been wrestling less than two years now and hasn’t even had 75 matches yet with her first singles match coming about thirteen months ago. I have no idea what WWE was expecting when they threw her in the ring other than hoping people would swoon over her in the outfits (fair enough) but it’s not fair to put her out there like that. Just let her be a full time manager or go train for a LONG time before getting back in the ring because this isn’t fair.

I wouldn’t feel right without including the Young Bucks in here. Yes they’re athletic freaks and can be entertaining a lot of the time, but the superkick parties and almost never selling enough and the lack of any form of psychology to most of their matches puts them near the top. Though they did block me on Twitter so I must be doing something right.

A name that you’ll probably see on a lot of these lists is Jinder Mahal and while I couldn’t stand him for most of the year, there’s a huge difference between someone who is boring, repetitive and in way over his head than someone who is worthless. There’s value in Mahal, but he was being put in a spot he wasn’t ready for. Those are two different things and I’m not going to fault Mahal for the bad booking. I’ll fault him for being a boring promo and a repetitive wrestler though, which is quite bad on its own at such a high level.

Now someone on the other end of the spectrum is Dolph Ziggler, who is more than capable of having a good match but hasn’t changed his style in what feels like years. His meta stuff with the entrances isn’t doing anything for me and I really could go with him being away for a very long time, hopefully to recharge his batteries and change things up a bit as his style got old a long, long time ago.

That brings us to the winner and, in what shouldn’t be a surprise, I’m going with Enzo Amore. I’ve made no secret of the fact that I can’t stand him more than once for a variety of reasons, including he doesn’t change anything. It’s been the same “how you doin” promo and never shutting up, while almost never actually wrestling. When he does it’s not any good and we’re stuck with Enzo as champion while 205 Live dies because he gets so much attention. It’s a bad way to run things and the division has died even more with him on top. Get him out of here already so the division can actually have a chance.

This is a big one.

Well yeah, of course it’s a big one, because the actual wrestling is a big part of the wrestling business. One of the most common debates is what was the best match and that’s what we’re looking at here. Some of these might not be your cup of milk (tea was never my cup of tea) but there’s some outstanding stuff to pick from this year.

Note that there’s a chance I left a nominee off because I just didn’t see it, which is going to be the case with some New Japan matches.

We’ll start at the beginning of the year with a match that is certainly going to be discussed somewhere in here with Kenny Omega vs. Kazuchika Okada from Wrestle Kingdom XI. This was the very early clubhouse leader and the subject of some of the most discussion of the ridiculous star rating from Meltzer. The match itself is very good, though it could have been shortened a bit as it does drag. Still though, it’s more than worthy of a mention.

Another noteworthy match is WarGames from Takeover: WarGames. I know a lot of fans were worried about this one and while the match wasn’t what WCW used to put on, it was still as brutal and violent of a match as WWE was going to offer these days. It was a lot of fun with everyone beating the heck out of each other, including some brutal spots and even some blood. I had a blast with it and it was an incredible spectacle.

At the same show is a match that I underrated pretty badly, despite saying it was quite good. Velveteen Dream shocked the heck out of a lot of people by having an awesome match with Aleister Black after an even better build up. The story was really entertaining and seeing Black kick Dream’s head off and then FINALLY give Dream what he wanted by saying his name was the best thing that could have happened. Both guys looked awesome and Dream got a huge elevation. What more can you ask for?

Well how about a big gimmick match? That was the case in the blowoff for the Usos and the New Day inside the Cell. These guys beat the heck out of each other and it was quite the spectacle. This was the match that made the Usos the undisputed top team in WWE in a move a long time in the making. It’s very cool to see them get a major match like this and they stole the show in the process.

Speaking of four men in a match, we have the main event from Summerslam with Brock Lesnar vs. Braun Strowman vs. Roman Reigns vs. Samoa Joe. There’s no other way to put this: these guys beat the heck out of each other and showed why they come off like bigger stars than almost anyone else in the process at the same time. This was about hitting each other really, really hard until only one person was left standing and it was exactly what people wanted to see.

Next up we have the other clubhouse leader from January with AJ Styles vs. John Cena. I watched this back a few weeks ago and not only does it hold up, but it has some outstanding drama and a huge moment with Cena tying Flair’s record. It’s great stuff, but there’s other stuff that surpassed it later in the year.

That leaves us with the winner and it was the year of the British. Tyler Bate and Pete Dunne had one of the best trilogies in WWE history (easily) and their second match was the best of them all. Taking place at Takeover: Chicago, the match with Dunne taking the title from Bate was one of the most exciting matches I’ve seen in years with the two young guys leaving everything in the ring with an absolutely crazy Chicago crowd. It was the match of the year and nothing else was really in its world for me.

It’s the Rated RK-No Special.

This is one of the awards that often shows you how bad things can get. There’s a fine line between a match that isn’t very good and one of the worst of the year. That’s the case this time around as well, meaning I won’t be including matches that aren’t very good because I’m looking for something far worse than that. These are the worst of the worst for one reason or another.

Before we get into the regular nominees, I’m intentionally leaving out Goldberg vs. Kevin Owens from Fastlane. It was 20 seconds long and it’s kind of hard to make a match really be that bad in so short a time. The match was stupid booking instead of a bad match, which are two very different things.

We’ll start with the ladies as Alexa Bliss and Bayley which had one of the most career destroying fallouts that you’ll ever see. Bayley still hasn’t recovered from this and there’s a good chance that she never will. The whole story was about Bayley channeling her inner extreme and then she just got the heck beaten out of her in the actual match. Terrible idea and a really bad match, which is quite the horrible concept.

Next up is House of Horrors from Payback, which wasn’t even the worse Orton vs. Bray Wyatt match of the year. This was basically a segment in a house (which wasn’t horrory), an hour off, and then a brawl in the ring with interference giving Bray the win. Wyatt gets nothing out of winning because it’s non-title and then the Brand Split screwed everything up anyway. Easily a horrible match, but it would get worse for these two.

Let’s spread the venom a little more with the men’s Survivor Series match. I don’t remember the last time I saw a match and wondered what the heck they were thinking more than this. It was COMPLETELY overbooked, the big stars they brought in didn’t mean much, and it wound up being about HHH vs. Kurt Angle. Oh and that whole Braun Strowman attacks HHH thing? Still waiting on a followup. This was a straight up disaster and one of the biggest missed opportunities in a long time.

It’s time to get to Battleground and one of its two horrible matches of the night. First up is the flag match between John Cena and Rusev, which was as much pandering to the show’s name as I had seen on anything other than the Royal Rumble. This was long, it was never in doubt, and it was flat out terrible, along with having a rather heavy handed set up in the first place. Cena is better than this, but he seems to have forgotten how to do so.

And now, in a rarity, I present you with a tie for the worst match of the year. In no particular order, we have Randy Orton vs. Bray Wyatt at Wrestlemania XXXIII and Randy Orton vs. Jinder Mahal in the Punjabi Prison match at Battleground. Both of these are horrible for reasons that I can’t quite differentiate, meaning I can’t put one beneath the other.

We’ll start at Wrestlemania, which not only felt like a nothing title change but also featured Bray’s main event run (which was long overdue in the first place) having its legs cut out from under him (and he’s showing no signs of recovering), title reign for Orton that is as transitional as you can get, and A BUNCH OF FREAKING BUGS BEING DISPLAYED ON THE MAT FOR NO APPARENT REASON! I get the idea of Wyatt trying to get in Orton’s head, but it didn’t even work. Orton just shrugged it off, hit the RKO, and won the title. What was the point of this?

Speaking of that, what in the world was the point in having the Punjabi Prison match go that long? It felt like they could have chopped a good fifteen minutes (it was less than thirty altogether) from the thing and told the same story: Orton dominates, the Singh Brothers interfere, Mahal gets beaten up some more, the Brothers interfere, Great Khali makes a one off appearance and Mahal retains. It was long, it was terrible, and Mahal retained the title.

But was it as bad as Orton vs. Wyatt in Orlando? Well…

I don’t know, because I’m not thinking about these things again and you shouldn’t either. Go watch some old Divas matches which were at least so bad they were funny. These were so bad that they belong in a woodchipper somewhere. The bad stuff was REALLY bad this year and I can’t imagine things actually being worse this year.

You have to restock the shelves somehow.

Over time, wrestling fans are going to get bored with the current crop of talent. Seeing them every single week is going to cause you to stop caring about them at some point, which means that enough is enough and it’s time for a change (thanks Owen). Therefore, today we’re looking at the best rookies and newcomers of the year.

Just to clarify, this isn’t someone we haven’t seen before but rather someone who made their debut on a new roster. You can barely ever find a true rookie and it would give you quite a shallow talent pool to pick from.

We’ll start in developmental with one of the latest names to become a big deal off of Tough Enough. Patrick Clark is now named the Velveteen Dream and while that sounds like a stupid name and gimmick on paper, Dream has turned it into one of the most entertaining things around NXT. On top of that he had one of the best matches of the year against Aleister Black and there’s a very high place on this list for him.

If there’s one thing WWE knows how to do, it’s book the heck out of a monster. That’s what they have with Lars Sullivan and he’s one of the best I’ve seen in years about running through people with reckless abandon. Just don’t let him talk and he could be one of the best monsters NXT has had since Bray Wyatt.

We’ll stick with NXT (shocking I know) and look at Aleister Black. While he might not talk very much, Black lets his fighting do the talking, including that awesome Black Mass kick. Couple that with his amazing presentation and the sweet entrance and there’s no way Black won’t look awesome. He can kick your head off and look awesome doing it. If he’s not NXT Champion by the end of the year, I’ll be rather surprised.

This was actually a really hard pick and it took me a long time to make up my mind between this one and the winner. Pete Dunne is one of the best young stars I’ve seen in a very long time. He has an incredible look and has some great matches to go with it, all in his early 20s. My only criticism of him is we don’t see enough of him, which is the case with almost all of the British guys. He’s outstanding and there are a lot of people I’d love to see him against on the NXT roster. Give us more.

You really can’t say Dunne without going with Tyler Bate as well. Those two have beaten the heck out of each other in three straight up classics (even Jim Cornette loved them) and you can’t have a great match without a great opponent. Bate is just 20 years old and that alone makes him an amazing newcomer.

As great as all of those people have been, the big one for me is still Samoa Joe. Not only did he debut and start a pretty dominant feud against Seth Rollins, but he moved on to become a big time Roman Reigns antagonist, plus there was that whole main eventing a pay per view against Brock Lesnar and then being in the main event of Summerslam. Joe should have been in WWE about ten years ago but better late than never, especially when you have such a high level of awesome.

Now this one isn’t that hard. And no it’s not the Young Bucks. This is for good teams, though they did block me on Twitter so maybe I should….never mind.

What’s better than a great wrestler? Well not much, but something that’s also good is having a bunch of wrestlers who come together and do well as a unit. That’s the basic idea behind a stable and since there aren’t enough of them to get their own category, we’ll throw them together with tag teams, as usual.

Before we get started, I’m intentionally leaving off LIJ and Bullet Club. I know they’re both big deals but I just don’t watch enough New Japan to give a good opinion on them.

We’ll start with a team that I never liked who have turned into a pretty solid combination. Back in late 2016, the Bar was put together and for the life of me I did not get why. I understood the point in putting them into a team but EGADS the build to get there was terrible. It turned out that they worked quite well together as two big Europeans who hit other people really hard is a heck of a combination. Who would have guessed?

Down to NXT for a bit with the Undisputed Era. While the name is still bad (like the Bar), they’ve taken charge of NXT and have already won some gold there, which is a lot more important down there instead of how it would be on the main roster. The team hit the ground running and there’s a good reason to believe they’ll keep right on going. You can almost pencil in Adam Cole as winning the NXT Title in 2018 that’s really not a bad thing.

As much as I can’t stand their leader more often than not, the same could be said of Sanity. Killian Dain is a heck of a monster and I can watch Nikki Cross doing her crazy thing for days. The team also had some success and teased getting closer to the main event scene without actually getting there. This is pretty much the perfect fit for everyone involved and that’s a very good sign for all of them, along with being a great stable at the same time.

One more in NXT, even though they split up pretty early in the year. DIY is one of the better in-ring teams NXT has ever had (and that’s covering some serious ground. They came into the year as Tag Team Champions and then had some great matches over the next few months. Throw in one of the best heel splits in many, many years (if not ever, actually) and there’s no way they weren’t at least getting a mention.

Even though they didn’t have the best year, you have to include New Day, if nothing else just for how long they’ve managed to survive. They should have been a nothing little act that died out in a few months and we’re now on what? Their fourth year? They did host Wrestlemania this year and won some tag titles so there has to be something going on there. There’s always the fun bit of just seeing what they’re going to do to stay relevant, which they somehow keep managing to pull off. Now just get Kofi in the main event.

And that leaves one of the easiest picks of the year. I’ve been a big fan of the Usos since they debuted and MY GOODNESS they’ve turned it up lately. This Uso Penitentiary is getting to be one of the best things on WWE at the moment and they’ve dominated the tag division on Smackdown for months now. The only thing missing for them was leading the Smackdown Siege (they were MADE for that) and that’s quite the resume for the year. The Usos win and it’s really not close.

I’m not even bothering to make the Kurt joke this year.

This is one of the biggest awards of the year because angles are what matters more than almost anything else. You can have a heck of a match but it doesn’t mean very much without a reason to care about these people. There were some great ones over the course of the year and you might have forgotten a few of them so here we are again.

We’ll start with the build to one of the biggest matches of the year. A three way feud is one of the hardest things to pull off in wrestling but NXT managed to do it (I’m as shocked as you are). This time around they set up Sanity vs. the Undisputed Era vs. Roderick Strong/Authors of Pain in FREAKING WARGAMES. That’s more than enough to make this a big deal and it was awesome as a bonus.

From the same show, we have a match that I completely underrated when it aired in the first place. In the build towards Takeover: WarGames, Velveteen Dream may have wanted to sleep with Aleister Black (it’s not clear) but the whole idea came down to Black not saying Dream’s name. The match wound up being awesome and we even got a payoff with Black saying his name after kicking Dream’s head off. Great build, great match, great payoff.

I know it was short term but Chris Jericho vs. Kenny Omega had a heck of a build to a match that wasn’t taking place in 2017. This felt like an old school blood feud between two guys who just don’t like each other. Jericho kept attacking Omega and now I want to see them fight. I mean, I’ve seen it by now but at least the build was awesome in a way you don’t get very much anymore.

If you’ve read my stuff over the last few years, you know I’m a big fan of Sami Zayn and Kevin Owens. That alone should tell you I was excited to see them getting a bigger push, which is exactly what we got when Sami saved Kevin from Shane McMahon’s latest Cell dive. This set them up as some awesome heels over on Smackdown and I’m interested to see where this goes from here, which is the best thing that can happen.

This is less of an angle and more of just the build to a match but John Cena vs. Roman Reigns became must see television for a good while there. It was in the same vein as Rock vs. Cena from years back with two guys trading bombs against each other, albeit with only one actually managing to make that much contact. Cena mauled Reigns on the mic and the win did help Reigns, but my goodness this was one sided up until the bell rang. Incredibly entertaining, but destruction otherwise.

That leaves us with one more option and it’s gone throughout the entire year. Johnny Gargano started the year as one half of the NXT Tag Team Champions but the Authors of Pain took care of that back in January. Then Gargano and Tommaso Ciampa lost the rematch at Takeover: Chicago, which resulted in the team splitting. It was all downhill for Gargano from there, even to the point of him losing matches just because he saw a DIY t-shirt. He kept fighting though and eventually won a #1 contenders competition to end the year. It was a year long story and it never once got boring, which made it the 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.

I bet you didn’t see this one coming.

As you might have guessed, I’ve watched quite a bit of wrestling in my day. Over the years, you eventually get a pretty good idea of what to expect from a lot of wrestling shows. I mean, there’s only so much that can be done to surprise you when you’ve been around for a long time, which is what makes this such a hard category to pull off. There were actually a lot of options though and that’s always a lot of fun.

In no order, as usual.

We’ll start with one of the options that is going to get the most attention and for good reason: Tommaso Ciampa turns on Johnny Gargano. This one worked far better than I would have expected and I’d be shocked if their match doesn’t headline at least one Takeover in the coming year. My only issue is they kind of telegraphed it by having the match go on last and leaving the camera on the team for so long. It felt like they were teasing the going away segment but it went the other way. In other words it felt like they were going somewhere, which takes away a bit of the impact.

Given that this is being written as Wrestle Kingdom is taking place, it seems appropriate to put in Chris Jericho appearing in New Japan to challenge Kenny Omega. I know it might not be the best in-ring match but my goodness people: it’s CHRIS JERICHO in New Japan. There were rumors of a surprise at the show but I thought it was going to be a full show in America over Wrestlemania weekend or something. This was a heck of a deal and my eyebrows went up when I saw the announcement.

Everybody needs a Clarence P. Oddbody ASC (Look it up you heathens.) and Kevin Owens got one in the form of Sami Zayn. While Shane McMahon was on top of the Cell (again) for an elbow drop that missed (again), Zayn came out and saved his longtime rival and sometimes best friend in a heck of a heel turn. It might not have been the biggest surprise, but I’m not sure how many people actually thought they would go this way. It was quite the success though and that’s what matters most.

In another moment where I was actually in the house, we have the Hardys return. Now, I really don’t know how much doubt there was that the Hardys would wind up back in the company someday and that’s normal. Almost everyone winds up back in WWE at some point and the Hardys were on fire. The thing is, even with all that, as soon as New Day came out and said there was another team, I stood up and said out loud “They wouldn’t. There’s no way.” Then I couldn’t hear myself anymore because the fans were going so cookaloo. This was a great moment and I could easily see this getting the vote.

Back in May, Jinder Mahal won the WWE World Title. It was shocking, it was something people never saw coming, and it was Jinder Mahal winning the WWE World Title. This deserves no awards so we’ll move on to the winner.

Like I said, it takes a lot to surprise me. There’s very little that hasn’t been done in wrestling but in this case, WWE actually pulled it off. Back in February, Chris Jericho promised to show his best friend Kevin Owens what he really meant to him. Jericho set up the most over the top display of friendship in wrestling history, though it didn’t quite go as well as he had hoped. At the end, Owens, looking a bit annoyed, said he had a present for Jericho. Chris opened the box and found a new list! With his name on it! Jericho dropped the box and the back of the list said “The List Of KO”. A huge beatdown ensued and the team was done.

They got me with this one and that’s quite the feat. Jericho sold the heck out of the thing and it was the absolute perfect way to split the team up. The List of Jericho had been one of the coolest ideas I had seen in a long time and tying the split all back into that concept was the perfect way to do this whole thing. It’s hard to get this right but I bought into it all the way so well done indeed.

Kind of a perfect way to get started no?

It’s that time of year again and this time around, I’m going to make sure to get these up in a much, much more realistic amount of time. Hopefully it’s going to be one a day for twenty one days but I’ll throw in a bonus this time around (which might be more often if I can remember to do them. There are a few new categories this year and we’re starting with one of those today.

Entrances really are one of the more important things in wrestling. Whether it’s Hulk Hogan firing the crowd up or Undertaker just being creepy and chilling, you need someone to come out looking awesome to really sell what’s going on. That’s what we’re looking at today, though in this case it’s going to be looking at individual entrances instead of general ones.

These are in no order.

First up is one I was there for in person for: Aleister Black rising from the shadows at Takeover: Orlando. Keep in mind that this was his debut and tell me how it could have been any cooler. The guy literally rises from the blackness and is instantly ready to go. You knew it was something cool and you knew it was something that was in the vein of the Undertaker, which is as awesome as it gets.

Next up is something a little more glorious with Bobby Roode at Takeover: San Antonio. This was straight out of the Ric Rude playbook as Roode made his full entrance but came out with eight good looking women because he’s just that big of a star. Roode was great at making himself look bigger than anyone else on the roster and that’s what this entrance did. You really could pick any of Roode’s entrances from the year and the song alone is more than enough to carry him as high as he needed to go.

Speaking of that song, we’ll move on to the person it was originally intended for. It was no secret that Shinsuke Nakamura was getting the call up to the main roster after Wrestlemania, but the question was where would he go from there. That question was answered on the April 4 Smackdown when he made his main roster debut by interrupting Miz and Maryse as John Cena and Nikki Bella. I mean, counting Maryse as Nikki (just….dang that look worked for her) and then cutting to the violinist to play Nakamura’s theme and this was completely awesome.

I’m going to break my own rule a bit here and pick a more general entrance (kind of). Sami Zayn turned heel earlier this year and that opened up a bunch of questions. Was he going to be able to pull off a heel character? Would the fans cheer him anyway? Where can I get one of those snappy hats? It turns out that he can rock the heel run and that was never more evident than his dancing around Kevin Owens during the entrances, looking like the biggest jerk of a heel in years. I’m digging the heel character and the dancing entrance is probably the top reason.

That leaves us with the winner, which is one I never would have guessed. I’m going with Naomi at Wrestlemania XXXIII just for the pure spectacle of it all. I’m not a big Naomi fan (and her winning the title still isn’t a big deal, just like her winning the title back in her hometown) but that entrance is something else. Putting it in a massive stadium in front of 75,000 people was one of the coolest experiences I’ve ever had at a wrestling show and it more than does the trick. I wasn’t expecting to pick this but the more I thought about it, the more blown away I really was.