One honorable mention: Sami Zayn vs. Antonio Cesaro from NXT.  It’s a 2/3 falls match and an outstanding fight.  Zayn is as good of an underdog character as you’ll find in wrestling today but Cesaro in Beast Mode is going to put down anyone he’s against.

Now to the nominees:

Rhodes Brothers vs. Shield – Battleground.  It’s the worst show of the year but this match brought out so much emotion for reasons we’ve already covered.  The main story here is the Brothers trying to get their jobs back after losing them to the Authority.  The match was all about the emotion and that’s better than action every single time.  Great match but it didn’t save the show.

CM Punk vs. John Cena – February 26 Raw.  This was the match for Cena’s Wrestlemania title shot and these guys tore the house down.  I called it the best TV match I’ve ever seen and I still  think it ranks right up there with anything I’ve ever seen.  The one thing that holds it back is the lack of drama at the end.  Everyone knew Cena was going to win, but the question was how.  That’s very good but not perfect.

Daniel Bryan Runs The Gauntlet – July 22 Raw.  If a match told a better story on TV this year, I didn’t see it.  Bryan had to face Jack Swagger, Antonio Cesaro and then Ryback in succession.  Swagger didn’t even last three minutes, but the Cesaro section is a war between two different styles.  After that it was Ryback where Bryan gave it his all but couldn’t overcome the power.  The key here though: Ryback lost via DQ, thereby giving us a logical conclusion that doesn’t damage anyone.  Outstanding stuff.

That brings us to the two real contenders.

Daniel Bryan vs. John Cena – Summerslam.  What else can I say about this match?  It was long, it was exciting, it had great action, it had an ending that came out of nowhere.  The one thing that holds it back: there was no way Cena was winning with that baseball growing out of his elbow.  Just like Cena vs. Punk, there was only one possible winner to this and that was Daniel Bryan.  Still though, excellent match.

The winner:

CM Punk vs. Brock Lesnar – Summerslam.  My goodness what a match this was.  In something I don’t say that often, I was completely wrong about this one.  I didn’t think Punk could be a realistic threat to Lesnar but he went move for move with the beast and had me wondering who was going to win the entire time.  It’s an amazing match with both guys beating the tar out of each other.  On top of that, it was more proof that HHH had no business hogging Lesnar for a year as Brock has had masterpieces with Punk and Cena but three only good matches with HHH.

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It’s Shield.  It just is.  Moving on to the other nominees.

FIrst team I want to talk about is Bad Influence.  These guys are what happens when you let entertaining guys be entertaining instead of trying to make wrestlers into comedians.  Every week these guys go out there and make me laugh which is something WWE very rarely does anymore.  Bad Influence is a good example of playing to wrestlers’ strengths and that’s the best thing that can be done a lot of the time.

Then we have the Rhodes Brothers.  If there’s been a better renaissance than the one Goldust is currently on, it’s been more years than I can remember.  These guys are going out there and stealing the show every night and I’m still not tired of them.  I’d also like to point out how important a story can be.  The Brothers got over with the audience not because of their in ring work (which has been very good) but because the fans can relate to their problems.  Cody just got married and lost his job and Goldust is out of work.  They’re given a chance to fight back and that’s exactly what they did.  A story like that connects with so many fans and that’s why it worked so well.  Do more of that, though it helps to have one of the best tag teams going today involved.

Finally, we have the Usos.  They’re a pretty distant fourth, but they deserve some recognition for how consistently good they are.  A lot of the time you just need a pair of interesting guys who can fly around the ring and pop a crowd.  Right now no one is as good at that as the Usos and I’m a big fan.

But yeah, if you didn’t know this was going to be Shield you haven’t paid enough attention.

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