Every time a door closes, someone kicks in a window. When a leaf falls from the tree, a seed goes in the bush. The back door is an acceptable option to some but not to others…I dunno, we’re just wrestling fans and what I’m trying to say is – last year’s done, this one’s started (JAKE! JAKE! YES!) and so here’s a belated list about the shit we’re into, starting with ME, your ever-lovin’ editor.
Michael James Hall:
WWE Superstar Of The Year – Daniel Bryan
WWE Diva Of The Year – N/A
WWE Tag Team Of The Year – Prime Time Players.
I bloody love Prime Time Players.
Match Of The Year – Daniel Bryan/Orton, Raw, December – didn’t see that one coming, did ya? PPV OF The Year – Wrestlemania. Because I finally got to go after 25 years of yearning.
Moment Of The Year – Ziggler’s music hits the night after Mania. I jump up on my cheap seat, grab my girlfriend (at her first Raw) by the ribs and, apparently, scream “IF THIS HAPPENS EVERYTHING ELSE WILL BE ALRIGHT”
Promo Of The Year – That Mark Henry one. Best thing he’s done in a decade.
Worst Superstar – Khali/Miz/Santino etc etc Worst Diva – N/A Worst Match – Anything involving Santino, Khali or The Miz Worst PPV – Battelground. I mean…c’mon.
Hopes/Tips – The former – Orton keeps the belt for nearly as long as Punk, using Flair-like means to retain. This leads to Punk desperately trying to unseat the evil champ before he breaks his record. Daniel Wyatt vs Taker at Mania. Batista’s visit to be brief/cancelled. Flair back full-time as a manager – preferably involved with Ziggler. Punk gets his edge back. The latter – Cena stays top guy, PROGRESS becomes number 2 company in the world. Simple really.
FROM THE ESTEEMED DEXY K:
“*WWE Superstar Of The Year – From January to April CM Punk was the absolute king. Destroying The Rock in some of the greatest promos of recent times, making the WWE title mean more than it had meant in years before inexplicably dropping the belt to him (shut up, I’m right and you are not entitled to your opinion). His feud with Undertaker involved not only some of the most brilliantly tasteless promos in memory but also their match was the highlight of Wrestlemania 30 by a huge margin. Then in the summer he came back as a face, somewhat neutered and ‘nice’ and once again we lost the greatest heel since Ric Flair. Plus his new hairdo makes him look like he’s one of the McPoyle brothers from It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia. So I’ll just do what I assume everyone else has done and say ‘Daniel Bryan!!!1!11!!’
*WWE Diva Of The Year – AJ Lee. The Divas division is much stronger than it’s been in a long while but there is still an unnecessarily high number of Divas who seem to be there more for their chest measurements than their wrestling ability. I don’t think even teenage boys devoting real time to ‘getting to know themselves’ would disagree with this. AJ has great wrestling psychology, really sells a story and has one of the best finishers in the WWE today in the Black Widow. Plus she’s clearly mad as a bag of hamsters.
*WWE Tag Team Of The Year – 2013 was a much improved year for the tag team division, with Cody Rhodes & Goldust teaming up as The Brotherhood, Swagger & Cesaro becoming the wonderfully offensive Real Americans and The Usos finally getting some proper TV time (no, not Total Divas). However the team of the year has to be The Shield. Since they arrived in November 2012 they have never been anything but completely compelling and all three members have the potential to be main eventers. Plus they have Dean Ambrose. Which is the main thing.
*Match Of The Year – I couldn’t settle on just one for this so I’ve gone with Punk/Taker from Wrestlemania and Sami Zayn vs Antonio Cesaro in a ‘best out of three falls match’ from NXT in August. Punk/Taker was an incredible spectacle, the crowd was split 50/50 (incredibly rare for Taker at Mania) and the whole thing was emotionally exhausting in the way only great wrestling matches can be. Zayn/Cesaro on the other hand was simply a technical masterpiece of a match. It was quick moving without either guy spunking their best moves for the sake of a good pop and Cesaro showing yet again that his mixture of technical ability and pure strength should really see him much higher on a WWE pay-per-view card very soon.
*PPV Of The Year – Money In The Bank. The card was not without it’s flaws but both ladder matches were phenomenal – it’s rare that an ‘all heels’ bout works but holy hell did the WHC title shot ladder match ever deliver. There was barely a guy involved who didn’t come out of that match stronger (except maybe Fandango. Poor Fandango). The ‘all stars’ main event ladder match was also an absolute belter, despite the presence of the increasingly bored looking Christian. Punk’s face turn was still in the works so his interactions with Heyman were beautiful (please put them back together) and the winner set up a heel turn we’d all been waiting for. If you’ve not seen this PPV, get it watched.
*Best Moment Of The Year – Easy. Dolph Ziggler cashing in his title shot and winning the World Heavyweight title on Raw the night after Wrestlemania. Just watch this clip (I was there and still get goosebumps watching it) – Del Rio was the babyface, Ziggler the heel. The crowd response tells you whose side we were on. I’ve not heard a crowd pop like that for a heel since Punk in Chicago at MitB ’11. A truly amazing, lump-in-the-throat moment. WWE management decided for some reason however that Dolph wasn’t ‘money’ and his time at the top lasted all of a few weeks. He’s now back jobbing on Superstars or on the pre-shows. But for now let’s just watch this moment again and enjoy seeing a guy with incredible talent who has busted his butt for years get his reward –
*Promo Of The Year – Again, an easy one. Mark Henry’s retirement speech. Starts at 04:57 of this clip – a middle finger to anyone who thinks wrestlers are weak actors:
*Worst Superstar Of The Year – Most people will probably vote for The Miz, which is understandable what with him being shit. But my vote goes to Ryback – a lumbering, boring injury-generator of a man with minimal wrestling ability and the mic skills of a biscuit. He’s had main event opportunity after main event opportunity both as face and heel and has bored us all senseless each time. He has this week given Dolph Ziggler a concussion in their match. He needs to fuck off, and swiftly.
*Worst Diva Of The Year – Eva Marie. Someone who can barely even carry out the most basic of wrestling moves, like bumping or doing a clothesline or not looking like they’d rather this wasn’t their career, shouldn’t be anywhere near a backyard wrestling event let alone working for the biggest wrestling company on the planet. Again, fuck off and don’t even dream of fucking back on again.
*Worst Match Of The Year – John Cena vs Randy Orton WWE Title/WHC Title Unification match at TLC in December. A pretty important match, as you can probably guess. So you’d think both guys would make sure they were at the top of their game for such an event, right? Wrong. Botch after botch after botch after botch ending with what was supposed to be Orton throwing Cena through a table before collecting the belts. Both men misjudged and instead Cena didn’t so much ‘go through the table’ as ‘land slightly short and take the table bump with his fucking neck’. How he isn’t in hospital after that is probably due to botching getting into the ambulance. Both men should be utterly ashamed of this match. *Worst PPV Of The Year – Battleground. Essentially just a sub-standard house show with video cameras. You know an event is going to be bad when Great Khali and Santino are both on the bill but even then you don’t expect it to be THIS bad. I’m not even sure glandular fever was THIS bad. The main event ended when Big Show waddled along and pissed off both wrestlers. CM Punk beat Ryback by hitting him in the balls. I think I was actually a happier, more well-adjusted human being before I watched this. So thanks.
*Hopes/Tips For 2014 – That Battleground doesn’t return. That the main event of Wrestlemania doesn’t involve Batista getting a title shot. That CM Punk cuts his hair, gets back with Paul Heyman and starts being a total bastard to everyone again. That Dolph Ziggler gets another shot at the upper card. That the Wyatts intro doesn’t always have to include that blowing out the candle bit (it was good the first time but I’m a busy guy, do a single edit or something). That Corey Graves gets called up to the main roster. That we find out Los Matadores was all just an annoying and dated dream. That people doing the “Let’s go Cena” chants realise they are really setting themselves up and come up with a more wordsy song. That Mark ‘Sexual Chocolate’ Henry and Randy ‘Apex Predator’ Orton form a new tag team, The Sexual Predators (thanks Michael). That I can keep getting away with talking about how great Dean Ambrose is even when it’s unrelated to the article. That people that mock wrestling for being ‘fake’ find out that the films and TV shows they watch aren’t all documentaries. And probably some more stuff as I am greedy.”
AND FROM THE MIGHTY ADAM FISHER:
WWE Superstar Of The Year THE SHIELD – Yeah, I know they’re a stable and not a ‘superstar’ but I don’t care. Seeing as they only debuted a little over a year ago they’ve made a huge impact and, in the process, added some needed credibility to the otherwise neglected tag and US championship belts. I’d love to say something witty here but I can’t. Everything they do is so deliberate, no wasted movement whatsoever. The only thing that didn’t disappoint me at least once this year.
WWE Diva Of The Year AJ LEE – The only Diva, other than Kaitlyn & Natalya that seems to know what she’s doing. AJ wins out for her anti Total Divas promo and for having an arse that looks like it was sculpted out of caramac by Michelangelo.
WWE Tag Team Of The Year Wyatt Family – Because I’ve already said The Shield. Although not technically the best in ring, I don’t think they have to be. They’ve got the psychology down, genuinely creepy and Bray cuts some of the finest promos since Roddy Piper & Jake The Snake in my opinion.
Match Of The Year CM Punk vs Brock Lesnar – It’s always an event whenever the Polish Incredible Hulk wrestles, like it or not. He’s the only person WWE has who is a believable monster and even threw in some wrestling in this match which, if you saw his previous matches with HHH, it seems like he forgot how to do. PPV Of The Year Summerslam Best Moment Of The Year Goldust’s return. Criminally underrated Promo Of The Year Each and every Bray Wyatt one AND the part in Bryan / Cena face off when he’s discussing the Japanese ritual of slapping each other before a match to get riled up and says, “but I’m not going to do that because you don’t deserve it and you’re not a wrestler.” It was such a well done segment that at times I genuinely thought, “ooooh, that pissed him off!” then I remembered I’m 23. Worst
Superstar Of The Year The Miz – Did you see him lock that Figure 3 & a half on Dolph Ziggler. No? Go watch it on youtube and listen for that dull thudding sound. That’s Buddy Rogers spinning in his grave at 100000 RPM.
Worst Diva Of The Year Eva Marie – Has no discernable interest in wrestling and does it show. I am fond of red heads, though, so I throw her a compliment – She’s like a Mars Bar; delicious but untalented. Worst Match Of The Year The Miz vs Great Khali – I have no idea if this match even happened. However it would be shitter than Crohn’s disease. Worst PPV Of The Year Battleground – Shoddy matches, shoddy storylines just totally shoddy and, let me tell you, NOTHING screams ‘Battleground’ more than a pink ring rope.
Hopes/Tips For 2014 Dolph Ziggler gets a push again and The Miz gives up on this wrestling lark. ‘It’s Still Real To Me’ will be back on the pages of GIITV more regularly this year – keep an eye out for our fanboy bullshit.
