Timbo Slice

I think with the way Dave is pushing NJPW that Okada winning has a much bigger chance than Bryan because by the time voting begins, Bryan's storyline won't be finished to the point where people will be "satisfied." There's plenty of Okada matches that are highly-regarded and he ruled the roost as soon as he took the belt from Tanahashi so well that his ascension to the new Ace of the promotion will outweigh the Bryan stuff, which is A) Much better and Still highly criticized because Bryan isn't a golden god at this point. Punk/Lesnar should win match of the year but the Okada title win will probably win. I'm also partial to Regal/Ohno. Bryan will run away with Most Outstanding Wrestler, but Cesaro SHOULD win it, as (and Dylan will point it out quicker than I) the enormity of his great stuff really does show up better even than the high points that Bryan has (the gauntlet, six man tags, Cena match). Go back and watch Cesaro in 2013 and he absolutely rules in almost every singles match he's in. In the end, it comes down to Bryan having the best of the high end stuff, but it being more peaks and high valleys whereas Cesaro is between those two points and is more consistent. Brock should win best Box Office Draw. $5 million contract or not, that guy sells PPVs. Shouldn't be questioned at this point. Feud of the Year will be interesting because if this Bryan stuff keeps going forward and turns into something by say, Survivor Series, it's fresh enough in people's minds that it will win. Punk/Heyman should get some votes, and the purists will throw Okada/Tanahashi up there again. The Shield should win Tag Team of the year. Most Improved...wow. Okada was an easy choice last year. This year, it's hard for me to figure one out. Maybe Big E.? Bray? Does AJ Lee count? I'd like to hear other people's opinions. Best on Interviews is easy for me with Bray, but I'm willing to hear others. The Shield had some good ones, Punk had a few good ones but wasn't nearly as great as he was the last two years. Most Charismatic for me would actually be Bryan. I can't think of anyone who made a better connection with the fanbase than Bryan this year, even with Rocky's match with Cena. Best Technical Wrestler, I like Bryan here but Cesaro has a HUGE case here, too. Kevin Steen seems to be a great brawler, but holy shit, has nobody seen Lesnar this year? Kota will most likely win Best Flying Wrestler, but Adrian Neville has been pretty fantastic this year. Most Overrated will be Triple H. Again. However, I'm totally down to see if someone will vote for Tanahashi. Cesaro will be the Most Underrated. Shouldn't be close. I think WWE has won back Promotion of the Year. Much tighter stories, an influx of new talent, a renewed look at the youth through NXT...NJPW will give it a run, but I think WWE should take it back here. NXT is the best weekly TV show by a country mile. Haven't seen enough of the rookies. Paul Heyman should be the best non-wrestler again. Best TV announcer for me is JBL or Regal, although Cole hasn't outright sucked this year. NXT announcer Tony Dawson is pretty terrible. He's still my reason for me thinking about trying out for NXT at some point. SummerSlam is the show of the year. Everyone will go G-1 Climax Day 4, but as I've said before, SummerSlam smokes it. Worst Major Show is probably TNA Lockdown. That AJ/Big E vs. Natalya/Khali tag where they missed the finish was probably the worst match I saw this year. Best Move this year shouldn't be the Rainmaker, I'll tell you that. I think Neville's Red Arrow (Corkscrew SSP) is still the best highspot in wrestling today. Always hits it cleanly. Someone else will come up with the disgusting promotional tactic, but it will probably be Punk playing off Paul Bearer's death. I think Impact has regained the title for worst weekly TV show. Worst Feud is whatever The Bella Twins were doing this year for Total Divas. TNA for worst promotion is a shoe in. Who was booking NXT? Naylor? Got to give it to them. Although I can see Vince as the winner for the trickle down effect. Gedo and Jado do book NJPW well, too. Does Vince take the title from Dana this year for best promoter? I saw this as a down year for UFC. Daniel Bryan should win for Best Gimmick. Either him or Bray Wyatt. Aces & Eights should have it locked up for Worst Gimmick again. Didn't read too many great books this year on the wrestling kick, although I've heard good things about the Montreal book. Best DVD for this year probably goes to the Crockett DVD from Highspots. Or Will's ECW set.

Sasaki/Tenryu from 1/4/2000 is underrated as all hell and makes the case for the start of Sasaki's sustained run as a good singles wrestler. Plus, it's Tenryu main eventing the Dome. Also from that show, Hash/Iizuka vs. Ogawa/Murakami. One of the most heated matches in Dome history, and that's saying something. Completely different match than probably any other match you'll get on that list. EDIT: Interpromotional greatness, but Nagata/Iizuka vs. Kawada/Fuchi 12/14/00 is fantastic, as is Kawada/Sasaki 10/9/00, obviously. Akiyama/Tenzan in the G-1 Final from '03 is great, too. If we're going non-interpromtional, then the Nagata/Takayama 5/2/2003 Dome match works, too.

It's...um...interesting? I always like that Triple H is candid and wants the business to thrive, and agree with him on why things had to change, but still...it seems like a lot of it is all ideas and little execution in some ways.

There should be two different types of selling in matches like Brock/Punk and Bryan/Cena. Wrestling doesn't have a baseline of selling that must be hit. It just depends if the selling works in the style or not. The way Brock and Punk sold in their match was great. The way Bryan and Cena sold in their match was great. But they sold in two different ways because they were two different types of matches. That being said, Bryan winning the belt and then having Brock come out to be his first challenger would be insane and get him over killer. He could redo the Morishima No Holds Barred match at Extreme Rules.

Bryan talked about how in Japan people would get slapped to help pump them up and told Cena that he wanted to slap him but didn't feel he was worthy enough because he was an entertainer and not a wrestler. EDIT: What Dylan said.

KENTA was definitely in the building tonight, as was Eddy. That was Bryan as Misawa loading up the running elbow for the first time to knock out Hansen. The Rock was the last guy to beat Cena truly clean. Not sure that Punk beat him clean during his title run.

I think this killed the much lauded Day 4 of the G1, which, anyone will tell you, is the best show they had during the tourney. If you take the top three matches of that card and put them side by side with the three top SummerSlam matches, SummerSlam comes out way ahead.

They treated this PPV like it was the second biggest show of the year.

If WWE doesn't put Bryan over HHH and Orton, they really don't know shit. The two "non-WWE" guys that got the most heat tonight were Bryan and Punk, so if they aren't gonna realize what they have, they're digging their own grave. And I understand it's logical booking at its finest, but if this doesn't end with Daniel Bryan winning the belt in the main event of WrestleMania 30, it doesn't mean shit long term. SummerSlam is the second biggest show of the year, and if you're gonna have a redemption angle, it needs for him to go 60 in the Rumble and pull out the Name Redacted run to win the belt.

Saw that coming a mile away.

How can Dolph be that athletic and not have any good baby face offense outside of a dropkick? I'll never understand that.

Working WWE MOTY at this point. There was some fucking King's Road shit with the Eddy Guerrero callbacks, and it was at least really smart work. Brock is the best big match worker in the world at this point.

Okay, Brock doing the UFC shuffle prematch is fantastic.

Divas match was alright. I can't wait for some of the NXT divas to get up. They could really make it something to watch.

Great match. Christian is smarter than most about selling and callback spots, so I was expecting good things here. Don't know where Del Rio goes from here, though.

Nice match. Surprised as all hell that Cody went over. He is picking up some steam here.

Problem with that match is that unless you buy in to the match type, you just won't be into the match. And that match is about as limiting a stip as there is. Prematch show was alright. Ambrose was a folly for all of RVDs offense and didn't really get to do much outside of his stooging early on. Which was awesome.

Hope you saw the Cesaro/Bo Dallas match, Dylan. Absolutely fantastic carry job from Cesaro. One of the matches that justifies a #1 ranking.

Funk, Steamboat, Savage. The more I watch the GAB '89 match, the more I might think it's Funk's best match ever and I'd put it right there with the Steamboat matches for Flair. Completely different styles, but Flair was an absolute machine in that feud with Funk. The Savage feud was incredible for its intensity and it was obvious that both Flair and Savage wanted to do something special. Might be the most personal WWF/E feud ever.

I would actually go with 1/20/97 because I think it is the peak of those two styles, with the 10/21 match being more on the downslope. I think the Gringos Locos/Santo and Octagon When Worlds Collide tag match should be included as a straight introduction to lucha, as I think that does the best with rude/tecnico roles and contains two of the greatest workers ever on top of that. If you were looking to separate it a bit more on the indy side, maybe throw in joe/Necro for a garbage indy match? Also, I think you can throw the Lyger/Ohtani 2/97 match in there for juniors if you want.

I was thinking about guys who aren't high up on the card (right now) that would be in that timeframe. A guy like Antonio Cesaro could be Swiss Billy Robinson in a heartbeat. Bray Wyatt would have carved up Florida with Kevin Sullivan. I could see a Big E. Langston in a similar spot he's used now and have it be even more effective in the NWA or Memphis. Damien Sandow in the Bible Belt would be a license to print money as an aristocrat from New York or California (where he's being billed from now). In fact, NXT being run basically like a territory makes it seem like there's a lot of guys who would at least get a shot in the 80s, as they're really pushing some interesting gimmicks rooted in what was going on in the 80's.

Quickly on the BR thing: BR's reputation is warranted on general principle of overall journalistic integrity, but their wrestling and MMA coverage is pretty damn great mainly because they haven't been handcuffed into the same type of rules that most of their other sports writers have had to follow for the most part. I'm not sure if that's by design or it's because Snowden, Bix, et al decided that it was how they were going to write regardless, but it's still good stuff more often than not. BR might have a lot of crap, but their wrestling and MMA coverage is not in that realm. I'm definitely a fan of someone deciding to be the entity that tries and proves that something thought to be bad can actually be good, so good work, fellas. Perfect example: Bix and Snowden write for supposed horrible website BR, yet Shoemaker writes for supposed not as horrible website Grantland. I'm pretty sure nobody on this board is seeking out Shoemaker's stuff. Now, deciding to have The Shield lose on a go home show heading into a PPV because you have to let Team Hell No and Orton have their moment so that the Shield can retain across the board is WWE Booking 101 and pretty fucking ridiculous. Although if they parlay Bryan's overconfidence that he was the one that beat The Shield into him costing Orton and him the titles Sunday, I guess that's not the worst booking decision in the world. Also, they've lost by DQ a few times, so it's not like it's a HUGE deal, but if the booking decision ends up resulting in a Daniel Bryan mega-push that actually has victories attached to it, it's still good for business.

I'll close this up with the Driven match. Incredible stuff from those guys, who were natural foils. Next: Brock Lesnar. My pick will be vs. Eddy at NWO 2004.

One of my favorite wrestlers ever for always trying to do something different in a match that didn't take away from the regular things that made him great. Extremely versatile. Great punches. The Flair matches sold me on him and then the Zbysyko series made me a fan for life. It was all gravy after that. Still think he's the most underutilized wrestler in history: He did things better than most top-run heels and was able to get not just himself but his opponents and the match over as well. And he was most underutilized as a face, where his fiery antics were about as good as it got and we only saw it rarely. And keep the reviews coming. The more the merrier.

I had this in my old iTunes library of wrestling matches and saw it was a part of the set, which I'm stoked to see. Looking forward to picking up the yearbook sets, especially with 96 being one of my favorite wrestling years. I scurried to the DVDVR Best of the 90s poll to see where this placed and saw it only got one third place vote and ended up near 100 overall. I know people loved the Vader '94 match because it was Vader working the UWFi style, but holy FUCK this match is fantastic and it might even be better than that match. Tenryu doing everything he could to make this into a pro wrestling match because he doesn't want to go at Takada in his style, and Takada showing fire because he'd be damned if Tenryu was going to come into his fed and not work shoot style was incredible. The fact that they worked the pinfalls into the finishing stretch made this work really well as a spectacle that you wouldn't really see that often in UWF-i and made it stand out. This was a flat out war.