Loss

This will be fun to revisit after watching some years prior to 1996. DDP won, and that seems like the perfect pick to me. I am a big fan of this award in general, so we'll see how coming back to this goes after watching 1990-1995 sets.

With tag wrestling kinda dead in the U.S., the only real candidates I see stateside are PG-13. And they worked a breakup angle and spent a great deal of the year apart, so I don't want to pick them. Misawa and Akiyama won the award. Kawada and Taue are right there too. I think you could pick either team and do just fine, so I have no qualms with the WON pick. I do wish at some point that the best tag team of all time (Kawada and Taue) would have won tag team of the year at least once though.

NWO vs WCW won in the Observer, but I feel like that's too vague, and I'm not sure it's what I would pick anyway. It had some great moments, but the players on the WCW side rotated too much. Sting, Savage, Flair and Arn were all major players in the early days of the angle and fell out of the picture over time. It was a success and I enjoyed it, so I don't mean to downplay it. I just think of a feud as something more concrete. My pick is probably Mitsuharu Misawa & Jun Akiyama vs Toshiaki Kawada & Akira Taue. They had a series of matches which were all great, there was a clear progression from match to match, and the year ended with a nice payoff in perhaps the greatest match of all time.

#50 - Mitsuharu Misawa vs Kenta Kobashi (AJPW 03/31/96) -- I can't get into this match as much as most, but I still acknowledge that it was an excellent performance, specifically from Misawa, but Kobashi as well. Both guys do many things they could never do with anyone else. #49 - Genichiro Tenryu vs Great Muta (WAR 10/11/96) -- Muta puts on a true 70s-style madman performance, and Tenryu responds by kissing his punches! This is quite the spectacle, and a very Memphis-style brawl. #48 - Masa Chono & Hiroyoshi Tenzan vs Kazuo Yamazaki & Takashi Iizuka (NJPW 09/23/96) -- One of my favorite New Japan tags of the year, with Chono and Tenzan being a really fun heel pairing, and Yamazaki and Iizuka doing a good job of feeding them spots and playing for sympathy. #47 - Chris Benoit vs Dean Malenko (WCW Hog Wild 08/10/96) -- Yeah yeah, the crowd sucks, but the match most definitely does not. In the end, Benoit and Malenko weren't successful at doing a "this is wrestling" match for casuals, which this match seemed to be booked to do, but that doesn't stop me from appreciating the effort. This has more bomb throwing and less psychology than you'd expect a long match with these two to have, but this is charming in its own way. #46 - Hayabusa & Masato Tanaka vs Terry Funk & Gladiator (FMW 09/24/96) -- Funk Masters of Wrestling debuts. Crazy finish, but like most FMW, pretty solid and more logical than you'd think. #45 - Keiji Muto vs Shiro Koshinaka (NJPW G-1 Climax 08/05/96) -- My favorite match in a loaded G-1 Climax. I love Muto's call back being the dragon screw leg whip from just about any angle, which builds to a meaningful finish. #44 - Mitsuharu Misawa & Kenta Kobashi & Jun Akiyama vs Toshiaki Kawada & Johnny Ace & Gary Albright (AJPW 04/20/96) -- One of those typically great, disposable AJ six-mans. Kawada and Akiyama are my favorites here, but everyone puts in a good performance. #43 - Great Sasuke & Gran Hamada & Super Delphin & Gran Naniwa & Tiger Mask IV vs Dick Togo & Mens Teoh & Taka Michinoku & Shiryu & Shoichi Funaki (Michinoku Pro 12/09/96) -- Elimination rules rob the match of guys who can do cool stuff in some ways, but this is still a really strong match, kind of the best possible Survivor Series match. #42 - Volk Han vs Kiyoshi Tamura (RINGS 09/25/96) -- Beautiful match with some amazing struggle. Probably a great intro for anyone who wants to get into RINGS. Han's the aggressor, but Tamura thinks quickly on his feet. Wonderful dynamic. #41 - El Hijo del Santo & El Dandy & Dos Caras vs Blue Panther & Apolo Dantes & Emilio Charles Jr (CMLL 02/16/96) -- El Dandy and Emilio Charles Jr! Don't confuse it for nostalgia, as it's some of the best wrestling on the set.

He did until the lawsuits went into overdrive.

Looking at this HOF beyond "Retired/semi-retired people who are in good graces with the McMahons at that point in time" is an exercise in frustration. They don't look at it beyond that, except in terms of marketability of the headlining inductee, so no reason for us to do so either.

The more I think about it, the whole "rock star from Mars" thing may be more of a New Breed homage than Brian Pillman's gimmick.

Fixed.

Even some of the honorable mentions might be in a top 40 in other years. 1996 was just that loaded.

Memorable for me anyway: There was an episode of Power Hour in '89 that had a Sting/Steve Williams vs Terry Funk/Terry Gordy match, and some guy in the crowd kept raising his shirt and patting his belly at the heels. Funk would sell for him like it was really bothering him, which was great. They did a long taping from that arena, so Crazy Belly Guy appears on '89 NWA TV for a few weeks. I also remember the front row of ECW fans wildly cheering Hogan's heel turn at Bash at the Beach.

#60 - Billy Scott vs Kenichi Yammamoto (UWFI 10/23/96) -- Closer to a traditional wrestling match as far as layout than any UWFI on the set. Feels like a 70s NWA title match, and Yammamoto doing a backslide in the middle of the tricked out matwork is spectacular. #59 - Rey Misterio Jr vs Juventud Guerrera (AAA 07/15/96) -- A pro-shot version of the more widely praised 3/16 match, that once again is tremendous until the overbooking nonsense at the end. #58 - Black Tiger & El Samurai & Gran Hamada vs Shinjiro Otani & Koji Kanemoto & Dean Malenko (NJPW 02/25/96) -- Otani continues to beat himself by not keeping his emotions in check. Everyone is great here, but the Samurai/Otani stuff continues to be awesome. #57 - Ultimo Dragon vs Great Sasuke (NJPW J*Crown 08/05/96) -- It's a shame the match got cut short, as everything prior to Sasuke's injury is fantastic, in spite of Sasuke cracking his skull near the end. Not the best match on the show, but one that was on its way to becoming that before the injury. #56 - Rey Misterio Jr vs Dean Malenko (WCW Great American Bash 06/16/96) -- Forget what you've heard, this was a GREAT way to debut Rey in WCW. Undersized babyfaces get over by selling and that's what Rey does here in spades. While I really enjoy Dean's matwork, Rey is the glue that holds this together. The proof in that is that Dean would try this layout against many other opponents throughout the year, and it never had the same effect that it did here. #55 - Dynamite Kansai & Takako Inoue vs Mayumi Ozaki & Kyoko Inoue (JWP 04/20/96) -- Terrific match in an interesting year for Joshi. This was the first JWP match I saw on the set, and another notch in the belt of Kyoko Inoue, the likely WOTY for Joshi. #54 - Ultimo Dragon vs Great Sasuke (WAR 10/11/96) -- A better glimpse of what a long term feud between these two might have been than the J*Crown match, and I love that the focus here is on cool pinning combos more than offense. #53 - Toshiaki Kawada vs Kenta Kobashi (AJPW 05/24/96) -- Really terrific wrestling. I always felt like of the Misawa/Kawada/Kobashi rivalries, Kawada/Kobashi was at times the least discussed. Perhaps that's rightfully so considering Misawa/Kawada and Misawa/Kobashi are the competition, but these two still had so many excellent matches. There's lots of attention to detail in the matwork and bumping here, and this is a good overlooked match to check out. #52 - Shinya Hashimoto vs Shiro Koshinaka (NJPW 09/23/96) -- Koshinaka goes over in a strong match, and Hashimoto is the master of making another guy's win seem as meaningful as possible. Hashimoto always goes out of his way to make sure that if he's losing a match, the win the other guy gets is a convincing one, which in turn puts Hashimoto over even stronger. I love it! #51 - Great Sasuke & Tiger Mask IV & Shiryu vs Taka Michinoku & Super Delphin & Gran Naniwa (Michinoku Pro 03/16/96) -- A nice preview of what would come later in the year and the potential of this style. Super Delphin does some amazing comedy and the nearfalls toward the end are pretty epic.

So my pick for WOTY is ... Shinya Hashimoto. Was Hashimoto the biggest draw in the world? No. One could argue Takada was a bigger draw. But I'm not sure I'd put anyone else above him in that category. Was Hashimoto the best worker in the world? No. But only a handful of guys were better. So based on the Ric Flair standard of combining good main event matches with drawing power, Hashimoto is the guy who stands out the most. Even in losing, he was so good at getting the big picture over so well. Choshu's G-1 moment would not have had the dramatic impact it had if Hashimoto hadn't worked so hard to put him over. He's the guy who could do the least and get the biggest reaction, but still worked really hard. He did this in singles matches and tag matches, on big shows and small shows, against native talent and foreign talent, and against guys in their physical prime and guys who had seen better days. No one was quite as valuable to their promotion from January 1 to December 31 as Hashimoto was to New Japan in 1996. That's why he is my pick.

#70 - Jushin Liger, Gran Naniwa & Gran Hamada vs Dick Togo & Taka Michinoku & Shoichi Funaki (Michinoku Pro 08/18/96) Incredibly hot crowd, and Liger seems to be having the time of his life working in front of a Michinoku Pro crowd, and adjusts to the style quickly and easily. #69 - Psicosis vs Ultraman (AAA 03/16/96) My personal favorite match from this show. Psicosis shows why he was one of the best wrestlers of the 90s despite a bunch of booking nonsense. #68 - Nobuhiko Takada vs Shiro Koshinaka (NJPW 03/01/96) Really fun match between two old rivals, and a nice blend of UWFI stuff and Koshinaka's more pro wrestling based offense. The crowd is amped to see this too. #67 - Manami Toyota vs Sakie Hasegawa (AJW 03/20/96) Hasegawa makes all of one appearance on the yearbook, but makes it count in a big way, having what I'd consider Toyota's best title defense of the year and demonstrating some terrific command of matwork and basics while mixing in enough high-end stuff to keep up with Toyota. Great performance. #66 - Rey Misterio Jr vs Psicosis (WCW Bash at the Beach 07/07/96) Terrific match. Perhaps the best "showcase" match of this feud in '96. #65 - Devil Masami & Kyoko Inoue vs Dynamite Kansai & Aja Kong (JWP 10/13/96) Devil Masami is awesome in adding little veteran touches to her matches that elude most of the younger women working this style, and Kong and Kansai are a tag team for the ages. One of my favorite Joshi matches of the year. #64 - Yoshihisa Yamamoto vs Buzariashville Ramazi (RINGS 05/25/96) Excellent match between two guys who probably lurked in the shadows of Han, Tamura, Kohsaka and others most of the time, but not in this one. This is the match that actually excited about me about the RINGS style when watching this set. #63 - Steven Regal vs Shinya Hashimoto (NJPW 09/21/96) As far as I know, these two have had two matches against each other. I haven't seen the '95 one, but this one is terrific, as these two have great chemistry. Stiff with lots of nifty, attention-to-detail matwork. #62 - Shane Douglas vs 2 Cold Scorpio (ECW Matter of Respect 05/11/96) Far and away the best ECW match of the year, and maybe my favorite ECW match ever. The closest I've seen ECW come to thinking man's wrestling, even if that's not quite what this is. Scorpio looks like a future star, and it's a shame he never quite hit that level. #61 - Masato Tanaka vs W*ING Kanemura (FMW 08/01/96) Nice mix of wrestling and brawling. My second favorite FMW match of the year, and one that is a more fundamentally sound wrestling match than you'd expect.

Charlie Sheen is now doing Brian Pillman's 1996 gimmick in the media to great success. I also love that he's one of the few modern wrestlers who emphasizes the importance of winning. What other pro wrestling concepts has Charlie Sheen applied in the past few weeks, when he has become the hottest star in the business, and perhaps its greatest worker?

All of those Shawn things and probably some other week-to-week promos, the tag with Flair against Bret and Savage, a few handhelds, the Piper match from the pre-WM8 special and so on.

MJH, what's your favorite Southern tag? Your favorite NWA title match in the U.S. that's not Flair/Steamboat or Flair/Windham? If punches aren't impressive, why can so few wrestlers throw a good one?

The whole point of the Garvin title win wasn't to create a new star as much as it was build excitement for Starrcade, where they thought Flair challenging would have more appeal than Flair defending. With that said, I think Nikita Koloff would have been a much better choice as a short-term champion. He had slipped quite a bit by this time, but even at his peak, he was never a guy you could put the title on for any length of time. But Nikita wearing the belt for two months had some appeal. If they wanted someone who would have good matches on top at house shows, Barry Windham also would have been a better pick than Garvin. I'm not sure if Flair's neck injury was a factor in the title change or not, but he sure was hidden in a lot of tag matches around this time.

I realized that myself last night. Way to stop the countdown midstream and also the WOTY just short of picking someone. I will return to them tonight for sure.

Matwork did not "become" important at any point. It's as old as wrestling itself.

I just wanted to come back to this one more time because this was one point I forgot about before. Mass changing of opinions coincides with footage availability. That's the common thread. The reason there is a mass change at one time is because most people discussing it are seeing it at the same time for the first time. It's not "Hmmm, let's declare Fujiwara awesome and everyone will agree" ...

The WON hasn't slipped. Dave Meltzer has slipped.

It's still odd on that front, since I've never seen anyone suggest that Bob Armstrong is one of the 100 greatest wrestlers ever. I rarely hear a WON HOF argument for him, and that group is 200+ now. Other marginal wrestlers you could at least point to a memorable WWE stint. But Bullet Bob just seems...random. It is an odd pick considering that they don't have any footage of him, and normally like to pick guys they see as marketable for the HOF. If it was a legit HOF with objective standards, it would probably be a bigger annoyance.

If you read WONs at the time, Lawler was absolutely considered one of the top wrestlers in the business in the 80s. He was also supposed to win the NWA title in 1985, which ended up not happening after being built for a year in Memphis. Dave has been praising him as long as he has been doing the WON. He was also in the first class of HOF inductees and was Jim Cornette's pick for GOAT in a shoot interview nearly 20 years ago. And if he was saying it publicly at that point, I would imagine the idea existed long before that. But Cornette is someone who, whether you agree with him on Lawler, understands what saying something like that means, and he's definitely familiar enough with wrestling to say that from a place of knowledge. Lawler as great is not at all a new idea. A revived idea perhaps, but the wrestling fan devotees who watched wrestling the way we do in the 1980s (and probably earlier) considered Lawler to be pretty great.

MJH, I take exception to the idea that any changes in opinion over time are a "movement". New footage becomes available, then people watch it and comment on it. Sometimes, many people observe the same things. You might not mean it this way, but it sounds as if you're accusing people who like things like Jerry Lawler, punches and brawls of being opinion followers who are just saying these things because it's cool. Yes, the catalyst for a lot of the re-evaluation is a smaller group leading and a larger group following, but that was always the case with hardcore wrestling fandom. Many people reacting to the opinions on wrestling that others share by agreeing (or disagreeing) isn't dishonest or misleading in any way. I guess there are probably people who do have certain opinions on wrestling-related things because other people do, but I would imagine those people are few and far between. It was never "trendy" to prefer one style to another, really. Both sides on contentious wrestlers and matches have typically been pretty outspoken.

I think you can look at something in context (which I support), acknowledge that certain things were done that worked at the time that wouldn't work in a different time and still have the match look good when watching it years later. I think sometimes the statement that any match can be compared to any match (which I thought years ago and still think today) is taken as the absence of context when that's not true at all. I do agree that opinions have changed over time in terms of what makes a match good and bad. But what I'm saying is that you can compare two matches from any time period to each other because even if they are worked in different styles, good wrestling in 1970 was wrestling that made sense. Good wrestling in 2011 is wrestling that makes sense.