Dylan Waco

I have enjoyed the booking of Eric Young and his title run so far, I just feel bad for him because they've had him in there with some real turds.

If you are referring to me, Dave has had some major issues he's had to tend to. We will be starting back up in July, discussed it last night actually

I've watched WAY less this year than last year - and yet when I look around here, WKO, twitter, elsewhere I'm not sure I could name anyone who has watched more than me. Scary

Joe, who do you like for the Thesz/Flair Award contenders?

Only thing that hurts Sheamus to me is the fact that he doesn't have that one MOTYC level match I can point too

Match of the Year At this point my pick is The Wyatt's v. The Shield at EC, but I don't see a great deal of consensus on this looking around places. I get the sense this is a wide open thing in the eyes of many, and there may not even be an early favorite. I think I'd lean toward Cesaro v. Cena at two. Not sure what would be three, but to the shock of many I'd at least consider Nakamura v. Tanahashi from Invasion Attack for that spot. Wrestler of the Year: This is another year like 2012 where I don't think there is a strong candidate. Probably the strongest candidate by default is Daniel Bryan, who is still the most over guy in wrestling, and has at least shown some positive signs as a drawing card via ratings and merch sales. Having said that I don't feel strongly about him as a figure, the current direction/angle he is working out is not doing him any favors, and I think he has lost some steam. Bray is getting a push and has gotten over, but he's stuck in a weird feud with Cena, who also doesn't seem like a terribly strong candidate. The Shield as a unit gets strong reactions, but individually none is a viable pick. Orton and Batista are not serious options. Again Bryan is an uninspiring, weak, "one" at this point, with no obvious two on the scene in the WWE. In Japan I really can't see a terribly compelling argument for anyone. Last year I thought Okada was a solid contender for top spot, this year it feels like they wasted the back end of the title reign, didn't show faith in him in the Naito feud, and while the Dome show was up I don't think you can point to him as the guy driving that. This might lead one to conclude that Nakamura or Tanahashi are solid candidates, but that Sumo attendance figure rubs me wrong, and I don't think there is anything else those guys have done to enhance their case. Ishii is the best worker in the promotion this year, and consistently gets great reactions, but it's hard to call a guy who is at best the fourth biggest star in his own promotion (AT BEST and being really generous) the WOTY by Observer standards. In Mexico AAA has had some strong houses of late, as has CMLL, but I don't get the sense that any particular wrestler or feud is driving consistent attendance, nor are there hot feuds that look like they will be strongly paid off. I would love to vote for someone like Rush, but I'm not sure I think he's all that viable even in a weak year. TNA is a joke. In a twisted way I think AJ Styles is emerging as an interesting candidate, albeit of a protest variety. Yeah he's not headlined a slew of massive drawing shows, BUT he has had a hugely positive impact on the business of every indie he's worked for, including ROH. This impact has reached into several different regions, and has had seen him draw several 1,000 plus crowds on top of indie shows. In fact he's becoming something of a proven draw on the indies, which tells you all you need to know about TNA. And of course there is also the recent IWGP title win, which I think was handled poorly (and he wasn't over in the building), but could lead to him headlining some impressive houses in Japan. There is still a lot of time left in the year, but it's hard to imagine a slate of strong candidates filling out a 1,2,3 on a ballot this year. Worker of the Year Also kind of a weird year in that early a lot of guys looked like they may be set to break out and/or continue a hot run from the year before, but either booking, bad luck, or circumstance has intervened to bring all of them back down to the Earth. At the moment I still think Cesaro has the meatiest resume, but I don't feel nearly as strongly about him as I did last year. I see a lot of potential candidates in the WWE for the top spot including Cesaro, Bryan, Ambrose, Luke Harper and Sheamus, but none seems far ahead of the others. Lucha is suffering a bit this year from the Casas injury, my own viewing habits and other weird circumstances. There I think Cavernario, Hechicero, Virus and Rush are the strongest candidates, but not sure any of them has a complete resume at this point (to be fair, that's not Cavernario or Hechicero's fault, as they haven't been booked in a position to have such a resume). In Japan I think Ishii is a very viable number one contender, and wouldn't dismissive the notion of Nakamura either, though I don't feel nearly as strongly about him. Vordell Walker and Timothy Thatcher have been great on the indies, but footage availability remains a major issue. If pressed right this second I think my top three would be Cesaro, Ambrose and Hechicero, but I have no confidence in that at all. Tag Team of the Year Uso's are the easy pick here as they remain over enough to mix things up with the big singles stars, work hard in every match, and have solid matches with just about everyone. I actually really enjoy Rybaxel as a team to my great shame, so they might be my number 2 at the moment, though I guess the Rhodes Brothers had some solid stuff at the beginning of the year. This category really feels like a major drop off from where it was last year. Not sure what other categories are worth talking about at this point.

Hase v. Misawa fucking sucked.

That's insane talk. Reigns was the only guy over at the Rumble when the crowd dropped their pants and took a shit on the match as a whole. He's insanely over in a live setting.

I usually make efforts to get ppv nights off from work, made no effort here since I can watch it on the network as soon as I get home anyhow. I wonder how many people will do the same

HHH looked like the worst wrestler of all time in that last segment. Awkward interactions on the mic and with Flair, terrible timing on the big Rollins spot, off on the exchanges with Ambrose on the floor, and comically bad selling of Reigns spear. My god what a terrible wrestler, no wonder the crowd NEVER responds for Evolution at all

Are you arguing that Crash and Delaney had world champion talent and the only thing that precluded them from being champions was their size?

I really don't think he's all that good a face promo.

Give me a couple if weeks, it's the end of the semester

There are easily 1000 workers in history better than Kane. Hard to call him great

What's funny about that is that the anecdotal evidence of my day-to-day life pegs Kane as the dirt worst. The reaction to him being challenger among my buddies at work was one of bemused annoyance, in part because the way Kane has been booked it comes across as a massive downgrade for Bryan. "Can Bryan overcome the 4th tier guy in the authority" was literally a joke line my boss was tossing around last week.

Soft strikes is an odd criticism to make of a company that includes Luke Harper, Sheamus, Wade Barrett and Antonio Cesaro among others. I mean sure there are guys with soft strikes in the WWE, some with really, really bad ones. But then New Japan's most heavily touted worker is a guy who's strikes aren't exactly awe inspiring and are often horrendous.

I didn't say I wanted Cesaro to be the first challenger, but that's no reason to pretend that Kane is a good pick. The fact that they managed to shoot a very good angle this week doesn't change the fact that we are talking about fucking Kane here, a guy Bryan decisively beat leading into Mania, and who was part of a team that jobbed out in less than three minutes at Mania. It's not as if Kane was on some hot streak, or that the crowds were clamoring for Kane v. Bryan matches (actually the house shows they ran with that feud didn't do terribly impressive numbers as I recall). Instead they did nothing to set up interesting heels for after his win, had Bray job to Cena, and decided to pair off the established top heels with HHH (surprise, surprise!) for a feud against The Shield. I can live with the idea of Kane as a worst case scenario challenger, and even with the idea that they can successfully heat up the feud with angles like the one they did tonight, but that doesn't mean I'm going to pretend that Kane is a strong challenger.

I'm not saying he was the best option, but I see little to no reason why Cesaro would have been a worse choice than Kane.

If you thought RVD looked good in that match with Cesaro, I literally can't even imagine what you would regard as a poor performance.

I think Rey was the best worker in the US for that decade

One kind of "quietly" outstanding year - and I'm not even sure it's his best - is Hansen's 86. You have an extremely underrated and awesome run in the AWA, the beginning of the feud of the decade candidate with Colon, and some very stellar matches from AJPW. Very versatile here in terms of where he was working and the expectations on him. Certainly one of the more under the radar great years of all time if nothing else.

Cena from the middle of 06-end of 07 is one of my favorite runs by an ace ever. Going through HHH at Mania, RVD in his building (yeah he lost I know), Umaga being Umaga, Orton at Summerslam, Edge in "his match," Michaels at Mania, Monsters like Khali and Hulking babyfaces like Lashley, and being universally awesome through all of it. It really felt like the true "fighting champ' vibe they tried to get over with Bret, but turned up to ten and presented in a more "WWE" way. I would love to see Bryan or Cesaro or someone else get a chance to do something like this at some point, but I kind of doubt we will see anything like that again. I talked about this with my brother tonight, but Rey in 2009 was incredible enough where even with Christian right there being awesome every week in ECW, I thought Rey was the better week to week wrestler (though he did miss a month to suspension that year). I remember him having seemingly throw away matches that year v. guys like Shelton, shitty as fuck Edge and John Morrison, that were really dynamic and exciting, on top of crazy great performances like the Elimination Chamber match. I want to go back and watch all this stuff in bulk eventually. Black Terry was fucking outstanding in 2010. At the time we were getting tons of IWRG and indie uploads from Black Terry Jr.'s youtube account, to the point where there were probably three or four dozen Terry matches available that year. I don't remember him ever having anything less than a good performance, and probably at least half of those were performances that I thought were tremendous. Of course I haven't watched them sense and who knows how much of that is even still out there. It's also worth noting that he didn't have a singles match make tape at all that year IIRC. Also if you are including promos, character work/how they carry themselves, et. than I could very easily be convinced that Luger in 89 is a serious contender here.

Unfortunately that is gone forever. I could probably replicate most of it if pressed, though it's notable that in some cases I specifically did not pick the best years for certain guys, as my intent was to show how overrated that HHH year was.

Not sure it's the absolute best, but Buddy Rose in 1980 is incredible.

I cannot imagine a non-hardcore viewing one of the ROH tv shows and saying "boy there is a show I want to shell out money to see!"