1985 Wrestler of the Year Contenders

[JerryvonKramer]

DiBiase also has a great match tagging with Hansen vs. The Funks in All Japan, the one I reviewed last night.

 

I think him smashing Dory's head with a cowbell while Hansen eggs him on would make his career highlight reel. When you put that with the Duggan stuff, the Flair match, and the Murdoch feud, Ted's 85 looks pretty action packed. Too bad he didn't have the beard for most of it.

[Loss]

I know the style is not everyone's cup of tea, but Chigusa Nagayo really does deserve strong consideration for 1985, and maybe a few other years but definitely 1985. She had the mat classic with Devil Masami and the most emotional/disturbingly violent hair match in history against Dump Matsumoto within a week. She had her first singles match with Lioness Asuka, which was so good that AJW made the Battle of the Crush Girls an annual tradition through the end of the decade. She also has a pretty impressive list of workrate tags against opponents like the Jumping Bomb Angels and Red Typhoons, along with brawls with Dump and Bull. This was probably the year her status as a pop culture figure was at its peak as well. She's a strong candidate here.

[Danish Dynamite]

Kitten: Savage hit the wwf pretty strong by the end of the year, so sure, I'f have him in the mix. ... I keep coming back to DiBiase though :-)