End of Year Awards - The 2014 Edition

Major End-Year Awards

Company of the Year:

The winner is: ROH

This year’s company of the year award was a difficult one because the two companies it came down to run their business in such different ways. Let’s get rid of the one’s that didn’t make the cut though. TNA produced a relatively entertaining second half of the year with a shockingly good Lashley reign and a nice build to a second Bobby Roode run with the belt but the first half of their year was so lacklustre and the second half so dogged by rumours of their demise that it has to be looked at as one of the worst in TNA’s history. WWE’s year was even more bipolar, they started off well and had the best Wrestlemania in over a decade, then it all fell apart. Some of it was WWE’s fault, some of it was impossible to blame on them. However, since Bryan’s injury it feels like they’ve been on autopilot and it has made for some awful television. There have been bright spots such as the build to and eventual execution of the Survivor Series main event, the entirety of NXT all year and certain parts of the Dean Ambrose versus Seth Rollins feud. However, for all those good to great bits there have been five or ten times as many bad bits. And the RAW’s since Survivor Series have been among the worst they’ve ever produced. That left me with two to choose between: ROH and PWG. Like I mentioned right at the start though these companies operate so differently that it is difficult to compare them. I sided with ROH in the end though, they’ve had their best year since 2008 in my book and although everything hasn’t been perfect it has been majorly entertaining throughout. PWG has been much the same, the shows haven’t been as amazing as last year but you still know going into every PWG show that you’re going to have two to three hours of guaranteed fun – not something you can say about many other promotions. ROH has made some giant leaps this year with a big increase in the quality of production, the working agreement with the biggest wrestling promotion outside of North America in New Japan Pro Wrestling and their debut on live, traditional pay-per-view. So they earn the award for company of the year and hopefully they can kick on and have an even better 2015.

Superstar of the Year:

The winner is: Adam Cole

This one was a no brainer this year. Sometimes it’s close, this year it wasn’t. Adam Cole started off the year as both ROH and PWG World Champion. Come the end of the year he’d lost both Championships and is heading into 2015 looking like he’s going to have to take some time away due to injuries. That last bit is such a shame because Adam Cole came of age this year. He honed his skills not only to become one of the best in-ring workers on the independent scene but probably the best interview on the independent scene too. Cole has been endlessly entertaining as a character throughout 2015 and, unlike most heels, he is actually difficult to cheer because of how hateable his character actually is. As always with great heels though, they reach a point where the crowd starts to respect how good they are and Cole was approaching this area as 2014 came to a close. It is to the point actually where upon returning from his injury I have no doubt that ROH will have to place Cole in a babyface position. Other contenders for this award were Sami Zayn for his breakout year in NXT, Seth Rollins for transitioning from one-third of a great faction to the de facto top wrestling heel in the WWE and Daniel Bryan. The last one may seem a strange choice but Bryan had such a good first third of the year before a Kane feud and injury struck him down to the point where he was out for the rest of the year. Bryan deserved consideration for how amazing those first four months were but he couldn’t compete with the rest simply because he wasn’t around enough this year.

Wrestler of the Year:

The winner is: AJ Styles

The Wrestler of the Year award differs from the Superstar of the Year in the simple fact that it is decided on who has been the best and most consistent in-ring performer over the whole year. Superstar of the Year encompasses everything: in-ring work, character development, promo skills, the whole package. This award is based purely on the performers in-ring work and this year there were several contenders. Kyle O’Reilly for his work with reDRagon and as a singles competitor in PWG, Sami Zayn was considered for this award too for his matches in NXT, Adam Cole was also considered as he has had some fantastic encounters throughout the year but in the end I had to go with AJ Styles. It still boggles my mind how TNA let him go. Not only was he loyal to the company and the guy most people think of first when they think of TNA (and why would you let a guy like that go?) but they have ploughed so much money into people who didn’t deserve it and yet when it comes to someone who deserves it like AJ they decide he needs to take a pay cut? Ludicrous. That being said, they’ve gotten what they deserved because they have had a pretty torrid 2014 and AJ’s probably had the best year of his career. I’ve seen very little of his work in NJPW as I don’t really have the time to commit to watching anymore wrestling so Japanese wrestling is always a little off my radar but I did see the match where he beat Okada, the most protected star in NJPW, to win the IWGP Heavyweight Championship. It was a very good match, something that AJ has produced all year long. I do a top fifty list when I do my match of the year article and honestly if I wanted to I could probably produce a top fifty purely made up of AJ matches this year that’s how much of a career year he’s had. The nickname “The Phenomenal One” has never been more apt. His match with Adam Cole at All Star Extravaganza VI was probably my favourite of his throughout the year but he has had several bonafide classics across several different continents this year. He’s changed up his style in recent years, it really took hold when he was doing his version of Sting in TNA in his final twelve months or so, and it has really freshened him up. I loved his old style as much as anyone but now that he’s moved to a more strike-orientated and submission based move set he may be even better than he was when he was the top high flyer. Being so successful with such a change in your in-ring style just goes to show exactly how talented the man truly is.

Female Wrestler of the Year:

The winner is: Candice LeRae

Another difficult choice here, early on in the year I thought it might be difficult to select a woman who would actually be worthy of winning it, but by the end of the year I was struggling to separate four very talented women. Gail Kim has to be considered for this award in most years but her feud with Havok showed just how talented she still is, one of their matches actually cracked my top fifty this year and Gail – even after all this time – is still one of the best female wrestlers in the world. The next two contenders both emanate from NXT, which might just show you how much better booked the women are on that show than they are on the main roster. First of all how could you look past the current NXT Women’s Champion in Charlotte? In my eyes she’s gone from being “Oh that’s Flair’s kid” to “Charlotte’s facing ??? at the next show, that’ll be a great match because Charlotte is so talented”. The woman has matured over the past twelve months and her NXT Women’s Championship reign may be the best reign anybody has had with any Championship in WWE all year, and that speaks volumes. The other woman who just fell short in this battle was Charlotte’s most recent fierce competitor (and her former BFF) Sasha Banks. Jonathon, who I write the on-going rebooking series with, is a huge fan of Sasha and even I have to admit that in the past two or three months she has been fantastic. Nobody gets her character like Sasha but, much like I mentioned about Cole earlier, she’s become so good and entertaining that she’s starting to get babyface reactions. Either way though she could carry the main roster Diva’s division by herself right now, if they allow her to go out there and do her thing. In the end though this award had only one winner, step forward Candice LeRae. Candice has had an amazing 2014. She is probably the most over member of the PWG roster and, if you’ve ever seen a PWG show you’ll know, everyone in PWG is over. None quite as much as Candice though. She and her tag team partner Joey Ryan have done battle with Mount Rushmore (and more specifically the Young Bucks) for the most part in 2014 and that culminated with a fantastic Guerrilla Warfare match at this year’s anniversary show (ELEVEN) in which Candice took some of the most brutal bumps I’ve ever seen a woman take. But it’s not just that she’s willing to put her body on the line in a way most people aren’t it’s that she wrestles with men and never looks like she needs to be carried. To me when people are praising women’s wrestling they look at it on a different scale to men’s wrestling. They look at matches and say “that was good” when, in my eyes at least, it may have been good for a women’s match but it was not a good wrestling match. You cannot say that about Candice matches. She more than holds her own and doesn’t just have good women’s matches, she just has good matches period.

Match of the Year:

The winner is: The Shield vs. The Wyatt’s, Elimination Chamber

I’m not going to elaborate on this one too much, only give a cheap plug for anyone reading this to also check out my top fifty matches of 2014 but I will say this that there have been some absolutely phenomenal matches this year and yet this one was a comfortable choice for match of the year. The WWE may want to paint a different story but it was clear to me that this was the best match going. The fact that the crowd, before the match has even begun, is chanting “This Is Awesome” is testament to the aura that surrounded these two factions. And the match lived up to its expectations. A wild, chaotic brawl that was so good that I got lost in the action. I was disappointed that The Shield lost because I prefer them out of the two but the match was of a high enough quality that I didn’t mind. Specifically since, at the time, they seemed to be building to a Shield split so it made sense for the Wyatt Family to win. Either way, it was one of those times where I was able to stop thinking about anything other than how much I was enjoying this match. It was fantastic.

Angle/Feud of the Year:

The winner is: The Authority vs. Daniel Bryan

There haven’t been too many feuds that really caught my attention this year so in the end it came down to four. One the spanned the first five months of the year, one that spanned the final five months, one that spanned the five months that were June through October and one that, on and off, spanned the entire year. Those feuds were: Daniel Bryan vs. The Authority; Adrian Neville vs. Sami Zayn; Dean Ambrose vs. Seth Rollins and Adam Cole vs. Jay Briscoe respectively. Cole and Briscoe tore each other part on and off throughout 2014 and with the assistance of The Kingdom at times Cole always seemed to come out on top, including in a destructive Ladder War V at Supercard of Honor on Wrestlemania weekend. That was until the two foes faced off one last time, with Briscoe now Champion, at ROH’s biggest event of the year – Final Battle. There, in New York City, Briscoe finally overcame Cole and decisively beat him in an absolutely brutal Fight Without Honor. Now that may not have been the originally planned result, nor may it have been the result I wanted but it was the result that told the best overall story and completed a terrific arc that had started fifteen months earlier in Philadelphia when Cole had originally won the Ring of Honor World Championship and turned heel on Briscoe himself. It is a testament to both luck and great writing that such a well-woven story ended up being told. I also hold this feud accountable for Adam Cole growing from a promising talent into the full package and the most consistently entertaining all round performer in 2014. As for Dean Ambrose and Seth Rollins, I think this feud surprised a lot of people. Everyone expected when The Shield broke up that Roman Reigns would be the breakout star (and WWE are still pushing him like he is) but initially the two guys who got the most traction were Rollins and Ambrose. I assume WWE’s thought process was that Reigns was “above” Rollins and Ambrose and therefore needed to feud with someone like Randy Orton. Yet his push was largely met with apathy originally (although his reactions have grown in recent months, probably helped by injury keeping him off television for a while) whereas Ambrose and Rollins engaged in an all-out brawl that everyone could relate too. Betrayal, anger and vengeance were the key themes and at that point I was convinced Ambrose would win the World Championship in 2015. At Hell in a Cell they main evented the pay-per-view over a John Cena versus Randy Orton match. It was a momentous occasion but then Rollins won… via Bray Wyatt interference and Ambrose has been damaged goods since. The reason this doesn’t quite reach feud of the year is simply due to a flat and unsatisfying ending. Next up we have the Sami Zayn versus Adrian Neville rivalry. A rivalry which spawned out of friendship between the two top babyfaces in NXT and grew into so much more. When Neville defended his Championship in a fatal-four way he made a life altering decision when he pulled a referee out of the ring in order to preserve his Championship reign. What happened next was probably the best shades of grey style booking I’ve ever seen. Neither man was wholly good, Zayn at times was almost over the top in his angry rhetoric towards Neville, yet whilst Neville was clearly the more morally ambiguous of the two neither man was full blown heel either. It led to a fantastic story where Zayn got a little more serious and started his path to redemption which culminated in a classic at the final NXT special of the year where Zayn defeated Neville to win the NXT Championship. It was a fantastic moment and a fitting end to a brilliantly booked feud. There’s a reason why one reddit user sent Triple H a fruit basket as a show of gratitude for that particular NXT special. And finally we come on to the winner: The Daniel Bryan versus The Authority feud. Now this feud still strikes up a quandary for many wrestling fans especially when you consider the fact that all the evidence points towards the WWE not actually wanting the feud to end the way it did. But the fact that the crowd changed their mind and basically forced WWE to put the title on Bryan at Wrestlemania does not diminish what a fantastic feud it ended up being. It started off back in the build-up to Summerslam 2013 and continued all the way up until Bryan’s unfortunate injury. The crowning moment of course came at Wrestlemania where Bryan defeated Triple H followed by Randy Orton and Batista in one evening to become the WWE Heavyweight Champion of the World. It was special and for that reason it wins this particular award.

One-off Show of the Year:

The winner is: Wrestlemania XXX

There weren’t actually too many top to bottom great shows this year but a few did catch my eye. First would be ROH’s All Star Extravaganza VI, a card which was very good on paper actually delivered even more. It had a truly shocking moment for even the most jaded fan when Jay Briscoe surprisingly unseated Michael Elgin to become only the second two-time Ring of Honor World Champion. Every match on the card at worst served a purpose and at best was one of the matches of the year. Adam Cole and AJ Styles absolutely stole the show and ROH even managed to salvage an unfortunate situation with ACH by replacing him with Cedric Alexander and giving us a great last minute match for the Television Championship. The main event, however, did fall a little flat as the Young Bucks and reDRagon failed to meet my ludicrously high expectations as their two out of three falls match paled in comparison to their mesmerising War of the Worlds clash. ROH has a second entry with their big annual Final Battle event. Another card where every match was noteworthy and even saw some sleeper matches such as Adam Page versus Roderick Strong and the opening Four Corner Survival which surprised many people with their quality. The 6-Man Tag and Tag Team Championship matches were fantastic and although the Television Championship match was disappointing the main event made up for it with a brutal Fight Without Honor. Once again Adam Cole proved why he was the MVP of pro wrestling in 2014 and it neatly wrapped up an angle that had lasted well over a year. PWG had a shout with their own big annual show, the Battle of Los Angeles. More specifically the second night of this year’s mammoth three night extravaganza. Another card which had nary a bad match in sight. Candice tore it up in the opener with Rich Swann. Zack Sabre, Jr. and Adam Cole had a fabulous match and ACH and Kenny Omega had a match that encapsulated what makes PWG such a fantastic promotion. Now into the WWE events starting with a show that earned Triple H a fruit basket: Takeover: [R]Evolution. From one of the best WWE women’s matches in years between Charlotte and Sasha Banks to a good Tag Team Championship match to Finn Balor’s mind blowing entrance everything was top notch. Even the Baron Corbin segment was both inoffensive and short but the start and end of the show were what left the biggest impression. The debut at the start of the show of Kevin Owens made him seem like a big deal straight away and Sami Zayn’s conclusion to his redemption angle was executed perfectly. Of course post-match was the cherry on top of the already remarkable cake. Sami Zayn’s celebration was so satisfying to watch and seeing Owens turn on Zayn to end the show was one of those moments where you can’t help but be completely immersed in the action. The whole show in fact reminded me of what it felt like to watch wrestling as a child, and there’s nothing more special than that feeling. That point brings me nicely onto the eventual winner of this award: Wrestlemania XXX. WWE may not have had a landmark year and, if we’re being honest, it has been hard to sit through at times. However, at Wrestlemania XXX they knocked it out of the park. I talked about how rare it is for me to be legitimately surprised by the outcome of match these days when referring to Briscoe beating Elgin for the World Championship earlier but that does not even begin to compare to the utter shock of the streak finally ending. The show itself was not particularly mind blowing match wise. The Undertaker versus Brock Lesnar match was far from a classic, usual match of the night stealers The Shield took part in what was essentially a glorified squash and Bray Wyatt versus John Cena felt ultimately less important than almost everything else in the world. However, Wrestlemania XXX was Daniel Bryan’s night and he seized his opportunity with both hands. He tore the house down with Triple H in one of the best opening matches in Wrestlemania history and the moment where he beat Batista and Randy Orton in the main event to win the WWE World Heavyweight Championship was as perfect a moment as you can get. One that will live long in the memories of most pro wrestling fans and will be shown in highlight reels for years to come. All five shows I talked about here were fantastically entertaining in different ways but the special feel of Wrestlemania and unadulterated joy that Bryan’s victory brought me puts it over the top. By far the best Wrestlemania in many a year.

Best Moment of the Year:

The winner is: Daniel Bryan wins the WWE World Heavyweight Championship

For me this came down to three very special moments. The first was the Royal Rumble crowd’s complete refusal to accept the narrative that WWE was trying to push. It was special because I can’t remember a crowd ever wanting something so badly that they actually forced WWE to change their plans and, full credit to WWE - they did. But at the Rumble, in a place not particulary regarded as a hotbed for pro wrestling in Pittsburgh, the so called WWE Universe was actually the Daniel Bryan universe. They rejected yet another John Cena versus Randy Orton bout and mercilessly booed the inevitably doomed to fail Batista babyface Rumble win. It was all very surreal and so toxic that it forced WWE to actually run with Bryan. Of course, in the end it mattered little as injuries and a disastrously bad feud with Kane meant we never got the Bryan Championship reign that we all wanted to see but that crowd helped change the course of WWE history and that is something very special. The next amazing moment is one I’ve touched upon earlier, Sami Zayn finally reaching the pinnacle of NXT by dethroning the longest reigning NXT Champion in history in Adrian Neville. A story that was perfectly written from Neville’s “do anything to retain the Championship” attitude to Zayn becoming that little bit edgier that he needed to be in order to “win the big one”. It is rare that a storyline is executed so flawlessly but this one was. But the winner was obvious to me. Pro wrestling often makes me feel very extreme emotions, both good and bad but I don’t think I’ve ever felt as happy as I did when Daniel Bryan won the WWE World Heavyweight Championship at Wrestlemania. Moments don’t come as special as that, or at least I didn’t think it was possible for them to. And that’s all I can say on that moment because I don’t feel I can adequately articulate quite how it made me feel nor do can I possibly do justice to the moment itself.

Breakout Star of the Year:

The winner is: Sami Zayn

Another obvious one: Sami Zayn. It had to be him this year, it just had to be. When the year started Zayn was someone who was making tracks in NXT but wasn’t a top guy. He would have great matches with everyone but he didn’t seem to be considered as a potential future main eventer. That all changed in 2014. He is by far the most over person in the promotion and rightfully so because he has had brilliant matches, delivered brilliant promos and been booked almost perfectly. He came out of 2014 looking like a star and if he is booked half as well on the main roster as he has been on NXT then there is no question in my mind that the unknown Canadian who was signed to WWE in 2013 with apparently no prior wrestling experience has become a star. He’s taken the spot in my heart that a certain El Generico held before he admirably went back to Mexico to look after the orphans that he loves so much. Zayn was the only choice for breakout star and I can only hope he has as good a 2015 as he has 2014. 

Minor End-Year Awards:

Face of the Year: Candice LeRae

Heel of the Year: Adam Cole

Commentator of the Year: Excalibur

Gimmick/Character of the Year: The Young Bucks’ overly self-aware gimmick

Tag Team of the Year: reDRagon

Promo of the Year: Dean Ambrose wants to stuff Seth Rollins’ hair where his teeth used to be

Finisher of the Year: The Meltzer Driver

Spot/Bump of the Year: The Young Bucks superkick Candice with a Thumbtacked boot

Worst Moment of the Year: Daniel Bryan not being in the Royal Rumble match

Televised Show of the Year (consistency-wise): NXT