I already posted this in the forum but Shane's post inspired me to clean it up and add comments. Perhaps this will lead to actual posting from me on this wonderful blog.
And Shane, you are indeed a brain-dead douchebag.
LOU THESZ/RIC FLAIR AWARD (WRESTLER OF THE YEAR)
1.) Tito Ortiz
2.) Bryan Danielson
3.) Edge
4.) John Cena
First, the people I left out. I'm not a fan of Mistico's in-ring work. Chris Hero wasn't anywhere as good as Danielson in-ring and drew nothing, and that goes for anyone else wrestling in the US not in the WWE as well. Matt Hughes and Mirko Cro Cop both would've been serious contenders except they had a loss during the time period (12/05-11/06). It's hard enough to consider undefeated MMA guys vs. wrestlers, yet alone guys who got beat.
Tito led UFC to a ridiculous year, drawing at the time their highest buyrate, starring on the most-watched of the sequels to TUF, and winning three of three fights. Granted, two of them were against Ken Shamrock and another was a very close split decision against a borderline contender, but MMA still has no stronger candidate.
Danielson had an unbelievable run of good to awesome matches with all sorts of people. ROH makes money as the third or fourth biggest promotion in the country, and grew some in attendance this year with Danielson as champion. If Danielson had this working year in a major company or even TNA, he'd be an easy pick.
Edge and Cena are hard to separate, as they feuded for half of the voting period. Edge was the breakout star of the year; it's easy to forget that he started 2006 as an upper midcarder and was getting old enough to where it appeared he might never be a true top guy. He ended it as probably top long-term heel in the company. Edge is the best "total package" eligible for this award, combining very good in-ring with good drawing power and good talking, and he was also able to turn Cena back face when that looked impossible.
Cena coming into this year was receiving a huge fan backlash and had a reputation as a mediocre worker. During the year, he managed to get back as a top face for potentially a long time to come, starred in a movie that didn't bomb, and had a bunch of good matches with a number of different people. He's the face of the WWE.
I can't see these four in any order really being wrong, and I've vacillated on which placement to go with many times. In the end, it depends on how much you think MMA is wrestling (I think it clearly is) and how much Tito Ortiz is responsible for the rise of UFC (I think greatly).
MOST OUTSTANDING WRESTLER
1.) Bryan Danielson
2.) Nigel McGuinness
3.) Edge
Danielson had a bunch of great matches and more or less no bad matches and is miles ahead of anyone for this category. Nigel had a great feud with Danielson and a bunch of good stuff with other people. It seems a bit specious to place Edge third and not vote for him first for wrestler of the year, but the gap between him and Danielson here is massive while the gap between him and Tito is small.
BEST BOX OFFICE DRAW
1.) Mistico
2.) Tito Ortiz
3.) John Cena
Mistico wrestling or not wrestling makes or breaks a show for a major promotion, which you can't say for anyone else, anywhere. Ortiz was responsible for two of the larger of the UFC spikes this year, UFC 59 and UFC 61. There's an argument for Matt Hughes over Cena, but without knowing what UFC 65 did while also considering the effect of Royce Gracie on UFC 60's business, Cena is a safer choice if not clearly superior.
FEUD OF THE YEAR
1.) John Cena vs. Edge
2.) Tito Ortiz vs. Ken Shamrock
3.) ROH vs. CZW
The WWE accidentally stumbled upon the feud that carried their top brand, which says it all about WWE these days. Ortiz/Shamrock, the feud that will never end, actually ended. Well, probably. ROH/CZW was the best booked feud in ages.
TAG TEAM OF THE YEAR
1.) LAX
2.) Paul London and Brian Kendrick
3.) Austin Aries and Roderick Strong
I probably should've voted for the Kings of Wrestling somewhere but I'm not a huge watcher of random indy stuff and I didn't see them in any truly epic matches. Shane, feel free to point me in the right direction. The state of major tag team wrestling makes me sad, although LAX and to a lesser extent Rated RKO are promising.
MOST IMPROVED
1.) Nigel McGuinness
2.) Johnny Nitro
3.) John Cena
Nigel just got his catchphrase stolen by Hillary Clinton, who is now in it to win it. I find this hilarious for some reason. Anyways, Nigel was good before this year but had multiple MOTY candidates and I don't know that anyone could've possibly seen that coming. Johnny Nitro got quite good at some point while I wasn't really paying attention to him, and appears to be on the road from Tough Enough to the top of the card. Cena went from a terrible worker to a decent worker and even pulled a good match out of Rob Van Dam. I also considered voting for Delirious and Jeff Hardy so Shane isn't miles off base here.
BEST ON INTERVIEWS
1.) Mick Foley
2.) John Cena
3.) Konnan
Foley in his couple months blew everyone else away, as always. Cena makes the best of some really terrible material. He's not The Rock, but he's good. Konnan rules and I never thought in a million years I'd say that.
MOST CHARISMATIC
1.) John Cena
2.) Edge
3.) Tito Ortiz
Cena gets reactions just off of existing. Edge has always seemed like a star but never crossed the line until 2006. Tito is Tito.
BEST TECHNICAL WRESTLER
1.) Bryan Danielson
2.) Nigel McGuinness
3.) William Regal
Yep, no Chris Benoit in this category.
BRUISER BRODY MEMORIAL AWARD (BEST BRAWLER)
1.) Finlay
2.) Edge
3.) Necro Butcher
Finlay came out of retirement and was a serious candidate for most outstanding worker. Edge and Necro run the gauntlet of WWE brawling to insane death match stuff.
BEST FLYING WRESTLER
1.) Jack Evans
2.) Rey Mysterio
3.) AJ Styles
Jack Evans wants to die. Mysterio with non-functioning knees still does almost as good flying stuff as anyone and doesn't completely forget match psychology like a lot of the flippy-floppy guys. AJ is one of the better of those types which isn't saying much.
MOST OVERRATED
1.) Batista
2.) Triple H
3.) Jeff Jarrett
Where do you even start? This category is meant for the most heavily pushed without merit, and Batista is a guy with a monster main event push who can't work a lick in his post-injury form. Triple H, 2006 version, is a slightly above average worker booked like he's a god walking amongst men. Jeff Jarrett is an okay worker booked the same, but in a company where that doesn't mean as much, plus he did disappear towards the end of the year.
MOST UNDERRATED
1.) William Regal
2.) Shelton Benjamin
3.) Matt Hardy
Regal is tough to pinpoint because he interacted a lot with the SmackDown main event crew while still being much lower on the actual cards. I'd love to see what would happen if they gave him a run as a heel main eventer because his work is there and he can draw the appropriate heat. WWE's treatment of Shelton the last 2 years has been criminal. Matt Hardy will never get the push he deserves for political reasons, but he's a good worker who's very over and has never even sniffed a top run.
The fact that all three of these guys are WWE workers is disturbing to that company's prospects.
PROMOTION OF THE YEAR
1.) UFC
2.) ROH
3.) CMLL
UFC's rise this year was truly insane. ROH does good business and puts out a product vastly superior in pretty much every way to every other American company. And I hate the ROHbots as well. The last spot could be any number of companies: CMLL, NOAH, CHIKARA, SHIMMER, WWE, pick one. They're all varying degrees of successful and decent but nothing stands out to me.
BEST WEEKLY TELEVISION SHOW
1.) UFC The Ultimate Fighter
2.) WWE RAW
3.) WWE SmackDown
This is nearly by default as the American weekly TV that exists seriously sucks and I don't watch weekly foreign stuff. I like RAW a little better then SmackDown, probably because it's booked like a bigger deal, but they're both hit and miss on a number of levels. ECW has had a couple good weeks but man, when it sucks it sucks hard.
SHOOTFIGHTER OF THE YEAR
1.) Georges St. Pierre
2.) Mirko Cro Cop
3.) Chuck Liddell
GSP beat a top welterweight and then the clear-cut number one welterweight in his 2006. Nobody else has that level of accomplishment. Cro Cop lost the fight to Mark Hunt in 12/05 but came back to impressively destroy Wanderlai and Barnett en route to the PRIDE Openweight Grand Prix. Tim Sylvia, you're next. If Chuck's murdering of Tito counted he'd have won here.
WORKED MATCH OF THE YEAR
1.) Bryan Danielson vs. KENTA, ROH Glory By Honor V Night 2
2.) Bryan Danielson vs. Nigel McGuinness, ROH Unified
3.) Samoa Joe, BJ Whitmer, Bryan Danielson, Adam Pearce, Ace Steele, and Homicide vs. Claudio Castagnoli, Chris Hero, Nate Webb, Necro Butcher, and Eddie Kingston (ROH vs. CZW Cage of Death), ROH Death Before Dishonor IV
Danielson/KENTA was built to actually mean something and was technically phenomenal with an incredible ending sequence. Danielson/Nigel was a great technical match with a great crowd and the most insane bump I've seen in forever. I liked Cage of Death massively, much more then the 6-man from the same angle, but I have been accused before of liking overbooked garbage matches when done in small doses and right. This felt like an old Crockett/WCW War Games, which nothing has in many years.
SHOOT MATCH OF THE YEAR
1.) Diego Sanchez vs. Karo Parisyan, UFC Ultimate Fight Night 6
2.) Matt Hughes vs. BJ Penn, UFC 63
3.) Josh Barnett vs. Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira, PRIDE Final Conflict
Hughes/Penn is probably my favorite match of the year, along with Tito/Forrest and GSP/Hughes, but Diego/Karo was just nuts. Barnett/Big Nog was a hell of a match that could've gone either way.
ROOKIE OF THE YEAR
No vote. Of the people I had seen, none were any good, and I wasn't going to watch a bunch of random NOAH opening matches hoping to find an identifiable new guy who didn't suck.
BEST NON-WRESTLING PERFORMER
1.) Konnan
2.) Maria
3.) Armando Alejandro Estrada
Konnan, after years of stinking up rings all around the world and talking about tossing salads, finally found a role where he was awesome. Maria is so good at playing braindead that she's probably not acting and she's insanely hot. AAE is a throwback to the old heel managers.
BEST TELEVISION ANNOUNCER
1.) John Layfield
2.) Joey Styles
3.) Joe Rogan
JBL buries guys for no reason way too much, but he's absolutely hilarious. Styles isn't as good as he was when he was allowed to actually speak freely, but he's still better then most. Joe Rogan does some of the best hard sells in the history of the world and manages to at the same time know what he's talking about but come across like an enthusiastic fan.
WORST TELEVISION ANNOUNCER
1.) Jonathan Coachman
2.) Don West
3.) Todd Grisham
Coachman actually commentated large segments earlier in the year and he was terrible. Don West has been doing this for almost five years and knows next to nothing. I only actually had to deal with Grisham commentating a couple times, but he was perhaps worse at it then anybody has been in a long time and thus beat out serial crappy announcers like Tenay and Lawler.
BEST MAJOR WRESTLING SHOW
1.) Ring of Honor Glory By Honor V Night 2
2.) Ring of Honor Unified
3.) WWE Unforgiven
The top two ROH shows have MOTYC main events, one other borderline MOTYC (Nigel/Marufuji and Briscoes/Aries and Strong), undercards of solid work, and some historical significance in so much as a ROH show ever can have that. Unforgiven had a borderline MOTYC candidate Cena/Edge main, a decent spectacle of DX/Team McMahon as the semi-main, and some random quality stuff like Trish/Lita and Carlito/Orton underneath. Also, I didn't want to come across as a serious ROH shill. I haven't seen the full Battle of LA cards and I don't know that a whole lot of other indy stuff can be called "major" reasonably.
CATEGORY B AWARDS
WORST MAJOR SHOW OF THE YEAR
1.) WWE The Great American Bash, 7/23 in Indianapolis, IN
This was the most crappy pay per view, although not the most boring. There were lots of both. December to Dismember is outside the voting period but the clear frontrunner for the 2007 awards and would've won this year if we're doing a calendar year.
BEST WRESTLING MANUEVER
1.) Bryan Danielson's Cattle Mutilation
It's a cool-looking move and doesn't involve ridiculous overt cooperation or flipping.
MOST DISGUSTING PROMOTIONAL TACTIC
1.) WWE uses Eddie Guerrero's death in storylines
Don't know how anyone could vote for anything else, although "TNA signs Kurt Angle" certainly has the potential to be there looking back.
WORST TELEVISION SHOW
1.) TNA Impact
Impact wouldn't be horrible if they trimmed half their roster and had a two-hour show. Seriously.
WORST MATCH OF THE YEAR
1.) Big Show vs. Batista, 8/1 ECW on Sci-Fi
This is a forgotten horrible match that the crowd turned on as bad as I've ever seen a crowd turn. Sure, they were the remnants of the ECW mutants, but this wasn't good no matter who it was in front of.
WORST FEUD OF THE YEAR
1.) DX vs. the McMahons
I'm including all the iterations here since it was one really long program. Sure, there's feuds that were worse, but they didn't go on for TEN MONTHS. This thing had a whole initial life from early-December 2005 through WrestleMania with Vince vs. Shawn, which got tired quickly, then they added Shane and Triple H and went for another half-year. If this didn't involve the McMahon family prominently, it would've been aborted at maybe two months. Instead, it was booked to at times overshadow everything else on the roster for months on end and led to a couple decent but not great matches and not much money drawn.
WORST PROMOTION
1.) TNA
WWE is at least still profitable. TNA has hemorrhaged money for five years now and has such clueless management that they brought Vince Russo in for a second run after his first one tanked.
BEST BOOKER
1.) Gabe Sapolsky (ROH)
Ring of Honor had the awesome ROH/CZW angle and the great booking of Bryan Danielson as the throwback champion. Seeing stuff actual make sense and have continuity is shocking.
PROMOTER OF THE YEAR
1.) Dana White (UFC)
Dana uses a lot of F-bombs but man, UFC has exploded in 2006.
BEST GIMMICK
1.) LAX
LAX reminds me a lot of the 1997 version of the Hart Foundation.
WORST GIMMICK
1.) DX
This was a great gimmick in 1998. Wrestling has changed a lot since then, and here are two guys, both around age 40, one a born-again Christian whose been a top guy since 1995 or so and the other the heir apparent to the WWE empire, bopping around like it's still 1998. Sure, it gets a good pop, but it's done next-to-nothing for actual business, taken up a ton of screen time, and doesn't appear to actually be going anywhere except another epic HBK/HHH feud.
BEST WRESTLING BOOK
No vote. I breezed Bischoff's book and it sucked.
BEST PRO WRESTLING DVD
1.) Best There Is, Best There Was, Best There Ever Will Be: The Bret Hart Story
WWE has put out some great DVDs this year - off the top of my head, the Pillman DVD, the Superstar Graham DVD, and the AWA DVD were excellent - and Heroes of World Class was also very good. But Bret's has a great feature and an awesome match-listing, which puts it amongst the must-have wrestling DVDs of all-time.
