The 411 Wrestling Year-End Awards: Part One – The Biggest Disappointments of 2014

Welcome back to the Wrestling Top 5, year-end awards edition! What we are going to is take a topic, and all the writers here on 411 will have the ability to give us their Top 5 on said topic, and the end, based on where all of these topics rank on people’s list, we will create an overall Top 5 list. It looks a little like this…

1st – 5
2nd – 4
3rd – 3
4th – 2
5th – 1

It’s similar to how we do the WOTW voting. At the end we tally the scores and get our overall top 5! It’s highly non-official and final, like WWE’s old power rankings. From some of the best and worst, the 411 staff is ready to break down the awards! Thanks for joining us, and lets get down to work.

1. Daniel Bryan’s injury derails his title run. – Daniel Bryan started 2014 as the hottest act in WWE. He put on fantastic in-ring performances, and yet the powers that be constantly denied him opportunities to shine. All of that changed in the build to WrestleMania 30 and at the biggest show of the year, when Bryan resurfaced in the main event scene, and got to defeat Triple H, Randy Orton, and Batista in the same night, putting on two MOTYCs in the process. As auspicious as his coronation may have been, Bryan’s title reign never got off the runway. He suffered from middling booking in a poorly planned program with Kane, and after one successful title defense at Extreme Rules, went on the DL with neck and shoulder issues, and hasn’t had a match since. I certainly hope Bryan will pick up again in the main event scene when he finally returns, but we’ll have to wait and see if WWE gives him another shot at that level.

1. The WWE’s worst year ever – If I had 20 votes in this category, they all would have been WWE-related. That’s how bad the WWE has been in 2014. Creatively it’s been the worst I’ve seen in 40 years of watching the product. Monetarily the WWE is losing tens of millions of dollars for the first time since it went public back in 1999. Vince even buried his own talent in early December during his interview with Austin. Genius! I keep thinking they’ve hit bottom and it’s time for the inevitable rebound, but they keep getting worse. Trying to think about what the WWE is doing while it’s doing it can make your head hurt. The biggest problem is there’s a lot of WWE to see and most of it’s bad. No wonder they can’t sell Network subscriptions. You can’t expect people to pay for a lousy product.

1. WWE Stops Trying – It’s the only answer that I can come up with that explains the year they’ve had. While crowds have remained steady, the action in the ring and the total lack of excitement in the product harkens back to the dark days of the WWF in 1995. The maddening thing is that EVERYONE knows what the issue is…the product is stale. EVERYONE knows what needs to be done to fix it….make new stars. It’s not even make new stars but give us something different. It’s why fans gravitated to heavily to Daniel Bryan. He was something different from the norm. However, fear of the fact that ratings largely drop when John Cena is not on top (a fact) and the dire need to get up network subscriptions means we will have Cena for a while with zero effort being put into almost everyone else except Roman Reigns. If Reigns doesn’t catch hold (the jury’s out) then we could be in for another long year.

1. Daniel Bryan’s Injury Ruins WWE Title Run – Since I first watched him in Ring of Honor back in 2006, Daniel Bryan has been my favorite wrestler. When he signed with the WWE, people questioned if he would ever amount to anything on the big stage. He debuted on NXT, got fired from Nexus, re-hired and then proceeded to start winning. He entered WrestleMania 28 as World Champion, but lost in 18 seconds. He did get his WrestleMania moment this year though, as he beat Triple H, Batista and Randy Orton in one night to become the WWE World Heavyweight Champion. While his first PPV defense was against Kane, he managed to get a really good match out of him and I was looking forward to a solid run at the top. Alas, life can be cruel as Bryan suffered an injury and was forced to relinquish the championship. Hopefully, he can return and pick up where he left off, to become champion again.

1. Daniel Bryan goes from best week ever to worst MONTHS ever – During WrestleMania XXX week, Daniel Bryan was riding high. He could honestly call himself the luckiest man on the planet, and not many would have argued with him. The wrestling world was at his finger tips, and fans were loving it. He was going to get his ‘moment’ at WrestleMania XXX and the payoff we all suspected since for months. WWE World Champion with a soon to be bride? Life could not get any better. Sadly, it was too good to be true. A series of events brought the mood down…down…down, and down some more. It was just one thing after another. His dream became a nightmare. By the time summer rolled around, he was forced to relinquish the top prize in the industry, have surgery, and sit on the sidelines. To this day, his wrestling future is in doubt. Unbelievable fall from grace. Hopefully, he gets healthy as soon as possible and reclaims his main event spot in 2015.

1. The Ultimate Warrior Passes Away – As much as I could use a storyline event, injury, backstage shenanigans or a horrible pay per view as fodder to declare each as a grand disappointment, nothing broke my heart more than hearing of The Ultimate Warrior’s passing the night after the Raw following WrestleMania. To see Warrior reconciling his differences with WWE, the glow his family had when he was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame and the awesome – and now eerily prophetic speech he gave on RAW was amazing to see unfold. Warrior was one of my heroes growing up. Even if we did not share philosophical or political beliefs, I could not bring myself to use that as a reason to not be flooded with sadness over his loss – not only for my own selfish reasons, but for the loss fans and his family felt. Warrior was going to be WWE’s ambassador – and he would have been an amazing one had he lived. This was heartbreaking.

1. The Death of the Legitimate Number Two US Promotion – For the entirety of my twenty-five years as a wrestling fan and, for many years before that, professional wrestling fans had a choice of watching one of at least two promotions that were available to millions of people on a national basis. Granted, at different points over those years, the gaps in popularity between the number one promotion and the number two promotion were large and at different points the gaps in quality between the number one and the number two promotion were large, but that number two promotion was there, it was a somewhat viable business entity, and virtually all of the nation’s populace had access to it on either through syndication on broadcast television or through a relatively inexpensive basic cable subscription. In late 2014, that changed, and it appears to be a change that is at least semi-permanent, if not entirely permanent. People point to the year 2001 as being when WWE reached near-monopoly levels in the professional wrestling industry, but, in some ways, this year was worse. Yes, both WCW and ECW went out of business in 2001, but at least TNA came to be in 2002 and was actively working towards a prominent television deal, which it ultimately earned in 2004. This year, however, saw TNA forced off of SpikeTV, a network which is available across the country on virtually all basic cable packages, and on to Destination American, with significantly reduced penetration and shoehorned in between niche programs like UFO documentaries and reality shows about bacon. Meanwhile, though Ring of Honor has grown as a result of its purchase by Sinclair Broadcasting, the promotion is still well below where it needs to be to become a competitive number two, as it lacks exposure in major markets such as New York and Los Angeles. Even Lucha Underground, which was much-hyped due to the involvement of Survivor producer and television bigwig Mark Burnett, has failed to emerge as anything other than a novelty. Also, given other developments this year, it appears highly unlikely that any of these groups or any new players in the field will have any opportunity to reach the level WCW was at relative to the WWF for most of its existence or even the level TNA was at relative to WWE for most of its existence. That’s because both TNA and WWE’s attempts to land television deals in 2014 came up with dreadful results this year, showing that, even though there are more cable networks competing with each other for viewers’ eyes than ever before, networks of significance are not placing any value on wrestling promotions as a programming source. The net result of all of this is that only people who will see alternatives to the E’s vision of professional wrestling are the people who are willing to dig deep or spend a fair amount of extra money for those products, which is a small, small minority. This is a major shift in the landscape of professional wrestling from a fan’s perspective, and it is not a positive one.

1. Daniel Bryan’s Injury – Nothing was more disappointing this year than Daniel Bryan’s neck injury. Not only did prematurely end a well deserved WWE World Heavyweight Title reign for D-Bry, but it drastically changed the direction of the top of the card, and will probably have more long term effects on WWE’s trust in smaller guys in the near future. Was creative dropping the ball by pairing D-Bry up with Kane straight out of the box? Probably, but him running up against Brock Lesnar at Summerslam this year would have been awesome. We lost that. Us getting to ride with D-Bry at the top of the card and see where he goes afterward? Lost that too. Their is no doubt in my mind that D-Bry’s injury was the most disappointing thing about wrestling this year.

1. The Sad Tale of Daniel Bryan – The story of Daniel Bryan leading into WrestleMania 30 ended up as a fairy tale for “that super hero” as Booker T would call him. Daniel Bryan, a guy that many of us had followed for years, who was told he was too bland, too small and not over enough to be the guy (brother) in the WWE had turned the wrestling audience in his favor. He went to WrestleMania and had the dream night, a tremendous match to vanquish the evil Triple H and then his title match. He won the WWE Title that night, and not only completed the journey but left a lasting moment for wrestling fans. Many of us hoped that this would and could be his year, but the neck injury, surgery and issues following that make WrestleMania 30 seem like an eternity ago. For as great as the moment at WrestleMania 30 was, I can only imagine how painful and frustrating the rest of the year has been for Daniel Bryan.

1. The Shield split up prematurely – Objectively, Daniel Bryan’s 2014 going horrifically off the rails was the most disappointing thing that happened in wrestling this year, but in terms of what actually upset shallow, selfish old me the most in 2014 it was my favourite pro wrestling act in eons and eons inexplicably imploding at the height of their popularity. Prior to Seth Rollins’ heinous backstab of his brethren, The Shield were having an eye-wateringly brilliant 2014, putting on a classic six man tag seemingly every week and submitting two entries into the Feud of the Year award (which 411 isn’t actually doing this year- hopefully Dean Ambrose won’t come after us) with their wars against Evolution and The Wyatt Family. Then Seth’s heel turn happened and it was monumentally shit and dumb. The explanation given was so bland it could have justified every other heel turn in pro wrestling history- “you know the way I have behaving for the past 18 months? WELL ALL ALONG I HAVE BEEN HARBOURING A SECRET DESIRE TO BEHAVE IN AN ENTIRELY DIFFERENT WAY!” The potential feuds that seemed to dovetail so effortlessly from the breakup didn’t really work out- Reigns-Rollins was curtailed by the former’s injury, while Ambrose-Rollins gave us some fun matches but never received a conclusive ending. As singles stars, their fortunes have been mixed; Rollins has established himself as a consistent main event presence and is looking fantastic, but Dean Ambrose has been the victim of some very questionable booking, and Roman Reigns has shown little to justify his status as the bearer of all of WWE’s hopes and dreams for the future. The most infuriating thing, though, is the feeling that the reason The Shield broke up was not out of a genuine belief that they would be better off alone, but just because creative were too lazy to come up with proper rivalries for them. Yes, they’d beaten all the current competition- so create some new competition! If you need time to create competition, give the three singles runs to test the waters, but don’t irrevocably split them up! Keep them aligned! ALIGNED I SAY! These dark winter months where little effort is put into the shows would have been so much more bearable with the Shield around- just throw them in the ring with three random opponents and 95% of the time you’d get a show saving encounter. I’m aware all good things must come to an end, but if God booked the Earth like WWE booked The Shield, the apocalypse would have occurred in 1845, before True Detective had been made or anything. Is that what you wished had happened? Hmmm?

5. Warrior Makes Amends With WWE, Then Tragically Passes Away. – 9 points

4. The Streak Ends – 11 points

3. CM Punk Leaves WWE – 15 points

2. WWE Pretty Much Sucks – 16 points

1. Daniel Bryan Achieves His Dream – Then Has to Miss The Rest of The Year – 40 points

THE 2014 411 WRESTLING AWARDS:

* The Biggest Disappointments of The Year: Daniel Bryan Achieves His Dream – Then Has to Miss The Rest of The Year – 40 points
* The Best Promo of The Year: TO BE DETERMINED (January 6th)
* The Best Tag Team of The Year: TO BE DETERMINED (January 7th)
* The Worst PPV/Major Show of The Year: TO BE DETERMINED (January 8th)
* The Best Female of The Year: TO BE DETERMINED (January 9th)
* The Best PPV/Major Show of The Year: TO BE DETERMINED (January 12th)
* The Best Promotion of The Year: TO BE DETERMINED (January 13th)
* The Best Match of The Year: TO BE DETERMINED (January 14th)
* The Best Wrestler of The Year: TO BE DETERMINED (January 15th)