My Wrestling Yearbook – 2019

This is the next chapter of a year by year retrospective from my viewpoint as a wrestling fan. What did I watch, what was good, what was bad, which men and women were the best and what matches and moments stood out.

2018 ended on an equally bright and sour note. In WWE the women’s side finished things up in spectacular fashion but the men’s side was a total shambles. And outside of WWE there was a similar dichotomy as the Elite were doing wonders for Ring of Honor in 2018 while bogging down New Japan with their self indulgent circle jerk feud against their former Bullet Club allies. But while that was where things started, it sure wasn’t where they would end as 2019 would be a year of major upheaval on all fronts.

A new company formed, All Elite Wrestling, that would shake the very foundations of the wrestling industry. NXT would come out of the shadows of the WWE Network and hit cable television, while Smackdown would graduate from cable to network TV on Fox. A bidding war would begin for top talent as some big names would sign on with the fledgling new game in town and others would opt to stay put. One name in particular, Dean Ambrose, would shock the wrestling world by announcing that he was not going to re-sign with the WWE. If Ambrose, a Grand Slam champion and one third of one of the biggest acts of the last decade in the Shield, was fair game to jump then anything was possible.

The WWE was at it’s most seemingly vulnerable in years. After WrestleMania, ratings took a nosedive and attendance for RAW and Smackdown evaporated. Tarped off sections and audible echoes were a regular thing on TV during the summer, and it seemed as if years of dogpiling from podcasters, YouTube guys, dirtsheets, etc had finally added up and reached the general audience. And with an upstart company with some big names about to arrive in a few months, tolerance for anything less than stellar from WWE was the lowest it had been in some time. This made for some stark reactions at different points of the year, to put it lightly. And some very bizarre moves….wildcard rule, anyone?

So what was good and what wasn’t?

The Good

KofiMania! There’s no way you can go into the good things about 2019 and not lead off with that. KofiMania was one of the best wrestling stories ever put together, period. From it’s beginning to all the twists and turns all the way through the big payoff at WrestleMania. In 2019 it was rare to see the entire WWE Universe in agreement on anything but there we were jumping up and down, some with tears in our eyes, when Kofi Kingston pinned Daniel Bryan to become WWE World Champion.

It’s rare that a wrestling story sticks the landing so well but they completely nailed it here.  Every beat along the way fit the story and the characters like a glove, there were great callbacks along the way and the finish was perfect.  Kudos forever to everyone involved.

That wasn’t all. Continuing where they left off in 2018, the WWE women’s division continued to shine. This year they hit even more milestones:

• First WrestleMania main event
• Women’s Tag Team Titles Established
• 3 More PPV main events
• 3 women’s matches or more on seven different PPVs (and two PPVs with four)
• The first ever women’s match in Saudi Arabia

NXT reached what may have been it’s absolute apex in terms of in house talent, so much so that they were legit able to stand next to both the RAW and Smackdown rosters at Survivor Series as equals. The quality of in ring wrestling had been on a par with the main roster for a while but now it was on display on national television. The Undisputed Era ruled the roost, but the women’s division was every bit as talented as their RAW and Smackdown counterparts.

And then there was AEW. The new company on the block started off gangbusters, opening to bigger crowds in the arenas and bigger audiences on TV than anyone had predicted. Their first show, Double or Nothing, featured the AEW debut of Jon Moxley (fka Dean Ambrose) and shook up the wrestling world in a way not seen since Lex Luger showed up at the end of the first episode of Nitro back in 1995.

The Bad

The men’s side in WWE continued to be a crapfest. Rollins’ championship reign, while very good to great in the ring, did not go over as well outside of it. It was a perfect storm of Vince shoving he and his wife Lynch into a cringey storyline together (the TV characters of Rollins and Lynch just don’t sync up well no matter how well the people playing them do in real life), Rollins just not being good at the earnest good guy type, and his very loud very online support for his employer at a time when the online railing against them was at an all time high. And Kofi’s title reign, while definitely not bad at all in booking or execution, had a perception problem. The reality is that while it may make for a great story to push a midcard/tag team guy to the World Title, if the audience’s view of them doesn’t change along the way then once you get that payoff you’re left with a World Champion that they don’t actually see as one.

There was some bad outside of WWE as well. The Elite leaving Ring of Honor to form AEW effectively killed all the gains the company had made during their time there, and New Japan was suddenly without a group of guys that they’d invested the last two years building into a big deal. For all intents and purposes two existing companies got the shiv in the name of creating a new one, and ROH would not recover. Now by no means were any of those guys obligated to keep working for ROH or New Japan but if we’re going to chronicle the history of things we need to mention all of it. One could say, and I would agree, that if anyone was looking for an alternative to WWE there were already viable ones in New Japan, ROH, and the various indie promotions that had gained prominence over in the mid 2010s. ROH was already on syndicated television, New Japan was being shown on AXS TV and both companies had streaming services. Access was far less of an issue that it was as recently as 2015. What AEW did, for good and ill, was to consolidate a large chunk of the featured players from those spaces under one roof. That made things easier for a lot of fans to watch them but it did have side effects.

I mentioned that there were some God awful booking decisions. The worst of the year was easily the Hell in a Cell main event, with a finish that had the whole building chanting ‘AEW!’ and effectively killed Rollins dead as a babyface. But that wasn’t the only one. Taking the Smackdown belt off of Asuka just so the WrestleMania main event could be winner take all was totally unfair to her and the other women on Smackdown. The women’s rumble and the aftermath were just plain baffling. With an end goal of a triple threat match for the main event, and with Becky having to win her way into the match being the story, having her win the Rumble and then taking it from her a week later was just bad. The blueprint was right there with the Yes Movement from 5 years prior, they could have just followed that instead. (I know what a lot of you are thinking about this and I’ll get to that at the end). Finally, there was Brock squashing Kofi. While I don’t take the same level of personal offense as others it was still wack as hell to end it that way, full stop.

And I couldn’t talk about the bad without mentioning the discourse.

Anything special happen?

The first women’s main event at WrestleMania.  No words can do it justice.  I’ve been watching pro wrestling since 1985 and at no point before maybe 2018 did I think this was possible.  Like it wasn’t even considered, it wasn’t argued, it wasn’t anything. Until 2016 women main eventing a PPV wasn’t even a thing people thought might happen.  So for them to main event the biggest show of the year was super huge.  And it gave us the greatest backstage women’s segment in WWE history:

Also…….Roman Reigns returned!  We didn’t know how things were gonna go when Roman announced he had leukemia and had to go away for treatment.  He said all the right things but I had no idea if he was heading off to a death sentence or early retirement instead of recovery.  So when he came back and announced that he was in remission, it was a wonderful day in wrestling. Shoot, I was happy that he’d recovered at all but he was going to be able to resume his career, too? That alone was enough to make this a good year.

Roman wasn’t the only one that made a comeback. Trish Stratus had her first singles match in over a decade at Summerslam. This was the first time as far as a I know that a female legend returned for a big singles match on a big show and not just a wacky tag team match or something. After years of watching the Undertaker, Kurt Angle, HHH, Goldberg, and other men come back for these kind of spotlights and paydays (and irony of irony, Goldberg was on the same show!), it’s a big deal to see women wrestlers get these kind of late career opportunities.

And of course there was the formation of AEW. The formation of a national wrestling company with a TV deal on a major cable network and money to sign people who could command top dollar from WWE, is nothing but a good thing. Monopolies are bad and while WWE did not fit the textbook definition of one, when it came to salaries in particular it absolutely was one of one at the time. Yes there were some side effects and some elements in it’s creation that weren’t so good. But it’s mere existence is a special thing for fans and the wrestlers themselves.

Lastly, there is one thing that is totally overlooked in the story of the turnaround of WWE and that is the move to the Fox network in October. After a six month onslaught of bad news this was something that even the most disingenuous of commentators could not turn into a negative. Pro wrestling getting another crack at network TV was something that hadn’t happened in a decade, and there was absolutely nothing bad about that. But that wasn’t all. By moving to a bigger platform that more people used, and to a good night for TV for families (Friday) they were essentially gifted 300 to 500k new viewers every week before they even booked anything.

Awards – Who was the best?

Top 5 Male Wrestlers: 1. Seth Rollins, 2. Kofi Kingston, 3. Daniel Bryan, 4. Roman Reigns, 5. Adam Cole

Man, this was tough. Rollins was the only one who had the kayfabe success and the performance level and the number of big spots all year long. Kofi was a clear second, but his run was killed dead on the Smackdown Fox premiere by Brock Lesnar and even before that he was presented as the clear number two champ to Rollins. Bryan did his usual stellar ring work but his post-Mania positioning was behind those two. Roman, after getting his bearings, was working as well as anyone in the second half of the year but did not chase anything significant. Adam Cole was King of the World in NXT and looked like he was poised to become a big deal in the future…..but it’s NXT, folks. Even in 2019 when they were at their closest to being equal to the main roster it’s still NXT.

Honorable Mentions:  Ricochet, Brock Lesnar, Samoa Joe, Mustafa Ali, Kazuchika Okada

Top 5 Women Wrestlers: 1. Becky Lynch, 2. Charlotte Flair, 3. Shayna Baszler, 4. Bayley, 5. Rhea Ripley

Lynch was the undisputed ruler of women’s wrestling in 2019 and there’s no plausible argument for anyone else there. The combination of performances in big spots, kayfabe victories and popularity were above what anyone else got that year in the entire industry let alone women’s wrestling. After her there was no lock for number two. Charlotte didn’t have as many big matches as she did in 2018 and thus did not match her run of stellar matches in big spots from the year before but still maintained her 2018 level when called to. Bayley had a big year in terms of winning things but there wasn’t any run of great matches to look back on and she got totally nerfed at Survivor Series. Shayna went on an all time run as NXT women’s champ but again there weren’t many great matches to come out of it. Ripley began her meteoric rise with maybe the best coming out party weekend of anyone to go through NXT but that started in November.

Honorable Mentions: Asuka, Sasha Banks, Trish Stratus

Standout Matches

• Sasha Banks vs Ronda Rousey. Royal Rumble
• Becky Lynch vs Asuka, Royal Rumble
• Charlotte Flair vs Asuka, March 26 Smackdown
• Kofi Kingston vs Daniel Bryan, WrestleMania 35
• Cody Rhodes vs Dustin Rhodes, Double or Nothing
• Seth Rollins vs AJ Styles, Money in the Bank
• Men’s Money in the Bank Ladder Match
• Charlotte Flair and Becky Lynch vs Sasha Banks and Bayley, September 9 Monday Night RAW
• Becky Lynch vs Sasha Banks, Hell in a Cell
• Women’s Wargames, NXT Takeover Wargames
• Men’s Elimination Match, Survivor Series

Others worth your time: Men’s and Women’s Elimination Chamber matches, the Shield vs Bobby Lashley, Drew McIntyre and Baron Corbin at Fastlane, Lynch vs Flair vs Rousey at WrestleMania*, Roman Reigns and the Undertaker vs McIntyre and Shane McMahon at Extreme Rules, Rollins and Lynch vs Corbin and Lacey Evans at Extreme Rules, Lynch vs Natalya at Summerslam, Flair vs Trish Stratus at Summerslam, Rollins vs Lesnar at Summerslam, Brock Lesnar vs Rey Mysterio at Survivor Series, 4 Way Womens’ Tag Team Title Match at WWE Starrcade

Match of the Year

Men: Kofi vs Bryan, WrestleMania

Was it the best match if you do the whole star rating, move counting thing? No. But I’d call it 4/5 for ringwork and 5/5 for story and emotion. And it was the best match on the biggest show of the year.

Women: Rousey vs Lynch vs Flair, WrestleMania 35

I know it’s crazy to put an honorable mention as match of the year. But hear me out. Was it a five star match? No. But by no means was it bad, or even average. Go back and watch it, it was a very good match in it’s own right. It had the unfortunate luck of being at the end of a show that was way too long and having to follow KofiMania earlier on. But it was the most important women’s match of the year, and it was good enough that it’s not just coasting off of sentimental value.

If you’re looking for the best worked match then I think either go with the Women’s Wargames or Becky vs Sasha at Hell in a Cell.

Show of the Year

WrestleMania 35

Is there any other choice? Whether it’s for history (the first women’s main event) or the best storybook ending (KofiMania), what else are you going with? The rest of the card was mostly good and there were few if any real stinkers. Yes it was too damn long, but you can’t get but so mad at them because if you want everybody to get on that show, which some of you do, then this is how it happens. But it was the biggest and most historic show of the year and given the sheer volume of matches it had way more good than bad compared to some of the other longer shows that year.

Final Verdict

This was a tough year for me to be a fan. The online discourse around WWE and AEW was at record levels of toxicity, and it got to the point where it did affect my enjoyment of it all. Social media became even more of a hellscape than normal and had it not been for the friends I’d made there I may have just moved on entirely from that. The way that people overreacted to the infamous wild card rule and to the Undisputed Era not showing up on RAW (when they were never even teased by the company inany way), y’all were real extra way too damn much all year.

More specifically, as a Black man seeing people crap all over Kofi’s title reign was hard to take. From where I’m sitting he had good matches, the matches had stories to set them up including a few big callbacks, he settled a ten year feud with Randy Orton, and got to go back to his home country representing the company as the World Champion. The only bad thing about it was how it ended. In hindsight it seems pretty clear that he never beat the perception game, and most of you guys were ready to move on after he got his moment. But me and a lot of other folks will always cherish those six months. It was the first time a Black wrestler in WWE had gotten that kind of moment at WrestleMania and gotten that kind of treatment as champion.

Overall it was a strange year. My favorite male wrestler beat leukemia (I even got to see him live that November) and returned to the ring and my favorite woman wrestler main evented WrestleMania and got to face and beat Trish Stratus at Summerslam. A wrestler who looked like me won the World Title at WrestleMania. But was a bad Spring and Summer for my favorite company and there was a lot to fight over. In WWE 2019 peaked at WrestleMania, and the valley came literally the next day; it’s definitely not a great year when the dropoff comes that soon. Lots of highs, but also lots of lows and lots of ‘WTFs?’ I give this year another A- for the women in WWE and a D for the men. I give the outside world a B. AEW captivated anyone who was looking outside WWE to enjoy wrestling but it was at the expense of Ring of Honor, the indies, and New Japan. If you’re looking for one big grade I give it a C. There was some all time great stuff but there was an equal amount of really bad stuff going on as well. C sounds about right.

The grade tally so far – 2012: B, 2013: C, 2014: A, 2015: A-, 2016: A, 2017: C, 2018: B