WON94

1994 wasn’t always the easiest of years to get through, especially the second half. WCW turned into the Hogan Show and the WWF kept finding new ways to bottom out. Plus there was fewer AJPW to pick from and New Japan seemed to get very quiet after the WAR feud was blown off, and their situation wasn’t helped by Jushin Liger breaking his leg. By the end, Smoky Mountain and to a lesser extent the USWA were what was carrying the load. Wrestling seemed to be a dying industry just like it seems now. The business surprised us once before, but that was a time when Japan was still very healthy. Time will tell if it can surprise us again, but I think it would require some Bischoff or Paul E.-styled maverick with a Kevin Sullivan-esque creative mind to do so, and I’m not sure if wrestling can attract those people anymore.

And the Awards for 1994. As usual real winners in parentheses, with these awards being for the calendar year and not December-to-November like the real votes.

CATEGORY A AWARDS
WRESTLER OF THE YEAR (Toshiaki Kawada)
1. Steve Williams
2. Toshiaki Kawada
3. Vader
It was close but I still think Doc had more impact on All-Japan as a whole. He was by a nose the better overall performer in the Carnival and he ended Misawa’s epic TC reign in another terrific match. His performances did tail off toward the end of the year but his first ¾ were strong enough to make up for it. Vader didn’t do much for North American business but he was churning out awesome matches and selling out baseball stadiums in Japan for a promotion that didn’t have TV.

MOST OUTSTANDING WRESTLER (Kenta Kobashi)
1. Toshiaki Kawada
2. Vader
3. Steve Williams
Both of these awards were actually fairly tough. In addition to being a down year overall, it seemed that few people broke out of the pack to separate themselves from the rest of the world, even as they were turning in good or even great performances. Doc really only broke out in comparison to his previous self. I could have easily given a spot to Aja Kong, Akira Hokuto, or Great Sasuke here. Or even Sabu (the #2 Observer WOTY!) who DID break the mold. Selection bias or not, it also seemed like there were more guys who showed up for a great match or two but with fewer consistent performances throughout the year.

BEST BABYFACE (Atsushi Onita)
1. Dustin Rhodes
2. Atsushi Onita
3. Bret Hart
Onita had a fine year but Rhodes had performances that should have launched him into World title contention. Instead he doesn’t even work Starrcade. Bret was a refreshingly real person in a cartoon world that made the “cartoon wrestling” of 1985 expansion WWF look like RINGS.

BEST HEEL (Art Barr)
1. Art Barr
2. New Jack
3. Bob Backlund
Vader probably should have been in here but Backlund and New Jack ultimately get nods for subverting prior expectations. I wasn’t always crazy about Love Machine’s work but he redeemed himself by the time of When Worlds Collide, as Los Gringos Locos had turned into a quasi-NWO-type faction that technicos and rudos alike aligned against. I know the Gangstas didn’t draw, but neither did Jake Roberts in ’91 and I wasn’t going to not vote for him then.

FEUD OF THE YEAR (Los Gringos Locos vs. AAA)
1. Dustin Rhodes vs. the Stud Stable
2. Bret Hart vs. Owen Hart
3. Lord Steven Regal vs. Larry Zbyszko
Kind of weird that we’d get 3 positive domestic awards in a year where international wrestling really started pulling away from the U.S. But the work in these feuds was just that good. Exposer was right—Rhodes vs. Parker’s gang was really the last of the great southern-style feuds. Bret and Owen were two of the best workers in the company and with the help of some thoughtful booking made what could have been a very hard-to-believe  storyline work. Regal feuding with an announcer should have had no business being as good as it was.

TAG TEAM OF THE YEAR (Los Gringos Locos)
1. Los Gringos Locos
2. Mitsuharu Misawa & Kenta Kobashi
3. Toshiaki Kawada & Akira Taue
Tag wrestling took a major step back in general—the Headshrinkers were one of the last WWF tag title reigns that didn’t feel like a complete afterthought, and the WCW belts bounced from the Nasty Boys to various solid but underwhelming fare like Stars & Stripes and Pretty Wonderful. The Heavenly Bodies and Quebecers were non-factors the second half of the year, and the Rock ‘n Rolls couldn’t get much out of the Gangstas, despite how great the promos were. Barr & Eddy were actually drawing big houses in addition to putting on good matches.

MOST IMPROVED (Diesel)
1. Diesel
2. Johnny B. Badd
3. Chris Candido
Diesel’s babyface act is lame as hell but his improvement in the ring can’t be denied. Badd is now starting to come into his own as a semi-serious worker, with the Regal matches and TV title win as a collective coming out party, as we head into what will probably be his best year. The staying power that Mero was able to have with that gimmick was nothing short of amazing. Imagine Oz or PN News lasting all the way until Nitro started—Badd realistically shouldn’t have avoided the same fate as them. I think Candido was good before but he really got a chance to cut loose with some long matches against fairly major opponents in ’94. He’s not to the point of carrying others yet but he put in meaningful contributions to his good matches this year. Meanwhile, Sid Vicious and Shane Douglas would have won Most Improved Interviews Awards if they existed.

MOST UNIMPROVED (Hulk Hogan)
1. Lex Luger
2. Masahiro Chono
3. Eddie Gilbert
Hulk for all of his faults had two strong performances on PPV and was a boon to the big shows he appeared on even if his exorbitant contract resulted in a net loss. Luger, a guy who won Florida’s Southern title 18 days after his debut, was probably at his lowest point of his entire career, push-wise. He choked on the big stage again, then had PPV losses to Tatanka and King Kong Bundy (!), firmly entrenching him as mid-card 4 life in the WWF. And he sure wasn’t churning out good performances in the process, not that he could necessarily be blamed. Chono’s heel turn and debut of the all-black look didn’t make the set, but if it hadn’t been for that he may as well have been dead for as much of a non-factor as he was. Gilbert was way past his sell-by date—every USWA comeback saw diminishing returns and he looked awful, lazy, and out-of-it in the NWA tournament. Honorable mention to Jesse Ventura, who really needed to go when he did. His contract actually ran into early ’95 but WCW made the wise decision to eat the contract and make him sit at home for the last chunk of it.

MOST OBNOXIOUS (Hulk Hogan)
1. Hulk Hogan
2. Dave Sullivan
3. Vince McMahon
Hogan could still bring it in the ring when he wanted to but his personality bordered on skin-crawling, and his influence over the rest of the promotion by the fall couldn’t be ignored either. Evad made me want to eject the disc and throw my screen out the window every time he interrupted an interview segment, which seemed to happen hourly. Vince was still good at getting angles over but the NEW GENERATION UNBEE-LEEE-VIABLE ANYTHING CAN HAPPEN IN THE WWF fake laugh mode had completely overtaken him.

BEST ON INTERVIEWS (Ric Flair)
1. Jim Cornette
2. Cactus Jack
3. New Jack
Jack was the frontrunner for most of this, but I’ll concede that his interviews ultimately did more to turn away fans than pack them in, plus Cornette and Cactus made strong pushes toward the end of the year. Cornette rejuvenated himself with a fresh angle managing the Rock ‘n Roll Express and Cactus was doing great work in multiple promotions.

MOST CHARISMATIC (Atsushi Onita)
1. Atsushi Onita
2. Nobuhiko Takada
3. Genichiro Tenryu
No one in the U.S. is getting this and the easiest pick from Mexico (Konnan) turned heel, which without a ton of knowledge struck me as a bad, premature move.

BEST TECHNICAL WRESTLER (Chris Benoit)
1. Volk Han
2. Hiroshi Hase
3. Lord Steven Regal
As usual, who qualifies as a “technician” is sometimes spurious, especially if you look at the actual rankings (Kobashi and Toyota? I…guess, but I don’t really view them that way). I’ve tended to look at these as being ¾ about pure matwork and ¼ execution of advanced moves.

BRUISER BRODY MEMORIAL AWARD (Cactus Jack)
1. Cactus Jack
2. Sabu
3. Terry Funk
These guys all had good chemistry with each other amd were all good in different ways, in promotions that generally booked them to their strengths.

BEST FLYING WRESTLER (Great Sasuke)
1. The Great Sasuke
2. Sabu
3. The 1-2-3 Kid
I’m still seeing Rey, the real-life #2 vote-getter, as more of a precocious talent who’s a spectacular sympathetic babyface more than he is a spectacular flyer. I’m sure he’ll be taking this award home more in the years to come. Sabu’s highspots weren’t looking overly contrived just yet, and Kid kept bringing the goods in what was not always a pleasant environment.

MOST OVERRATED (Hulk Hogan)
1. The Butcher
2. Dave Sullivan
3. Irwin R. Schyster
Brutus Beefcake in a Starrcade main event—that’s all that needs to be said. Dave Sullivan, #2 or #2a babyface, also all that needs to be said. Career joke mid-carder IRS gets the honor of being Undertaker’s follow-up feud after Yokozuna, a booking decision that’s had me utterly baffled for a full 20 years. This came after a summer where he pretty much vanquished Tatanka, destroying his sacred headdress and then beating him up and down the board on house shows, even in Indian strap matches.

MOST UNDERRATED (Brian Pillman)
1. Brian Pillman
2. Steve Austin
3. Felino
Pillman did absolutely nothing after the first month of the year, and in the latter stages was actually putting over the Honky Tonk Man in an ultimate indignity. Austin’s second US title loss speaks for itself, and the planned gimmick of putting him with Sherri and making him into a Flair clone smells like a failure as well, but at least it would have been something. Felino gets the #3 vote for the second year in a row. He got some real-life votes as well, so it’s not just a footage/exposure problem.

BEST PROMOTION (AAA)
1. All-Japan
2. Smoky Mountain
3. UWFI
New Japan wasn’t bad, but it got very quiiet after the Tenryu feud was blown off, and seems to be in a holding pattern, apparently needing a Chono heel push or UWFI invasion to shake things up again. Hash otherwise seems to be out of legitimate IWGP challengers. AAA had a big year and returned to drawing big crowds in LA, but despite the magnificent domestic build-up to the When Worlds Collide show I think Pena’s booking generally suffered, with the overreliance on cutesy but non-decisive bullshit finishes reeking of 1987-88 Crockett.

BEST TELEVISION SHOW (ECW)
1. Smoky Mountain Wrestling
2. ECW
As always, hard to rate. As usual, all the New Japan footage comes from home video or its extensive Classics shows. Meanwhile AJPW got cut to 30 minutes, which was crippling. Smoky Mountain had some of its best TV matches this year and as always could be counted on for multiple great promos and usually a good angle in every show. ECW was rarely great, but its TV show was daring, different, and very out-of-the-box compared to what everyone else was doing.

MATCH OF THE YEAR (Shawn/Razor ladder match)
1. Akira Hokuto/Shinobu Kandori vs. Aja Kong/Bull Nakano (3/27)
2. Mitsuharu Misawa vs. Toshiaki Kawada (6/3)
3. Mitsuharu Misawa/Kenta Kobashi vs. Toshiaki Kawada/Akira Taue (5/21)
4. Bull Nakano vs. Shinobu Kandori (7/14)
5. Toshiaki Kawada vs. Steve Williams (4/16)
6. Mitsuharu Misawa vs. Steve Williams (7/28)
7. Mascarita Sagrada vs. Espectrito (3/12)
8. Bret Hart vs. Owen Hart (3/20)
9. El Hijo del Santo/Octagon vs. Los Gringos Locos (11/6)
10. The Great Sasuke vs. Jushin Liger (4/16)
11. Razor Ramon vs. Shawn Michaels (3/20)
12. Dustin Rhodes vs. Bunkhouse Buck (4/17)
13. Nobuhiko Takada vs. Vader (8/18)
14. Tracy Smothers vs. Chris Candido (4/1)
15. Pantera vs. Felino (12/27)
I seriously didn’t expect the Dream Rush tag not to make it to the end of the decade as the Best Match Ever, but it didn’t. The Queendom tag was a master class in storytelling, moves, excitement…everything. And such a unique story it was, one that I don’t think has been repeated and certainly not repeated as successfully. I don’t keep track of these as strenuously as Loss and Chad or myself when reviewing ‘80s projects, so some things may be missed. But I’m very comfortable with my top 10 at least.

ROOKIE OF THE YEAR (Mikey Whipwreck)
1. Mikey Whipwreck
2. Alex Wright
3. New Jack
Mikey was a genius idea all-around, very well-executed. Wright was raw and given a silly Eurotrash gimmick but was a wrestling lifer with great potential and posisble international appeal. Not only had New Jack wrestled in ’93 but we even saw him on that Yearbook, but I think if this were baseball he’d be eligible in ’94. It’s hard for true rookies in wrestling to be evaluated at the time, and this should probably serve as more of a Breakthrough Wrestler award, which in my mind isn’t quite the same as Most Improved. Anyway, New Jack was a pretty lousy worker (though not as bad as Mustafa, who actually had several more years experience) but a guy who screamed potential as a star.

MANAGER OF THE YEAR (Jim Cornette)
1. Jim Cornette
2. Woman
3. Col. Robert Parker
Not that good of a year for managers. Cornette is pretty much a runaway, self-explanatory pick. Woman was terrific, one of the best female interviews ever. Parker could be goofy but he was so professional and so committed to his role that it was hard not to like him, and he was involved in the year’s best feud.

BEST TV ANNOUNCER (Joey Styles)
1. Jim Ross
2. Lance Russell
3. Dr. Alfonso Morales
Also a bad year for announcing. I know I should put Lance at #1 but Ross had some tremendous performances for both the WWF and SMW despite being beaten around by Vince. Lance really didn’t miss a beat, he just didn’t have the opportunity to call as much until the USWA started picking up toward the end of the year, plus the MSC clips were generally called by Macklin. Morales, along with Pierroth, have such commanding voices and deliveries that they transcend language, and he’s far easier to take seriously than Akira Fukuzawa.

WORST TV ANNOUNCER (Gorilla Monsoon)
1. Gorilla Monsoon
2. Randy Savage
3. Art Donovan
Lots to choose from here. Stan Lane and Ted DiBiase were underwhelming at best, Eric Bischoff was a twit, Vince was obnoxious and full of shtick, Lawler had mostly descended into a clown act, and Jesse Ventura had completely checked out and was actively hurting the product when he was on the air. The team of Monsoon & Savage turned in an all-time horrible performance at King of the Ring, and Monsoon on Raw was so bad and counterproductive that he basically forced Vince to go crawling back to Jim Ross until the steroid trial ended. I get that he was badly itching to wrestle again and I can’t blame him for that, but Savage combined Jesse’s indifference with an incessant pushing of himself, and it got worse as the year went on. I truly, really didn’t want to vote for Art Donovan, who was truly a legendary personality thrown into an impossible situation, and who even in that setting was still more likable than Joey Styles. But objectively he has to be there.

CATEGORY B AWARDS
BEST MAJOR WRESTLING CARD (Super J-Cup). Tough call as the first half of the year was loaded with great cards. I’m going to go with Wrestling Queendom for having the highest-end singles match, though Slamboree, the J-Cup, Spring Stampede, WrestleMania, and Bluegrass Brawl are all worthy candidates, in roughly that order.

WORST MAJOR WRESTLING CARD (Blackjack Brawl). Hard to argue with Herb Abrams’ last gasp as a wannabe-major promoter, but the Royal Rumble was a bigger stage and more insulting when compared to expectations. It’s a little better in retrospect than it was live, where aside from the Owen turn I thought it was about the worst thing I’d ever seen, but not that much better.

BEST WRESTLING MANEUVER (Sasuke Special). I can go along with that, when he hits it.

MOST DISGUSTING PROMOTIONAL TACTIC (Ric Flair retirement). The Observer readers’ choice is really a smaller function of what was voted second: WCW turning into the Hulk Hogan Show. It may have been an ultimately necessary evil but it doesn’t make it any better to watch. Many people would have given this to the Gangstas push, but a.) I think it was worth the try, even if it was financially unsuccessful, and b.) cheap as it was, in some ways it was actually more progressive than your standard push for black wrestlers in the Big Two that you could argue continues to this day. Not quite on the level of the Lawler/Snowman feud, but closer to that end than Four Horsemen/Rocky King or your typical dancing black guy today.

BEST COLOR COMMENTATOR (Bobby Heenan). Answer has to be Dave Brown, back in that role with the re-emergence of Lance Russell. It was a bad year for announcing, with Tony and the Brain both having their moments but both taking steps back. The WWF had exactly announcer worth a damn, and Ross was barely active for the company. I don’t dislike Les Thatcher but I’m not as high on him as some others, and regardless he’s no Dave. It was a weak enough year that if I was ever going to give a reputation vote to Arturo Rivera, this was the time.

READERS’ FAVORITE WRESTLER (Sabu). Going to go with Dustin Rhodes here. I did like Sabu in this era and revisiting ’94 he aged much better than expected. But Dustin was possibly at his peak.

READERS’ LEAST FAVORITE WRESTLER (Hulk Hogan). SO many to pick from: Duke the Dumpster, Doink, the Butcher, Mr. Pogo, Jungle Jim Steele, Hogan…but the guy who inspired the most visceral negative reaction over and over again was Evad Sullivan. MAYBE he could have been tolerable as a personality had the odd-couple team with Kevin been kept around, but his knee injury derailed that. Johnny Grunge is a VERY close second, with babyface Doink not far behind that.

WORST WRESTLER (Evad Sullivan). SO many to pick from: Duke the Dumpster, the Butcher, Mr. Po—oh. I think Evad has to take this as well.

WORST TAG TEAM (The Bushwhackers). The worst tag team with a respectable reputation was Public Enemy. I don’t always think that highly of Paul E. but getting those guys over as a legitimate champion tandem was one of the great smoke-and-mirrors jobs in the history of wrestling.

WORST TELEVISION SHOW (WCW Saturday Night). Well, the cybernetic Center Stage get-up is one of my absolute least-favorite sets of any wrestling show ever, and the canned heat and sterile overall atmosphere made it worse. WWF Challenge was probably worse, as it was reduced to seemingly 7 or 8 markets with a rotating list of announcers like Stan Lane, Ted DiBiase, and Monsoon. But, it wasn’t the flagship TV program either. I’ll go with WCWSN, but it’s close.

WORST MANAGER (Mr. Fuji). This was not a good year for managers, but there weren’t really any Coach/Sapphire-type disasters either, and Fuji no longer had to cut promos, so it’s not like he could really bother anybody. So, I sadly have to pick Jimmy Hart, an all-time great in an utterly intolerable role as the little puppy to Hulk Hogan’s Spike the Bulldog.

WORST MATCH OF THE YEAR (Doink/midgets vs. Lawler/midgets). MANY disasters to choose from. This was certainly a strong candidate. Undertaker vs. Undertaker was a strong candidate, as well as Undertaker/Yokozuna from the Rumble. But I will go with a match that some people have given ***** too, and that’s the triangle match from The Night the Line Was Crossed, an utter disaster of a match that should never have been such an unwatchable clusterfuck considering the talent involved. A shitty match with bad wrestlers is one thing, a shitty match with good wrestlers is another.

WORST FEUD OF THE YEAR (Lawler vs. Doink). This has to be Undertaker vs. Undertaker, which made absolutely no sense, injected comedy where it didn’t belong with a gimmick that was always and would always be very well-protected from such, and led to a WMOTY candidate that main-evented a damned PPV.

WORST INTERVIEW (Evad Sullivan). As awful as he was, Evad did at least accomplish what was asked of him. As with NTLWC, bad promos from a good interview are worse. So the answer is Hulk Hogan, who after cutting some tremendous promos in the WWF showed no appreciable skill for selling anything other than himself, which I guess was okay for Hogan but seemed like cutting off his nose to spite his face.

WORST PROMOTION (WCW). If you could split WCW in half, the first half of the year would be a winner for Best Promotion and the second half would be a winner for the Worst. So looking at the year as a whole, the answer is the utterly depressing WWF, which had no clue what to do with itself and continued to lose longtime valuable stars.

BEST BOOKER (Paul E. Dangerously). I don’t know when he took over the juniors division entirely but I’m giving this to Jushin Liger for putting together the Super J-Cup.

PROMOTER OF THE YEAR (Giant Baba). I think we have to go with Antonio Pena here.

BEST GIMMICK (The Undertaker). In a year of awful gimmicks, this goes to Bob Backlund. Backlund was one of those guys where the thought of him heeling was utterly inconceivable, and he went from being a washed-up guy in the late-‘80s Pedro Morales role to the company’s #1 heel.

WORST GIMMICK (Dave Sullivan). My goodness, it’s barely fair having to pick just one. I’ll break with some people on this board and say a “special” gimmick is not INHERENTLY awful, as I think Rick Steiner, Boo Bradley, and later Eugene showed. Sullivan was just an awful performer and way, way overpushed as a near-#2 babyface. Face Doink was a complete insult to a fine performer and great heel gimmick, but I think my final answer would be Duke Droese, an unbelievably misguided attempt at creating another Jim Duggan when the real Duggan was through some miracle going through a mini-renaissance.

MOST EMBARRASSING WRESTLER (Doink). Evad is in the running for all of these awards but there was enough shit in ’94 that he doesn’t deserve a clean sweep, which is why I keep looking for excuses to give them to somebody else. Doink is a good pick. One of the embodiments of what a lame, pandering promotion the WWF had turned into, a harder-pushed Bushwhacker whose pathetic comedy served to bring out the worst in his opponents, announcers, and everyone else involved.