WON98

It took a little longer than usual with work and motivation issues, but I'm another Yearbook down with one more to go. There was lots to like on this set and quite a bit to dislike as well--the WWF had its strongest year from a business and heat standpoint, and maybe its best or second-best from an overall quality standpoint after 1997. WCW was a mess but admittedly may have had more good stuff than I remembered. The Flair/Bischoff angle was great at the time and aged very well, the cruiserweight division was pretty consistently strong, and there are more good Goldberg matches than I remembered--but man, was the main event booking rough. All-Japan had a ton of great matches and took some steps to change things up a bit late in the year, but seemed to lack depth--no real super-great tags, for example. New Japan had great juniors action but frustratingly didn't seem to give them TV time, with curious main event choices like Tatsumi Fujinami winning the IWGP title when his *1994* win was confusing enough. ECW was dogshit, almost completely irredeemable. Joshi went to hell despite some promising stuff from ARSION.

Overall, the future seemed to hold a lot of uncertainy for any non-WWF company. The business is stronger than it was in the mid-'90s, but you would think at the time that most companies were going to be in for a worse 1999 than '98. WCW was in chaos and may have just killed their golden goose, Baba was already dealing with health problems, NJPW seemed unsure of what it wanted to be, Mexico was quiet for much of the year, and while WWF business was booming, its quality was starting to nosedive and it became more about a few dynamic personalities carrying the load instead of television built around week-to-week booking setting up big matches and payoffs. I don't really expect 1999 to be as fun as the past few years by any means, but I look forward to seeing a lot of new stuff.

The Observer Awards ballot follows. As usual, this will be January-to-December and not November-to-November. Real winners in parentheses. No MMA discussion allowed.

CATEGORY A AWARDS

WRESTLER OF THE YEAR (Steve Austin)
1. Steve Austin
2. Kenta Kobashi
3. Goldberg
Pretty easy choice for #1, don't you think? Kobashi was the Man in AJPW--no, he didn't have the Dome main event, but from a main-event picture standpoint as well as a performance standpoint, he was stronger than any other contender in that promotion. Goldberg seemed like a shining beacon as far as fresh new talent that could carry WCW into the next millennium, and was a better pure performer than you might expect.

MOST OUTSTANDING WRESTLER (Koji Kanemoto)
1. Kiyoshi Tamura
2. Jushin Liger
3. Kenta Kobashi
Tamura makes it two in a row despite his setback against Overeem in April. Just too many great matches to ignore otherwise and as a performer if not a shooter, he didn't really fall off from '97. Liger makes a late run at #2 on the strength of his full-length 2/7 match with Otani and he seemed to be the best all-around junior in the company from the mostly-clipped action that we saw. Kobashi seemed to find himself in almost all of the top AJPW matches, and considering it was a singles-heavy year for All-Japan, well...

BEST BOX OFFICE DRAW (Steve Austin)
1. Steve Austin
2. Goldberg
3. Hulk Hogan
I probably should have just kept the old Best Babyface and Best Heel awards as I don't really feel right voting subjectively on this, but this is a pretty non-controversial year for this award. Goldberg beats out Hogan for second-place due to all-around likability.

FEUD OF THE YEAR (Austin vs. McMahon)
1. Steve Austin vs. Vince McMahon
2. Ric Flair vs. Eric Bischoff
3. Kidman vs. Juventud Guerrera
Like this is even a question. Even more than the NWO, maybe more than any feud since the Freebirds and Von Erichs, no feud has singlehandedly done more to turn around a promotion's business than this one. The performances, the resulting matches, the way more and more people were drawn in, the universal boss vs. blue-collar worker appeal...if I do an all-purpose post-'90s set of awards I'm not sure how this can be dethroned for #1 for the decade. It says something that the #2 spot with its similar dynamic doesn't really feel like a ripoff. There was an underlying element of real-life to the McMahon feud based on his history both recent and in the past, but it didn't really play on real feelings the way the Flair-Bischoff feud did. Even with a shitty Starrcade result and some stop-start stuff down the stretch, the good was so, SO good that it made up for the bad. Kidman-Juventud was a huge surprise as I'll cover more later and had a bit of storyline stuff with the LWO to make it more than just a series of fun matches, and was one of a few things to help WCW close the year on a more promising note than I would have thought going into the set.

TAG TEAM OF THE YEAR (Otani & Takaiwa)
1. Toshiaki Kawada & Akira Taue
2. Kenta Kobashi & Jun Akiyama
3. The New Age Outlaws
An awful, awful year for tag teams--see the MOTY list later on for evidence of that. There were literally zero teams that showed multiple strong performances on this Yearbook so I went with a default, "safe" pick followed by the RWTL winners. If this turned out to be a down year for the Holy Demon Army, well, they had enough years in the earlier part of the decade where they were good enough to win the Award and didn't, so consider it a make-up. The NAO's stock fell off rather considerably as their run at the top wasn't that long, but with domestic tag wrestling in even worse shape than the internationals, I'll throw them a bone anyway as they lapped the tag team field as far as overness.

MOST IMPROVED (The Rock)
1. The Rock
2. Kidman
3. Booker T
To give you an idea of how far Rocky's come, he was my #3 pick last year. Now he's a genuine superstar and a strong all-around in-ring worker. Kidman was a huge surprise for me--not that I ever disliked him before but I was amazed at how fundamentally solid he was. He could match guys spot for spot but he really came off as a pro beyond his years as well. Booker should have found himself in main events after his first half--I know injuries derailed him somewhat, but he might be an even bigger example of the WCW glass ceiling in effect than even Benoit and the other Vanilla Midgets since his potential star power was so evident. This may belong more in the Most Underrated discussion, but to this day I don't think even with all his success that he ever was allowed to maximize his full potential--I think he may be one of the single unluckiest stars since late-'80s Lex Luger.

MOST UNIMPROVED (N/A)
1. Hayabusa
2. Lex Luger
3. The Undertaker
Almost a year later and I have almost no complaints about my Greatest Wrestler Ever ballot...other than putting Hayabusa at #70. No way would he even make the ballot if I could have a do-over much less place that highly. Along with the BOSJ final, probably the single biggest disappointment of this set as he had no performances that I would consider better than passable. It just looked so soulless and rote, like a video game imitation of a great match rather than greatness in and of itself. Luger did have the matches with Bret but if he was going to treat his U.S. title turnaround as inconsequentially as he did, why should I give it any thought myself? Really it was just a matter of age and bulk catching up to him, not any kind of personal failing on his part. Undertaker came off a great '97 and a great January to just total dogshit. I didn't hate the SummerSlam match but that was his last gasp of anything quality at all, and his character work deteriorated even worse than his stuff between the ropes.

BEST ON INTERVIEWS (Steve Austin)
1. Steve Austin
2. Ric Flair
3. Chris Jericho
Honorable Mention: Mick Foley
Austin's simply so far ahead of almost everyone else as a star--the only guy he doesn't pretty much lap is Goldberg, and that's not going to factor into this award. Jericho was hilarious and entertaining and almost must-see every time he came out for an interview, but he didn't have the money promos and pure chill scenes provided by Ric Flair at year's end. I called Goldberg WCW's beacon in the WOTY section, but Flair despite his age would fit that description as well, and even seemed to be moving in a promising new role at year's end, but of course both of those guys would be fucked in short order. Foley was good enough to place in most years but his underwhelming work as Evil Dude Love will knock him back just a bit in favor of a fresher option in Jericho. The actual wrestling stuff was second-rate for a lot of the year, but at least this category made up for it, as there wasn't room to put the Rock or Vince, two of the most important mic-workers of the era and two people who'd be more than deserving in many other years.

MOST CHARISMATIC (Steve Austin)
1. Steve Austin
2. Goldberg
3. The Rock
Even though Dave's description of the award has always been "Getting most out of the least," which would seem to favor Goldberg...a megastar is a megastar.

BEST TECHNICAL WRESTLER (Kiyoshi Tamura)
1. Kiyoshi Tamura
2. Shinjiro Otani
3. Yuki Ishikawa
Hard to give Tamura Most Outstanding for a second year in a row and not do the same for Best Technical. He had the best ground game of anyone we saw on the Yearbook, including Volk Han. Otani made a late run for #2 thanks to some killer arm work in the full Liger match, and Ishikawa was the most impressive of the BattlArts guys. In fact I may be overrating him because he was so good at the *non*-technical stuff against weirdo opponents like Don Arakawa. Best Technician is always nebulous even in the best years but in the late '90s it seems to matter less than ever, sadly, at least pure matwork...

BRUISER BRODY MEMORIAL AWARD (Mick Foley)
1. Mick Foley
2. Steve Austin
3. Masato Tanaka
...since your Big Two main events are almost all either brawls or just bomb-fests, much like your Japan heavyweight main events. Foley had a worldwide MOTYC at Over the Edge and then almost singlehandedly rendered ECW superfluous at King of the Ring--the bar had officially been matched and raised, for better or for worse. Of course he had a dance partner at OTE, and Austin also had the task of making compelling television working with the likes of Brisco and Patterson--not to mention the Undertaker. Tanaka wasn't always deep on psychology, especially in ECW, but he knew how to make a comeback and when he went for spots, his spots hit. He was a compelling figure on two different continents.

BEST FLYING WRESTLER (Juventud Guerrera)
1. Juventud Guerrera
2. Shinjiro Otani
3. Rey Misterio, Jr.
Rey was banged up a lot of the year, so some of his holy-shit spots were gone. Juvie wasn't as spectacular as peak Rey, but he was certainly very good, with dives and flips that had impact on top of just looking pretty in the air. Otani's springboard moves continue to amaze and set him apart from most of his peers.

MOST OVERRATED (Hulk Hogan)
1. The Disciple
2. Hayabusa
3. The Undertaker
I can't really say that Hogan didn't earn his position, at least until the fall or so when he became about as tolerable as he was in '95 and early '96. But the Disciple...Jesus Lord. It's indescribable that he was put into the position that he was, impacting top-tier main event matches the way he did. Then to try to make him a sympathetic babyface...just beyond the pale that Hogan was allowed to get away with that, even if the Disciple push mercifully disappeared along with the Warrior. I talked about Hayabusa already--sorry, I'm just not buying it. Not even when he's "reigned in." Undertaker probably shouldn't *really* be here over the Warrior, but the Warrior will get his recognition soon enough, and 'taker needs to be brought down more with how awful he was after SummerSlam. I don't care if it's bad writing or bad booking--Undertaker had enough pull to say no if he didn't buy the horrible material he was given.

MOST UNDERRATED (Chris Benoit)
1. Taka Michinoku
2. Chris Benoit
3. Dick Togo
Hard for me to go to bat for Benoit, but it was absurd that he still couldn't get any kind of title in WCW this year when the star power was clearly there. Still, Taka and Togo and the rest of Kaientai were stuck in the worst possible environment to show their skills. It would have been better served to just shunt them all to SuperAstros and at least give us a few token fun 5-minute TV matches each week.

BEST PROMOTION (New Japan)
1. WWF
2. All-Japan
3. New Japan
Wasn't nearly as high on some of the big NJPW stuff as the readers, and the WWF was too scorching hot to ignore even if a lot of the non-main-event wrestling left a ton to be desired, and even as things started to fall apart in November and December. You still had enough super-compelling figures at the top, and even some really good mid-card feuds in the beginning of the year, to keep Raw as appointment TV. All-Japan dominated the MOTY lists even if they too had a depth problem. No one really knew how they were going to be blindsided in early '99, but the arrival of Vader at year's end and the new pushes for Jun and Ogawa seemed to be a shot in the arm for the company.

BEST WEEKLY TELEVISION SHOW (Raw)
1. WWF Raw
2. New Japan
3. WCW Nitro
Raw laps the field--I grudgingly give NJPW the #2 spot despite their ridiculous hack-jobs on the juniors matches. The overall product got better as they somewhat drifted away from the NWO crap of '97. Nitro had quite a bit of bad stuff but enough good, especially in the latter part of the year, to stay on the list. Even at 3 hours and even at the most overindulgent, it rarely felt *boring.*

MATCH OF THE YEAR (Misawa-Kobashi 10/31)
1.) Kenta Kobashi vs. Toshiaki Kawada (6/12)
2.) Mitsuharu Misawa vs. Kenta Kobashi (10/31)
3.) Steve Austin vs. Dude Love (5/31)
4.) Jushin Liger vs. Shinjiro Otani (2/7)
5.) Kiyoshi Tamura vs. Tsuyoshi Kohsaka (6/27)
6.) Kenta Kobashi & Jun Akiyama vs. Vader & Stan Hansen (12/5)
7.) Mitsuharu Misawa vs. Toshiaki Kawada (5/1)
8.) Kenta Kobashi vs. Jun Akiyama (7/24)
9.) Shinya Hashimoto vs. Kazuo Yamazaki (8/2)
10.) Aja Kong & Mayumi Ozaki vs. Toshiyo Yamada & Meiko Satomura (12/27)
11.) Manami Toyota vs. Shinobu Kandori (8/23)
12.) Kiyoshi Tamura vs. Mikhail Ilioukhine (1/21)
13.) Kidman vs. Rey Misterio, Jr. vs. Juventud Guerrera/Kidman vs. Eddy Guerrero (12/27)
14.) Mitsuharu Misawa vs. Jun Akiyama (4/18)
15.) Yuki Ishikawa vs. Daisuke Ikeda (5/27)
No match jumped out ahead of the rest this year, in a year where the #1 match might not crack the top 5 of some others. Not that there wasn't plenty of great stuff, but great matches just didn't matter as much in '98 in the U.S. The top 4 or 5 seem very interchangeable, and really so are spots 5-15. #13 may raise some eyebrows and maybe it's both recency bias on my part and cheating to include both matches, but it's the WCW match I remember the most vividly (at least in a positive manner) when looking back on the year. As can be seen, even though I criticized the promotion for depth, it was a hell of a year for high-end AJPW matches. Liger/Otani was memorably only released in full last year and is well worth seeking out, with some really vicious and intense arm-centric matwork that's consistently sold throughout the match, an opening 15 minutes deserving of the hype offered by the last nine.

ROOKIE OF THE YEAR (Goldberg)
1. Dragon Kid
2. Magnum Tokyo
3. Shiima Nobunaga
Goldberg won my '97 award. So we get three reputation picks as there was little time to devote to rookies and "hidden" matches on this Yearbook amidst all the Monday night chaos. Magnum probably displayed the most immediate star power of Ultimo's trainees but Kid was probably the better and more promising overall talent at this point. Besides all the Dragon trainees, other notables whose 1998 debuts we missed on the set include Mistico, Chris Hero, Necro Butcher, Naomichi Marufuji, Low-Ki, Eric Young, Bobby Roode, Ayako Hamada, and Bison Smith. And Kurt Angle worked a few indy dates in August and September with a bunch of other WWF trainees, but didn't work enough not to be the prohibitive favorite for 1999.

BEST TELEVISION ANNOUNCER (Jim Ross)
1. Jim Ross
2. Jerry Lawler
3. Mike Tenay
Lawler certainly could be bad at points when calling anything outside of his comfort zone, but it's hard to envision anyone else doing a better job at his role, either. Of course Ross was the king, able to get even the most Russoriffic concept over and almost as big of a part of making Raw what it was as Austin or Vince. Still don't have a problem with Tenay--I didn't have much problem with Schiavone either, but he still wasn't in position to carry cruiserweight action on his own. Neither was Bobby and sure as shit not Larry Z, so Tenay was a necessary voice in the product.

WORST TELEVISION ANNOUNCER (Lee Marshall)
1. Shane McMahon
2. Michael Cole
3. Lee Marshall
I'd almost be able to write Shane off in a "he is what he is" sense, but he clearly had no idea whether he wanted to be a cool babyface or an only-thinks-he's-cool heel, singing along to babyface catchphrases while also kissing up to his "pops." Thankfully JR didn't go on the shelf until months after the WWF solidified its spot at the top in the U.S., or I really do think Cole could have done legitimate damage, since the drop-off from JR to him was huge. He wasn't unsalvageable, as we know now, but he still wasn't able to properly get across certain key storyline elements the way Ross could have--I don't think the Rock Bottom title match clusterfuck would have come off nearly as badly as it's perceived had Ross been there to emphasize how Vince fucked Mankind over, which Cole never even touched on. And the fake laughing...good Lord. Lee was Lee--cheesy and annoying and completely out of place, but also relatively inoffensive considering he was on Thunder, which quickly turned into a nothing show.

BEST MAJOR SHOW OF THE YEAR (ECW Heat Wave)
1. WWF WrestleMania XIV
2. AJPW Tokyo Dome show
3. WWF SummerSlam '98
The best build for a WrestleMania since 3, the best top-to-bottom build for any PPV in years, and well-executed in the end. WM14, like a lot of these awards seem to be doing, boatraces the competition. AJPW's Dome debut felt like a Big Deal, even if the backstage machinations sometimes seemed more compelling than the in-ring build, and gave us pretty much everything we wanted in the main event. SummerSlam was another terrific top-to-bottom show, just not quite as consequential and with a lesser main event.

CATEGORY B

WORST MAJOR SHOW OF THE YEAR (WCW Fall Brawl): I think I'm going to go with Road Wild, but barely. Two WOAT candidates, but Raven and Saturn may have managed to save Fall Brawl despite a far worse main event than even the Jay Leno tag match. In contrast to a lot of the A awards this is pretty much a coin flip.

BEST WRESTLING MANEUVER (Burning Hammer): Too head-droppy, though credit to Kobashi and his promotions that the move was only brought out on the rarest of occasions instead of being made into a cheap way to pop the crowd with a kickout. I like Takaiwa's triple power bomb into the DVD, which probably wasn't any less overindulgent in all honesty, but it was cool and different and stood out more for a juniors wrestler.

MOST DISGUSTING PROMOTIONAL TACTIC (Scott Hall exploitation): The Hawk suicide attempt topped that pretty easily. Just as crass and tasteless but also hamfistedly dealt with suicide on top of alcoholism for a double-dose of trivializing real mental problems, while also needlessly endangering Droz and Hawk by having them trying to work angles while doing 60-foot climbs.

FAVORITE WRESTLER (Mick Foley): Chris Jericho was sometimes the only reason to even watch WCW. Moreso before Flair came back and Hogan left. Not always the most effective Interview of the year the way Steve Austin or Vince were, but certainly the most fun.

LEAST FAVORITE WRESTLER (Hulk Hogan): The Disciple filled me with dread with every appearance. No one was more emblematic of what was wrong with WCW.

WORST (NON-ROOKIE) WRESTLER (The Warrior): Sure. He turned into a guy who looked like he'd never been properly trained. The Renegade might have actually provided better matches.

WORST TAG TEAM (Kurrgan & Golga): The Oddities sort of were what they were, and for comedy undercard bullshit they were sort of over, even if it was ridiculous for them to be squashing Kaientai. The DOA's brief period of relevance--because people marked over the motorcycles in '97--was long gone. Adding Paul Ellering and sticking them in an endless feud with LOD didn't help.

WORST WEEKLY TELEVISION SHOW (Nitro): Nitro certainly had a "holy shit, what *is* this?" vibe at points, and more obvious political bullshit taking place on-camera. But Thunder seemed like a dead show only a month or so after its debut and guys like Hogan stopped appearing on it. Wrestling wouldn't see a more blatant network cash grab until the third hour of Raw.

WORST MANAGER (Sonny Onoo): The era of the manager is pretty much dead now--in '97 they axed the Best Manager award but kept this one, but now it's so dead that there aren't really even any good candidates for this. Onoo honestly didn't bother me much since they kept him off commentary and he was passable as a ringside presence, so I'll go with Lance Wright, the poor man's Joel Gertner, almost as a default pick.

WORST MATCH OF THE YEAR (Hogan vs. Warrior 10/24): The Bash at the Beach main event was longer and might have done even more damage, precisely *because* it was such a huge hit--more people saw what a shitshow it was. Even though it was only weeks after the big Georgia Dome Goldberg victory, it seemed to erase all the good vibes created in that moment and was definitive proof that the bloom was completely off Hogan.

WORST FEUD OF THE YEAR (Hogan vs. Warrior): As I said in one of the endless parade of bizarre Warrior segments, the stuff with the literal smoke and mirrors seemed to be totally bonkers, Final Deletion-type shit while at the same time being totally one-note and repetitive. The bloom wasn't just off Hogan, it was off the idea of bringing back old WWF names as well.

WORST ON INTERVIEWS (Warrior): Yes. No one got more mic time with worse output. In '96 and '97 I said that wrestling in the Big Two was as meritocratic as ever because neither promotion could afford to do it any other way. In '98 that started to go away, especially in WCW. Bad talkers were covered up in the WWF, but if Bischoff liked you or was paying you a lot, you got time no matter what. Some of Warrior's work was better than his WM6 build, some of it worse, but all of it stood out in a negative fashion in comparison to the rest of wrestling.

WORST PROMOTION (WCW): I think ECW honestly had less to offer. It hasn't been much of a factor in these awards because the worse Big Two stuff was far worse, but outside of some fun stuff with Tanaka and Awesome and the FBI, ECW felt like a promotion on fumes. Like the worst of late-'80s Crockett with nothing getting blown off and nothing being advanced besides some random turns. It's ridiculous that at year's end Shane Douglas is still holding the World title while Taz is back feuding with Sabu again. Heyman was so creatively bankrupt that he even had to resort to double-turning them, again.

BEST BOOKER (Vince McMahon): A grudging award to Vince Russo, again. Thankfully this will be his last bit of contention, as he too is starting to burn out and wither, since very little about the last two months of the WWF made much sense.

PROMOTER OF THE YEAR (Vince McMahon): Oh, come on. Who else?

BEST GIMMICK (Steve Austin): Mr. McMahon was the gimmick we all secretly wanted to see--even people who missed out on 1993 USWA. There wasn't a better top heel-babyface foil since Flair and Dusty at their peaks.

WORST GIMMICK (The Oddities): Boy did Val Venis age badly. It came off as coattail-riding since his pre-match spiel was a total ripoff of HHH's boilerplate DX promo talking about the size of his member, and as a babyface(???) he was constantly getting heat on his heel opponents, be they Kaientai or Dustin Rhodes, to the point where you'd have to be a sociopath not to sympathize with his opponent. Well, I guess the Attitude Era was geared towards sociopaths then, because he kept getting cheers. We were an easily entertained bunch back then.

MOST EMBARRASSING WRESTLER (Warrior): I will admit--among WCW viewers at my school, which were plentiful, Warrior was pretty over. Some of it may have been nostalgia but he brought in a lot of new viewers, too. Still, it didn't translate to buys and the really bad shit couldn't be defended on any level besides "so bad it's good." And some of the stuff like the mirror angle qualifies for that in isolation, but seeing it week after week was a slog. An embarrassing slog. For the spot on the card that it occupied, it's an easy pick.