Who had the best 2013?

Which wrestler had the best 2013?  Now this is not who is the best wrestler.  Those lists would seldom change.  The question is who had the most success and good matches and feuds and yes championships.

Missing the list this year are regulars like John Cena, who missed time because of injury in addition to losing the title, CM Punk, who spent too much time with Paul Heyman fighting nobodies and getting pinned by Heyman, and Austin Ares, who seems to have disappeared completely from TNA.

So without further ado.

5. Magnus - Ending the year as champ clearly helped, but he had shots at the main event all year, participated in beating Aces and Eights at Lethal Lockdown, and beat Sting at Bound for Glory.  All in all, a good year.

4. Kahagas - The Toyko Monster started the year as the NWA Heavyweight Champion.  He dropped in March, but before April was over he had won the North American Championship, which he retained all year.

3. Randy Orton - The Legend Killer appeared in some big matches such as the Elimination Chamber, had a great feud with Daniel Bryan prior to the title feud, won the Money in the Bank, won the WWE title (although dubiously), and unified the titles to end the year.  Pretty good run.

2. Daniel Bryan - The master of the Yes Lock won the WWE title and was stripped of it over and over.  He showed he was super over with the crowd.

1. Rob Conway - The Ironman won the NWA World Title early in the year, and would become the first World Champ to have both the World Title and Tag Titles.  He kept both to the end of the year.  Making history and having a 200+ title reign is the best of the best this year.

TNA needs to learn from WCW

TNA is awful right now.  It is just undeniable.  What is more worrisome is that they do not appear to be learning from the downfall of WCW.  They brought over Bishoff and then Hogan and then Ed Ferrera and Vince Russo.  But, after Styles lost to Magnus this past week, I fear they missed the most important lesson of all: they are not putting over TNA.

The reason WCW failed in the end was because they failed to create WCW fans.  They had red hot gold with the NWO vs. WCW angle.  But then the angle never came to completion.  The whole point of an invasion angle is to put over one company, in this case WCW.  Yet, NWO beat WCW over and over again.  Sure WCW has to lose some to build drama.  So no big deal that they lose the War Games match.  Drama.  But when it had been going for a year Sting finally faced off against Hogan and what happened?  Clear Hogan victory.  A slap in the face of all WCW fans who had been pulling for their company and spent years hating Hogan and cheering on Sting.  Flair was buried.  Sting turned and became NWO as did Lugar.  As did Scott Steiner.  WCW never got a clear win.  NWO never went away.  Invasions cannot last forever.  Someone wins and takes over or loses and goes away.  Since that never happened, WCW fans quit.  The base abandoned them.  They were insulted and ignored, so why watch.  Those who were left were not WCW fans, but NWO or even WWE fans.  So when WWE got good again, they went back.  When NWO cooled because it had been around forever, people left.

TNA is making the same mistake.  AJ Styles represents TNA.  He has been their from the beginning.  TNA fans love AJ Styles.  Dixie Carter, for better or worse, is the NWO of this angle.  She is actively against the company from giving her own relative a push to hand picking champs.  Then the big moment comes: Styles vs. Magnus (Carter's representative) for a title unification and what happens?  TNA loses because Styles lost.  TNA just barely survived the Aces and Eights thing, but they did win.  Now it is just as bad.  Styles lying on the ground while Carter and Magnus are above him was not a good sign.  TNA is what has to be put over.  It doesn't look like that is going to happen.

Wasting Daniel Bryan

Does anyone understand what WWE is doing with Daniel Bryan?

Bryan is easily the superstar who has the most crowd support.  Cena always has a split crowd, and CM Punk does not have a catch phrase like Bryan.  Remember the crowd uses Bryan's "Yes" chant even when he is not in the ring.  The "Yes" chant is showing up on ESPN at college basketball games.

Yet, Bryan was denied a run as the WWE champ.  Randy Orton is the guy who gets to unify the two titles rather than have a Cena-Bryan rematch of what most people considered the match of the year in WWE this past year.  Bryan instead feuds with the Wyatt Family, and ultimately gives in to them.  So he becomes a bad guy . . .  for a total of 3 weeks!  What on earth?  What purpose or story is told from 3 weeks of being with the Wyatts?

All this did was make Bryan look bad.  It ended up making the Wyatts look bad since all they did was lose while Bryan was with them.  Are they really positioned for a run at the Tag Titles now?  Probably not.  Now Royal Rumble is upon us and Daniel Bryan has no story line.  This is Wrestlemania season, and usually the direction is starting to be set.  Maybe Bryan wins the Rumble.  That is about the only way to fix the problem.

WWE has lost touch with wrestling fans.  WWE pushes their guys and does not care whether or not he is over with the fans.  It leads to a lot of bad programs, bad story lines, and bad wrestling.

Changing of the Guard

January 4th was a big day in wrestling.  It was the first time ever the NWA World Heavyweight Championship and the World Junior Heavyweight Championship changed hands on the same day.

Ricky Morton won the Junior Heavyweight Championship from Chase Owens at NWA Smoky Mtn. Wrestling.  The official video shows how it went down.

And you can watch the entire match where Satsoshi Kojima won the NWA World Heavyweight Championship from Ironman Rob Conway.

How long will Kojima reign as champ?  Average Japanese title reigns look to be about 70-80 days.  However, Michael Tarver is going over at the beginning of February.  These two did face off in a tag match the next day and Conway got the roll up pin on Kojima.  This was what Kojima had done on Conway's last trip over setting up a this title bout.  Perhaps Conway is being set up to win the belt back.  It would be a good story line.  Can't wait to see what happens next.

Let's Get Ready to Rumble

The goal of this blog is to chronicle the great tradition of wrestling, discuss its storied past, and maybe even re-book some of the great angles.  It would be great for discussion and debate to occur.

I hope you tag in.