With the year about to come to a close, I figured now would be as good a time as any to hand out my end-of-year Wrasslin awards. Barring anything drastic, I don't know how much Saturday Night's Main Event or World's End will change the scope of what you see below. However, in any case, there was a ton of good in 2024, indeed some bad as well, but overall, I feel better about things leaving this year than I did last.
My "hunt" for Wrestler of the Year on the Women's side has been set for a while now, but the Men's side was highly contested. You had a ton of talent putting in some great work, namely Swerve Strickland, "Hangman" Adam Page, Cody Rhodes, Gunther, Bryan Danielson, Drew McIntyre, CM Punk, Sami Zayn, and the list goes on. Somehow, we trimmed that group down to six names and one winner, which is the final award listed here, but there's a ton of superlatives to hand out. Let's get into it.
Secondary Awards
Company MVPs
WWE - Gunther
AEW - Swerve Strickland
NJPW - Zack Sabre Jr.
TNA - "Speedball" Mike Bailey
CMLL - Hechicero
Stardom - Mayu Iwatani
Booker of the Year - Shawn Michaels (NXT)
Honorable Mentions: N/A
Best Booking Descision - WWE Pulling the Trigger on Cody Rhodes at WrestleMania
Honorable Mentions: AEW Re-Uniting the Hurt Business (now Hurt Syndicate), AEW Booking Sting to Go out on Top, WWE Treating the Motor City Machine Guns with the Proper Respect Right Away, WWE De-Unifying Their Tag Team Championships, Mox and Friends™ Turning Heel
Worst Booking Decision (Tie) - AEW Airing the Jack Perry-CM Punk Fight, and Tony Khan Effectively Benching Ricky Starks and the Lucha Bros.
Honorable Mentions: WWE Making Rhea Ripley-Liv Morgan a YEAR LONG FEUD, The Young Bucks Having a Largely Heatless near-200-Day Tag Team Championship Run That Nearly Killed AEW's Tag Division, WWE Waiting Too Long to Let Solo Sikoa Show He's Genuinely Hilarious, AEW Continuing the Adam Cole-MJF feud Upon the Former's Return
Best Weekly TV Show - WWE Raw
Honorable Mentions: WWE NXT, AEW Dynamite, WWE Smackdown
Best on Promos (Men) - The Rock
Honorable Mentions: "Hangman" Adam Page, Cody Rhodes, Swerve Strickland, Jon Moxley
Best on Promos (Women) - Mariah May
Honorable Mentions: Toni Storm, Rhea Ripley, Willow Nightingale, Becky Lynch
Tag Team of the Year - Fraxiom (Axiom and Nathan Fraizer)
Honorable Mentions: FTR (Cash Wheeler and Dax Harwood), DIY (Johnny Gargano and Tommaso Ciampa), Jake Something and "Speedball" Mike Bailey, ABC (Chris Bey and Ace Austin)
Note: The Young Bucks match catalog ended up good, but it was few and far between; the EVP schtick got old about two months in, and they overstayed their welcome as tag champs. Hence their exclusion.
Major Awards
The 2024 Christian Cage Hater of the Year Award - (Tie) "Hangman" Adam Page and Kofi Kingston/Xavier Woods
Honorable Mentions: Gunther (Saying Bill Goldberg is his all-time No. 1 in Calgary in front of Bret Hart, only to reveal that was a lie in Atlanta in front of Goldberg before verbally eviscerating him), Mariah May (Betrayed her mentor and best friend for the love of the game), Nigel McGuinness (Returned after 15 years to get one last crack at his biggest op before he retired), Drew McIntyre and Christian Cage (you should know by now), Jon Moxley (K*lled Bryan Danielson and Chuck Taylor because he hates what AEW become), Roman Reigns (Sacrificed a 1300-plus day title reign to get his lick back on Seth Rollins)
Hate is a beautiful thing, and it led to several all-time moments in 2024—so much so that we have a pair of winners for the biggest award here. I said it the night of, and I still feel this way now: the Hanger burning down Swerve's childhood home segment is/was the best closing segment to any AEW TV taping ever. Finding out your greatest enemy bought his childhood home, finding out the location of said home, doing a supervillain monologue on camera as all he could do was watch in horror, and then BURNING THE HOUSE TO ASHES is some of the most elite hating these eyes have ever seen.
That would've been the only winner here if not for something that happened only a few days ago. I've seen some diabolical stuff in my day, but victim-blaming one of your best friends for checks notes, getting his neck broken in a match two years prior, is beyond cartoonishly evil...and I'm here for it. I don't know if I've ever seen a segment quite like the New Day reunion before, nor do I know if I ever want to be emotionally damaged like that again, but I was entertained! I can't lie to you. The shot at the end with Kofi and Woods doing the Predator handshake will also get generational run on social media for the next decade.
PPV/PLE of the Year - AEW Revolution
Honorable Mentions: WWE Backlash, AEW All-Out, WWE Bash in Berlin, AEW All-In
There are some changes in the top five from when we ran this around June, but I don't think any PPV hit the highs Revolution did back in early March. All-In is a close second here, but ending with Ospreay-Takeshita, a Samoa Joe-Swerve-Hanger triple threat, then Sting's retirement tag match is as insane a three-match stretch to close out a show I've seen in a few years. By all accounts, this is a show that will hold up when we look back well down the line.
Promo of the Year - "I'm the best f*cking wrestler in the world, and I have been for the last 20 years."
Honorable Mentions: Too many to count
No diatribe here. Just an all-time great cutting the best promo of his career with the clock approaching midnight.
Feud of the Year - Swerve Strickland vs. "Hangman" Adam Page
Honorable Mentions: Cody Rhodes vs. the Rock, Mariah May vs. Toni Storm, Cody Rhodes vs. Kevin Owens, CM Punk vs. Drew McIntyre
Hate vs. Success. Revenge vs. Peace. What would you choose if a man who wronged you went unpunished, hit the highest of highs, and received universal praise? That was the arc for "Hangman" Adam Page once he returned from an early year break. With a tweaked presentation, Page decided that violence wasn't a solution for his issues with Swerve Strickland but rather a question in which the answer was absolute. Anyone and everyone who was an obstacle between him and Swerve throughout the middle third of 2024 was a valid target, which ranged from Jeff Jarrett to Bullet Club Gold. For all of AEW's booking faults in 2024, they did a great job keeping these two away long enough while giving just enough interaction (mainly Blood&Guts and the run-in during the All-In match with Danielson) to keep you hooked.
One of AEW's biggest current pitfalls is the minor gap between All-In and All-Out, which this year left only two weeks of buildup for the most recent chapter of this blood feud. Even then, these two did some phenomenal work in two TV segments to promote a cage match that would become unsanctioned as the go-home Dynamite went off the air.
The cage match itself isn't for everyone, given how over-the-top violent it got at the end with the cinder block, syringe (!!!), and unprotected chair shot, but in fairness, this was supposed to be the grudge match to end all grudge matches, and that lived up to the billing. What I appreciated, though, was what happened after the match with Hanger as he was on the ramp, walking back down to the sound of women in the crowd screaming in horror, then just accepting that he's just a monster now—probably my favorite ending to a PPV this year outside of Cody winning the big one.
Every promotion has its signature feud. Rock-Austin in the Fed, Sting-Flair in WCW, either Taz-Sabu or Tommy Dreamer-Raven in ECW, Kobashi-Misawa in All-Japan and NOAH, etc. Well, for All Elite Wrestling, through five years and change, this is their signature feud. Hopefully, this goes the Kevin Owens/Steen-Sami Zayn/El Generico route, where it's an eternal feud. Just give them an outline to make things fresh, but they're more than good enough, more speciffically all-time great when paired together, to make anything work.
Women's Match of the Year - Mayu Iwatani vs. Sareee (STARDOM All-Star Grand Queendom)
Honorable Mentions: Kris Statlander vs. Willow Nightingale (Street Fight, All-Out), Iyo Sky vs. Utami Hayashishita (Marigold Summer Destiny), Jordynne Grace vs. Masha Slamovich (Bound for Glory), Bayley vs. Iyo Sky (WrestleMania XL Night 2)
I had the chance to watch this highly touted scrap for the IWGP Women's World Championship relatively recently, and believe me, it lives up to the hype. Iwantai and Sareee spend the better portion of 20 minutes and change beating the absolute brakes off of each other, with a ton of hard-hitting strikes, kicks, and an absolute barrage of suplexes; really everything that you'd expect out of a Japan epic. In short, if you liked Rhea Ripley vs. Charlotte from WrestleMania 39, you will absolutely love this bout. Go out of your way to watch it in full if you have the chance. Few matches anywhere in the world were as good as this in 2024.
Women's Wrestler of the Year - Willow Nightingale
Honorable Mentions: Sareee, Iyo Sky, Mariah May, Toni Storm, Mayu Iwatani
No one in pro wrestling today plays the white meat babyface role as well as Willow Nightingale, and while she never obtained World Championship status in AEW on the back of a career year, she did secure CMLL's Women's crown in the wake of Stephanie Vaquer's departure for WWE, which is by no means a small feat. Not having the match catalog that either of the Joshi stars listed here do, Nightingale had no shortage of great work this year, namely, a couple of great outings with Mariah May, a PPV bout with Mercedes Mone, and, of course, her standout street fight with Kris Statlander at All-Out.
That latter match was when I knew she had this locked up, which was also the last match she's worked on TV. Especially in a company like AEW, where you have people like Toni Storm, May, Mone, Statlander, and Hikaru Shida to stand out amongst, Willow's natural persona has clicked with audiences coast-to-coast, making her perhaps the single most over women's performer in AEW, and for a good reason at that. A complete package performer if there ever was one.
Men's Match of the Year - Will Ospreay vs. Bryan Danielson (Dynasty)
Honorable Mentions: CM Punk vs. Drew McIntyre (Hell in a Cell, Bad Blood), "Hangman" Adam Page vs. Swerve Strickland (Unsanctioned Steel Cage Match, All-Out), Swerve Strickland vs. Bryan Danielson (All-In), Swerve Strickland vs. Will Ospreay (Double or Nothing)
Now, all these months later, with Danielson's full-time career over, it's fair to say that this was truly a once-in-a-lifetime clash of generations, in which Will Ospreay cemented the biggest win of his career. There's not much more I can say than I did back in June: This 30-minute classic was all-time great and ultimately set the table for an eventful rest of the year for both guys.
Men's Wrestler of the Year - Swerve Strickland
Honorable Mentions: Cody Rhodes, Gunther, Will Ospreay, Drew McIntyre, "Hangman" Adam Page
For as unreal as Will Ospreay's match catalog this year is, and for how Cody Rhodes undeniably became WWE's 1A with a largely great World Title reign, I don't think any top guy had as great and as consistent an all-around year in 2024 as Swerve Strickland. Everything he did mattered with heavy crowd investment, regardless of whether he had the World Title or not. Everything he did was baseline good at worst, phenomenal at best, and not for nothing; his three best matches this year (vs. Ospreay at Dynasty, vs. Danielson at All-In, vs. Hanger at All-Out) are as good a top three matches to hang your hat on as it gets.
It's one thing to hit high year-long expectations thrust upon you, but it's another to exceed those, and I can comfortably state that Swerve exceeded mine, which were pretty high to begin with and was worth every penny Tony Khan dished out to him on his new deal. The fact he's remained scorching hot despite losing his last three high-profile matches, with a layoff after the second, is simply a testament to how good he is. Forget house; right now, this is Swerve's world.
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