But enough of the festive frivolities - let’s get down to business. As this is the last column of the year, it must be time for : The Live Wire Awards 2002. And it is. So, erm... let’s go!
Well the Best Face award was one of the hardest for me to decide this year. Playing a face has evolved from smiling, shaking hands with the fans and never cheating in the good ol’ days to what it is now - a face can do anything from attacking people at random to pouring concrete into a car and get away with it.
That being said, Rey has been more or less a stereotypical face this year since his highly promoted Smackdown debut. Being his size, it’s more feasible for him to be a face - playing the outweighed and under-estimated face in the Spike Dudley mould comes easy for Rey, with the back-up of the crowd pleasing big moves makes Rey my #3 pick for Best Face of 2002.
Goldust... not the best in the ring, by a long shot, but on the mic and in backstage skits? Priceless. Goldust can take as much of the credit for Booker’s face turn and popularity as Booker himself... Would Booker be as over as he is without his faithful comedy sidekick tagging along? Probably not. Goldust is starting to find his feet in the ring at long last, his performances as part of the Booker-Goldust tag team have been a vast improvement from his singles work, and the comedic timing is perfection. A good year for Goldie.
Pretty boy, long haired, shiny white toothed faces may be a thing of the past, but Edge still hangs in there regardless. Edge has worked hard to try and shed the goofy “era of awesomeness” image that he and Christian had, and thanks to a lot of help from Kurt Angle, not to mention a string of great in-ring performances, he’s managed it. Surely ready to step up to the next level if he can help elevate A-Train to more than a midcard joke...
Best Heel was probably my favourite category to pick - I love a really good heel - or should that be a really bad heel - and this year has had a great few to pick from.
Kurt Angle would be here by virtue of his program with Edge alone. A fantastic feud that showcased what both men could do, and literally made Edge into a superstar, and most of that weight was carried on the shoulders of Your Olympic Hero effortlessly. Angle’s mic work can’t be faulted either - were it not for the 2 men above him, Angle could have walked away with this award easily.
What can be said about Paul Heyman that hasn’t been said before, and usually by me? Heyman is a genius at putting other people over. Heyman’s commentary MADE Rhyno a star, Heyman’s heel turn in the middle of Invasion to reform ECW MADE that angle damn near interesting, and this year, Heyman’s management MADE Brock Lesnar’s claims of being The Next Big Thing more than just hype, and later on, made Lesnar’s face turn mean so much more. Simply put, awesome with a mic in his hand and at ringside.
But there was one better heel than Heyman - Latino Heat Eddie Guerrero. Simply put, You love to hate him. Eddie’s heel act is fine tuned beyond belief, he is just that damn slimy that you really do want to reach in and strangle him. But it’s more than just acting like a slimeball - it’s pulling out all the classic heel tricks - the sole of the foot on the opponent’s face, the trying to get DQ’d - all classic old tricks, made to live and breath again by the genius that is Eddie. Eddie doesn’t suck - he rules.
It’s the holy trio of heeldom, but in a different order for this category. Eddie goes in at number 3 for this one purely because I like listening to the other two guys more.
Eddie’s promo’s this year have been the stuff of legend - the promo about him ripping the poster of The Rock off his daughter’s wall... the promo where he went through every emotion while Chris Benoit stood and stared... even the stuff in the bar with him and Austin... gotta love Eddie trying Karaoke. Even allowing for this greatness - he only gets number three.
Kurt helps himself to a number 2 slot purely due to his ease on the mic - it’s hard to believe he looked so wooden in those Pizza ads that we all laughed at on Raw, yet now he looks like a natural. It’s not just promo work, either - in all of his backstage interviews, vignettes, skits, whatever he just looks so at home that you can’t believe he’s acting. I get the feeling that the glorified dork he’s playing may not be too far from the truth though...
But hey, look who’s back at number 1 - that man Heyman. Give Heyman a mic and 10 minutes of airtime and he’d sell you the soul of your first-born. If it wasn’t for Heyman and his antics, Lesnar wouldn’t be as over, and the Big Show would still be a big, fat waste of space, instead of... erm... a big fat waste of space who looked dangerous for a few weeks. Heyman is the man.
From the sublime to the ridiculous... Much as I love Chris Benoit in the ring, on the mic or in front of a camera, he’s as bad as almost anybody. The only thing he has going for him is a cool fake laugh. His promo last week against the Big Show was an example of his style - he tends to just say words slooooooowwwwweeeerrrrr than normal to try and emphasise his point. Truly, a shame.
As for Big Show? Not too bad when he’s in the mood but has a serious drool problem! I mean, you need an umbrella just to watch him on TV! His promos always revolve around him telling you a) how tall he is b) how heavy he is c) how bad he is or d) all of the above, and after a while, it just gets to be a little bit grating.
But Al Wilson... dearie me. Al Wilson is in a class all of his own. I’d call him wooden, but the wood might be upset at that. I really don’t want to dwell on Al and his many different looks (Dawn tells him she loves him - Al looks bemused. Dawn tells him she got it on with Torrie - Al looks bemused. Dawn shows footage of her and Torrie - Al looks *slightly* bemused) or I may well... fall... asleep... ZZZzzz...
After a shaky start to the year, the Tag divisions on both shows took a turn for the better. Booker & Goldust spent the best part of 6 months dallying with the tag belts, finally winning them this month, and always made for entertaining TV along the way. Some of the exchanges between Book and ‘Dust were priceless - One that sticks out was when Booker and Kane were discussing who would sleep with a corpse and Goldust admitted to it, but claimed “I was young, I didn’t know”...
Angle & Benoit... Kurt n Chris - a dream team in the making. Had they been together for slightly longer, and not always smacked of being two singles guys thrown together to make a team, they would have been a sure thing for this category. These two guys, along with Edge, Mysterio and Los Guerreros were responsible for Smackdown showcasing some of the finest tag team wrestling that I’ve ever seen, and Angle & Benoit were at the heart of it all.
Having said that, they were just another superteam thrown together. Los Guerreros have a chemistry together that just edged them in front for this one. They lie, they cheat, they gloat - what more do you want in a heel tag team? Chavo especially has come into his own since they were finally paired together, and Eddie is just the usual class act he always is. Team of the year, and one of the best teams ever, in my humble opinion.
John Cena, on his own, is a good thing. John Cena, not trying to be Vanilla Ice, is a good thing. John Cena, with a repackaged Bull Buchanan, as a duo, is NOT a good thing. Cena’s raps annoy the hell out of me, and “bling bling” can flat out just go to hell. This will be his third try at making the grade, anyone want to bet that it ends in another flop?
You have to feel somewhat sorry for Chuck - he actually has a bit of talent about him, but his career is heading down that great big toilet pan marked “Ex-Partners Of Billy Gunn”. Billy & Chuck really did absolutely nothing for me, bar inspire the Bischoff led fun fest that was the Commitment ceremony on Smackdown. Poor, poor Chuckie...
But even they were genius compared to the inspired booking of “tag partners who hate each other” in Rikishi & Rico. Pointless, boring, and duller than 15 episodes of Eastenders back to back, what made these two worse is that they had the Tag titles for a spell as well! Madness!
I nearly went for the obvious joke and voted for Kurt... arf.
Flair vs. Undertaker was for me, the best bit of Old School booking of the year. Flair, the good guy who didn’t want to fight, Taker as the bad man that just wouldn’t let it go, and tormented Flair by beating up his best friend, Arn Anderson, and his son, David. The eventual blow-off match was pretty damned good too - Flair looking as good as he had in years, and even a killer Double A spinebuster too boot.
Not so much great booking, as just a great pay-off. A Scooby-Doo style unmasking from Eric Bischoff and a huge swerve from Rico was the last thing that I had expected, and it worked beautifully. Even now, I can still hear that fateful line from Eric : “Did I just hear myself say... three minutes?” and I smile. Add to that Stephanie getting splattered by the 3 Minute Warning, and hey, what a night!
But for me, the angle of the year was how The Big Show was made to look like a legitimate threat after he jumped across to Smackdown. Yes, granted it was just for a couple of months, but for those two months, he came as close to living up to the potential he’s supposed to have as he ever has, or possibly ever will. The addition of Heyman as his manager and even giving him the belt all made sense once the angle had played out, although I’m still not sold on the fact that Brock’s winning streak was ended by the Show, but you can’t have everything, right?
Hey, I’m a huge HBK fan, that’s why I did not like this angle one little bit. From killing off D-X for a cheap pop, to HBK’s pointless leap from the top of a truck into a pile of well padded bin bags and the horrible, HORRIBLE promo he cut right after it, this feud has been nowhere near the level it should have been at. I don’t know why, but for two supposed best friends, HBK and Trips just have absolutely no chemistry when they cut promos on each other. Thankfully, it looks like it’s over now... for the time being.
Only one thing makes the Torrie / Dawn & Al storyline remotely interesting... well, OK, Torrie has a couple of good points about her, I suppose, but I digress... Tazz. Yes folks, Tazz’s continual ripping on this angle is the only thing that keeps me watching. I really couldn’t care less about what Dawn does in her hotel room, or what pills Al takes, all I need is to hear Tazz gut himself laughing at the ineptitude of it all while struggling to get out “Look at Al! Look at Dawn! Look at AL!”. Tazz, I take my non-existent hat off, my small orange friend.
Hey, the less said about the horrific Kane and Katie Vick puke fest the better. A truly horrible angle from start to finish, it should never have made it to TV. I think the fact that the media at large really couldn’t give a damn about it killed it off a lot quicker than it maybe would have been, had there been international uproar about Trips and his video. It may have inspired one of my favourite jokes of the year though, Kane’s new “Sixth Sense” inspired T-Shirt that says “I do dead people”.
Yes - Michael Cole! Good Ol’ MC makes it into a best commentator list - the world has truly ended, folks - seeya! Seriously, Cole and Tazz have formed a great little partnership on Smackdown, and I just can’t split the two. As Michael Cole proved when he did the one show with Ernest Miller, they don’t work well apart. Tazz’s wicked sense of humour (if not his singing and dancing skills) bounce well off Cole’s well rehearsed straight man act, although snippets of a dry sense of humour are escaping more and more, usually in Tazz’s direction. Keep up the good work, chappies!
What can’t be said about Heyman that I haven’t already gushed? He may well have been commentator for only a short time, and hell, even only did colour commentary during a PPV, but dammit, he’s still the best damn commentator in the WWE for my money.
Jim Ross, I hear you cry! Yes, JR is in there. He’s really annoying me now, he mixes names up, keeps on spouting clichés, in fact he’s become a parody of himself in the past year. On his day, he can still be good, but sadly The King often drags JR down to his level, and JR just can’t get out of that rut.
Josh is a late entrant to the hall of shame, and qualifies for being just too damn cheesy for my tastes. He sounds like a mini Coachman with his little comments and his too familiar intros.... gyah! It annoys me right now even thinking of him. For some reason, he reminds me of Alvin of “Alvin & The Chipmunks” fame.
But there can be only one winner (if that’s the word) for this award - the sheer awfulness that is Jerry Lawler. Memo to Jerry : You’re not 22 anymore, it’s not 1997 - people are tired of hearing you go “Woohoo! Puppies!” if you get the merest glimpse of a woman on the screen. Give it up, man!
A hard category to pick, 2002 was a great year for stunning matches, both on PPV and TV - Smackdown excelling in that respect. No place for the No Mercy Tag Title spectacular, or TLC 4, or even Angle vs. Mysterio at Summerslam...
RVD and Eddie put on a match that is much forgotten about and overlooked, mostly due to a killer No-DQ match that Eddie had with Edge on Smackdown in September, but I thought this was a better match. Eddie even had to contend with a wannabe running in and nearly killing himself and Eddie in the process, but even with that setback, both men put on a great spectacle in an under-rated match.
Shawn Michaels’ comeback match was always going to be a bit special, and this certainly falls into that category. Hands down, the best match that Triple H has had since his return from injury, and it took a guy that’s been retired for 4 years to drag it out of him. Every move in the match had a meaning and a purpose behind it, even if it was just a straight right to the head - proof that a good build can make or break a match. Sadly, they should have stopped there with the Trips/HBK feud, and let this match stand as the blow-off.
Match Of The Year for me though, by a long, LONG way was the technical wrestling clinic that Kurt and Chris put on at Unforgiven. Simply put, a stunning match that I never get tired of watching... The quickness and inventiveness of some of the holds and counterholds was just amazing... I really do love this match - go and get a copy of it from somewhere!
Michaels and Trips’ much touted “Match Of The Year” contender in the making gets in here for failing to live up to the immense hype bestowed on it, and a stupid bump for Michaels to boot. There’s no need for HBK to fall from a ladder through a stack of tables to prove something to the fans - he’s proved all he needs to in the ring, and nearly crippling himself to make a moot point isn’t the way to go. Credit to Trips for working the match with his injuries, but a 30 minute first fall damn near killed the whole match dead.
Taker and Hogan - battle of “won’t sell” vs. “can’t sell”. Probably the first match in history to have a chokeslam that went below sea level, and definitely the slowest match of the year. Worst main event match of the year, hands down, and probably spelled the end of Hogan as a main eventer.
Could it really be any other match as worst of the year though? Jackie Gayda single handedly destroying any credibility that Tough Enough had built in one 4 minute spell. Add in Nowinski and his “unique” style, and Bradshaw’s unwillingness to sell, or even play nicely with Nowinski, and this was just a train crash. Highlight, or lowlight was Jackie deciding that she should sell a bulldog from Trish by falling backwards.
Yep, I admit. The feet were tapping the minute the old Shawn Michaels music we all know and love struck up at Summerslam. Michaels is the best all-round package of wrestler and entertainer that I think I’ve ever seen, and hearing that old music, and the pyro hit in like it was 1997 again kicked in the nostalgia that was the over-riding feeling of the 2002 WWE year. The match was worth the wait too, as I said earlier. Truly a great moment of the year...
Eric Bischoff’s finest moment since his WWE debut, that’s what his show stealing performance on Smackdown eventually turned out to be. Bischoff’s had a great spell as Raw’s GM, but this topped the lot. I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again - Bischoff pulling off his mask is one of the great images of the year for the WWE, and definitely worthy of being in my list.
But what can you say about the event of the year? Hogan vs. Rock - icon vs. icon, as it was rightly plugged. I was never a Hogan fan when I was younger (I always liked Randy Savage more) but the reception that the Montreal Wrestlemania crowd gave Hogan, and the way he and The Rock played it, and milked it for all it was worth... that was something.
All the cheesy Hogan spots we all knew would happen... the hand to the ear, the hulking up, the finger pointing, the big boot followed by the Leg Drop Of Doom... they all made sense, and even more - you were willing him on to win the match. It was an incredible display of crowd control by the two guys in the ring - certainly by no means the best match of the year by any stretch of the imagination, but what an atmosphere - I don’t think I’ve ever felt as close to being at an event by simply watching it on TV, and I doubt I ever will again. Breathtaking.
Just to break this huuuuge column up a little, a series of (short) Special Awards :
Best Gimmick : Jamie Noooooooble, Boy
Trailer Park Trash, complete with girlfriend of dubious morals... simple gimmick, but made to work by Noble and Nidia. A great example of making the best of what could have been a horrible image to work with... and Nidia’s denim...
Best Gimmick Change : Matt Hardy Version 1.0
From Jeff’s frizzy haired older brother and faithful sidekick, to cult leader and trend setter with the addition of one number, a killer attitude and move to Smackdown. If this guy doesn’t become a huge star in the next 2 years, then there’s something wrong with Vince’s head.
Most improved Wrestler: Trish Stratus
Without question, she’s improved leaps and bounds to carry the Women’s division on her back. She works well with pretty much anyone that’s thrown at her, and some of her best work has been at the tail end of this year with Victoria. When Jazz comes back, this could be a new Golden Age for women’s wrestling in the WWE.
Best Brand : Smackdown
Obviously, eh? Next!
Best Theme : Matt Hardy’s “Live For The Moment” by Monster Magnet
Love it. I’m a bit of a Monster Magnet fan anyway, and this track is great. Not just a great song, but fits the Mattitude gimmick perfectly.
Promo Of The Year : Eddie Guerrero
The promo I mentioned earlier when he was trying to talk his way out of hitting Chris Benoit with a chair - Benoit stood and stared as Eddie went through every emotion from threatening, to crying, to laughing, to cowering. What made it was Chavo leading a sobbing Eddie away, while asking Benoit “how could you”... top notch stuff.
Insane Spot of the year : Shawn Michaels going through 4 tables at Armageddon
Why, Shawn? Why take that bump? He doesn’t need to, and I’m damn sure that I don’t need to watch him try and kill himself as well. If Shawn is to carry on wrestling, as looks likely, surely that will be the last insane bump he takes.
Move of the Year : Brock Lesnar hitting the F5 on The Big Show
The single most impressive thing I’ve seen all year - the sheer brute strength needed for Brock to lift the Show off his feet, hold him up on his shoulders, and then deliver an F5... just scary strong. Amazing to see.
On to the last set of awards - “Yay!” I hear the one person still reading cry...
Before people think this is just me on one of my usual Jeff Hardy rants, this goes to him because he really doesn’t seem to care about wrestling anymore. His ring work is beyond sloppy, the only thing carrying him through matches these days is the pop from the fans, and that gets smaller and smaller by the week, or maybe that’s just wishful thinking on my part. Jeff looks like he’s damn near broken down - give the kid a rest before he does himself a real injury.
Big Show... what can’t be said about the Show? At one point, when he debuted, he looked like a great talent about to hit... now, he looks like a whale about to hit a beach. Another guy who veers between “couldn’t give a damn” and “tries due to getting a push again” on a weekly basis. When he cares, and has someone to carry him (see: Angle, Kurt) he’s watchable. When he doesn’t (see: Time, most of the) it’s horrific.
No offence to Hogan and everything he’s done for the business, but damn, he sucks! This year has probably been one of his best, to be fair, and you can see he’s really trying... but it’s just not working out. I think it’s time to hang up the red n yellow bandana one last time.
Benoit is still my all-time favourite to watch, and it’s no disgrace for him to finish third in this company. He’s had a great series of matches with everyone from Kurt Angle, Rey Mysterio, Edge, Eddie Guerrero, Rob Van Dam and even The Big Show, and looks to be back to his best after his neck injury. He’s set for a rematch with Angle at next year’s Royal Rumble - I for one can’t wait!
Eddie has been on fire this year. A well deserved comeback, one which he’s made the most of, kicked off a fantastic series of matches from him. Add to the fact he’s the outstanding heel wrestler in the WWE today and that spells one hell of a year - it was a very close call, and he can count himself really unlucky to be in at number 2 - but like with Benoit, it’s no disgrace with the company he’s sharing.
The mighty Kurt Angle cements his spot as the best wrestler of the year, fighting off Eddie’s claims with a series of German suplexes... Seriously, Angle proved his worth to the WWE this year by making Edge a superstar, and setting Rey Mysterio on the right path with their exchanges, and then having the Tag division basically built around himself and Chris Benoit. Simply put, I don’t think I can remember a bad Angle match this year, and that alone earns him my choice for Wrestler of The Year.
Reader’s Award for Best Wrestler : Kurt Angle
Well, it was a really tight vote for this one between two people, but there were a lot of different people voted for - everyone from Jamie Noble, Brock Lesnar, Hulk Hogan, Shawn Michaels and Triple H to Low Ki of the NWA... but in the end you could count on one hand the voted between runner up Eddie Guerrero and eventual winner Kurt Angle.
I’d like to say a huge thank you to everyone who voted, and indeed everyone who reads the column, and takes the time to send in some feedback. At the risk of sounding like Eric Bischoff... it’s the people that read that make this column still fun to do after nearly 4 years of writing.
On that slightly soppy note, I’ll leave you all to enjoy your New Year’s celebration’s in peace, and wish you all a happy Hogmanay!
Until next year, have fun, go mad.
