El Satanico vs. Octagon, EMLL Super Viernes (4/12/1991)

This isn’t exactly a classical great match, but it’s unique and a real blast.

On paper, this is Satanico just whipping Octagon’s ass for close to twenty minutes but getting carried away at the end and getting caught out of nowhere. There’s a lot of potential for it to go wrong or to get boring, but Satanico is the best possible guy to put in this role. It’s all simple, but it’s so incredibly mean. He’s able to waver in between unbelievably cruel and almost charming at the drop of a hat. It’s deeply mean spirited, but tying Octagon’s mask to the top rope by the sashes attaches to it is just so cool and fun. Every little elbow or punch to the face once he tears Octagon’s crummy little mask open and breaks the skin a little bit also feels just that much more more violent when performed by such a spirited maniac.

Octagon wins with a flash flurry at the end, but whatever.

Not one to seek out, but yet another testament to the greatness of El Satanico, because this probably falls apart without him and instead it’s this gripping little display of physical and mental violence.

2013 ~ THE YEAR IN LISTS

To repeat, from the last three of these, because it’s always someone’s first exposure.

A note, quickly, about what I’m intending to do here, for the uninitiated…

Decade lists are fun, and they are forthcoming. GWE III is also only six years off or whatever. But I think that it would be irresponsible to do the former without some sort of re-visitation, and I’ve never been the sort who could just kind of do a project. Always whole-ass one entire thing, buy the ticket and take the ride, all of that. My intention is to cover 25 matches you may have missed, five promotions and tag teams of the year, ten shows, and as with previous lists, the Top 25 Wrestlers of the Year. I will obviously not be re-treading 2019 but this is the fourth of nine of these, unless the plague gets me right before I can get the vaccine in the coming weeks (fingers crossed), in which case, hey, enjoy the ones you’ve gotten at least.

If you like what you read, hit the ko-fi or venmo or mail me a wad of cash or other rewards for my work (DM me, we can talk).

Another repeat from the previous lists, since I think it deserves repetition and maybe spelling out for people who are reading one of the Big Lists for the first time — I am going to be discussing and praising some bad people. Sorry. Less so than in a year like 2011 or than I imagine I’ll do in years like 2016 through 2018 as a result of the prominence of British wrestling and some other abusers. My brain was broken in 2007 when my childhood favorite killed his family and then skirted all responsibility. I’m removed enough to praise the work of these men without feeling like I’m condoning anything about them as people, except in the case of one famous dick wrestler, whose career is so intertwined with the things he did that it feels too gross to me to really do. Otherwise, yeah, I’m talking about the work alone. If I ever gave you a feeling otherwise, hey sorry. It’s not the case. Otherwise I’ll assume that if you’re reading this 30,000 word monster, you have the same kind of brain sickness, and we can leave it there so I don’t have to hand wring before every word of praise about the work of bad people.

So, 2013!

It’s the best wrestling year of the decade, I’m pretty sure. There were matches I had to cut that would have made a top twenty five in most other years this decade, definitely the more recent ones.  A handful of different major promotions had some of their greatest years ever, several of the greatest wrestlers of all time had career years, and exciting and new things were happening all the time. In professional wrestling, 2013 felt like the year that 2011 and 2012 were pushing towards. The revanchist tendencies that seemed to have me down when discussing 2012 in pro wrestling winds up having the benefit of making the leaps forward taken in 2013 all the more thrilling and rewarding.

It’s not perfect. There’s still a lot of weakness on the US indies. The gains that TNA took in 2013 all came crashing down in 2013 and their fate was basically sealed by the end of the year. ROH was still real dull. I wasn’t able to watch ALL the Dragon Gate I wanted to see, as my Youku source had all their videos blocked when I was only though October. On a larger scale, there were still all of these worrying little moments that popped up every so often where seemingly the only goal was to remind you that this was all a fluke, and things could go back to normal at any minute now.

And yet, there’s so much more good than bad here. You can joke and call me a strict grader and marvel at every occasion in which I go **** or higher. Sorry for having standards, I guess. I don’t invest easily, and it means that a lot of the time, I’m left looking at purely mechanical elements, and it’s a lot easier for wrestling to come up short when you’re looking at it plainly. However, I was able to invest myself more in wrestling in 2013 than virtually another year this decade, and it’s not just because of the one obvious thing that I’ve spent the last few months gushing about every week. 2013 offered just about everything that I like in professional wrestling. The greatest of all time getting to show that in a way nobody ever expected. All-time great and sensational displays of high energy spot work. Some stellar brawls. These sprawling multi-match title rivalries, a year of both ascendant underdogs shouting to the world that they’re here and multiple wrestlers making The Leap from great to all-time great.

It’s one of my favorite years of the decade, and probably of my life too. Most of my best stories are from 2013, so this is going to be a very robust MONTHS OF THE YEAR section, perhaps the most robust one I’ll ever write, at least in a more evenly distributed fashion.

But there’s time for all of that later.

Once again, this is a multimedia experience. Good music came out in 2013. You can listen to some of it.

 

my top 2013 picks:
1) guns
2) pictures of guns
3) halloween
thank you. please look out for the top picks of 2014, which i will do next year.

— wint (@dril) December 30, 2013

TOP 25 HOOT OF THE YEAR/FUN THING YOU MISSED/CATCH ALL NOT-MOTY-BUT RECOMMENDATION LIST CATCHALL (CHRONOLOGICAL):

 

1. Masakatsu Funaki vs. Akebono, AJPW New Years Shining Series 2013 Day Eight (1/26/2013)
2. Leaders of the New School vs. Jonathan Gresham/Mark Haskins, ASW UK (2/20/2013)
3. Atsushi Aoki vs. Hiroshi Yamato, AJPW Excite Series 2013 Day Ten (2/23/2013)
4. Junior Stars vs. Atsushi Aoki/Kotaro Suzuki, AJPW Pro Wrestling Love in Ryogoku ~ BASIC AND DYNAMIC (3/17/2013)
5. Ricochet vs. Amazing Red, Brian Kendrick’s King of Flight (3/24/2013)
6. Laughter7 vs. Yuji Nagata/Hirooki Goto, NJPW Invasion Attack (4/7/2013)
7. Arisa Nakajima vs. Yumiko Hotta, JWP Mania-X 2013 (4/14/2013)
8. Shuji Ishikawa vs. Ryuji Ito, BJW Endless Survivor 2013 (5/5/2013)
9. Daisuke Harada vs. Atsushi Kotoge, NOAH Ark New Chapter (5/12/2013)
10. Blue Panther vs. Virus, CMLL Guerreros del Ring (5/12/2013)
11. The Shield vs. Randy Orton/Sheamus/Kofi Kingston, WWE Smackdown (5/24/2013)
12. Jay Lethal vs. ACH, ROH Honor In The Heart of Texas (6/1/2013)
13. Timothy Thatcher vs. JR Kratos, PREMIER Dutra vs. Cobb (6/9/2013)
14. Antonio Cesaro vs. Sami Zayn, WWE NXT (6/12/2013)
15. Jun Akiyama/Go Shiozaki vs. SMOP, AJPW Cross Over Tour 2013 Day Five (6/23/2013)
16. The Wyatt Family vs. William Regal/Adrian Neville/Corey Graves, WWE NXT (7/10/2013)
17. AJ Styles vs. Austin Aries, TNA Impact (8/1/2013)
18. Charles Lucero vs. Rey Hechicero, Noches de Coliseo (8/4/2013)
19. Blue Panther/Negro Casas/Atlantis vs. Black Terry/Negro Navarro/Solar I, CMLL on Televisa (8/16/2013)
20. AR Fox vs. Alex Colon vs. Shane Strickland vs. Andrew Everett, CZW Down With the Sickness (9/14/2013)
21. Madison Eagles vs. Nicole Matthews, SHIMMER Volume 58 (10/19/2013)
22. CM Punk/Rey Mysterio/Cody Rhodes/Goldust/The Usos vs. The Shield/The Wyatt Family, WWE Smackdown (11/29/2013)
23. CIMA vs. Super Shisa, DG Fantastic Gate 2013 Day One (12/7/2013)
24. Kana vs. Arisa Nakajima, JWP Climax 2013 (12/15/2013)
25. Jun Akiyama/Yoshihiro Takayama/Mitsuo Momota vs. Kensuke Sasaki/Yoshiaki Fujiwara/Super Tiger II, Rikidozan Memorial Show (12/16/2013)

 

EVENT OF THE YEAR:

 

10. DRAGON GATE “KOBE PRO WRESTLING FESTIVAL 2013” (7/21/2013) ~ KOBE, JAPAN

A truly fascinating show, and one that perfectly sums up Dragon Gate.

On a great match level, this has it too. YAMATO vs. Mochizuki is a really heated little fight. Masato Yoshino and K-Ness predictable tore the house down, despite some of that DG Brain Sickness. The Open the Twin Gate match between the MAD BLANKEY standard bearer team of Tozawa & BxB against the mismatched Naruki Doi & Ricochet team is one of the company’s greatest ever displays of that sort of constant motion fireworks show.

The centerpiece is the main event, ostensibly Shingo Takagi’s long awaited coronation as The Man at the end of a nineteen month CIMA Dream Gate reign, only for that very much not to happen. Takagi wins, but the way in which CIMA does so remains one of the greatest and most dastardly political performances of the decade. We’re a few years off from seriously discussing Political Hit Theory, but if you believe it there, you ought to believe it here too. This is a blurb about the show, you can read a more robust piece on the match here but it’s one of the more fascinating wrestling matches of the decade. It’s a must-see to understand why Shingo Takagi never became the generation defining unparalleled top star that it seemed like he eventually always would have, to understand why Takagi eventually left Dragon Gate, and how so many of Dragon Gate’s gigantic bloody wounds in 2018 on beyond were primarily self inflicted. It’s the least of the great and notable matches on the show, but it’s the sort of instructive encounter that anyone seeking serious knowledge should experience at least the once.

It’s not the most traditionally perfect show, but beyond being a great show, it’s the perhaps the most fitting show ever to completely explain Dragon Gate this decade.

 

 

9. AJPW “PRO WRESTLING LOVE IN RYOGOKU  ~ BASIC AND DYNAMIC” (3/17/2013) ~ TOKYO, JAPAN

Basic and dynamic is right.

That turn of phrase just about sums up one of All Japan’s best years in recent memory. Of that year, this is easily the highlight as it pertains to full and complete wrestling shows. The spark which the Burning invasion lent to All Japan is best on display here, lighting up the junior, junior tag, and heavyweight tag team divisions, while allowing for a fun main event in its own right, as Funaki and Suwama butt heads. There’s not a single must-see match on here, but from the middle of the card on, it’s hit after hit after hit in a way that All Japan rarely ever delivered, even in their prime. The highs are nowhere near as high, but they’re sustained at such an impressive pace that it just feels wrong to ignore a show this enduringly fun.

 

8. NJPW “WRESTLE KINGDOM 7” (1/4/2013) ~ TOKYO, JAPAN

The Dome Show rarely ever hits as well as this.

The trick is that there isn’t really a wasted spot on the show, outside of “only” giving out Togi Makabe as Shibata’s first singles opponent back and not having more for Karl and Goto to do than loser to the mediocre Killer Elite Squad. The show works so well for the same reason that New Japan was at its best in 2013, which is that there really is something for almost everyone. The juniors spotfest delivers. You’ve got an old man slap fight, a delightful freak show tag, and one of New Japan’s better double main events of the decade. It’s there where this show really shines, delivering two remarkable epics, both so wildly different in scope and ton and ideology, and each wildly successful all the time. It’s a good rule of thumb here that if a show has at least two matches considered for or on the Match of the Year section later on, it’s probably going to be on this list.

It’s not even the third best New Japan show of 2013, but given all the new eyeballs starting to glance their way around this time, this is the best possible introductory show that the company could have put on, only topped two years later by one of the best shows of the entire decade full-stop.

 

 

7. PWG “ALL STAR WEEKEND 9 NIGHT ONE” (3/22/2013) ~ RESEDA, CALIFORNIA

In the first show after El Generico’s departure and the formal end of PWG’s absolute peak, the great plateau of 2013 through 2015 starts off real strongly.

It’s that same rule again. Have two of the best matches of the year on one show, and it’s worth considering. Have two of the best matches of the year on one show, and a a lot of fun stuff underneath it, and it’s a lock. The blow off between Sami Callihan and Drake Younger was one of the matches that didn’t quite make the final cut of the Match of the Year list. The big nutty spotfest tag was one of the matches that I knew absolutely had to be included in there. So you’ve got two matches that great and a card with relatively little that was actually bad (a tag match with 2013 KOR vs. Elgin & Brian Cage exchanges is up there, and probably why this isn’t higher).

Fittingly, the ultimate Obama era indie opens its new era with a statement that defines the era at large.

The best days are behind us, but that’s no reason we still can’t have fun.

 

 

6. WWE “SMACKDOWN #745” (11/29/2013) ~ UNCASVILLE, CONNECTICUT

The best episode of wrestling television of the year, and for several of them before it.

It’s one of my favorite televised wrestling experiences ever. The first hour is standard WWE b show stuff. You get some simple showcase matches. Titus O’Neil throws up on JBL. You know, the classics.

The magic in this is primarily in the last hour. It’s a sprawling and evolving series of three tag team matches, flowing from match to match in a way more befitting ECW or golden age ROH than a WWE b-show in 2013. However, given that those are two of the best professional wrestling companies ever, this is tremendous stuff. There’s a charm to it that WWE television usually lacks, even when they give a shit and try to make it good. Each builds on the one before it, the energy builds up, and it’s just such a fun and unique thing. It’s carried off almost exclusively by good to great wrestlers, and the whole thing simply WORKS. It’s a fascinating and memorable piece of television wrestling, and one of the major things I’m going to take away from 2013.

Even if it lacks the firepower or long term importance of some of the shows or matches yet to come on this list, it’s the third or fourth thing that comes to mind when I think of wrestling in the year 2013, and I can’t very well write about it without some kind of piece commemorating it.

 

 

5. NJPW “KIZUNA ROAD 2013 DAY NINE” (7/20/2013) ~ AKITA, JAPAN

Quietly, this was one of the best top to bottom New Japan shows of their banner year.

It’s a picture perfect exhibition of what worked so well about New Japan in this 2012-2015 high golden age, which is how much they had to offer. If you want your big moves epic title match, this show has it in the second ever Shinsuke Nakamura vs. La Sombra title match. If you want some shoot style grappling or a pure heel vs. face grudge match or old men clubbing the hell out of each other, this show has it. On top of all of it, it’s yet another classic display of the best trope that professional wrestling has, which is hurling a hot babyface and a hot heel at each other and watching the magic happen. And every single bit of it works. It’s a New Japan show without any one major epic, but in which just about everything of some level of consequence delivers.

The Fully Loaded 2000 of New Japan’s peak run, which is to say a show built around specifically not delivering big matches, giving the ascendant guys a shot to shine, and which works because the entire company is on such a roll at this point that it feels like almost anything would be successful.

 

 

4. NJPW “G1 CLIMAX 23 DAY FOUR” (8/4/2013) ~ OSAKA, JAPAN

This is a famous one, and one that I think we all knew would be on here.

It might be overrated at this point, it’s not the perfect wrestling show. But what it happens to be is a near perfect display of tournament style wrestling. There are six different great matches on this show, two of them among the top twenty five of the year, and they’re all pretty different. Pure formula good guy against bad guy, traditional power fighting, technique vs. flying, and one of the quintessential dudes rock style meathead displays of the decade. It’s the sort of show every round robin tournament show should strive to be like, as diverse as it is great.

Given the lasting impact both in terms of what these major matches did for the people who won them and their impact on the overall style of wrestling, this show’s not just here for match quality either though.

If not the perfect G1 show ever, it’s the platonic ideal that all others would aspire to be in the future.

But it’s not the best tournament show of the year.

 

 

3. NJPW “INVASION ATTACK 2013” (4/7/2013) ~ TOKYO, JAPAN

If that was the platonic ideal of a G1 show, this is the platonic ideal of a Sumo Hall show.

It isn’t just all these great matches underneath the one you know about. Before the big angle that births the most famous stable of the decade, Apollo 55’s challenge against The Time Splitters is a real blast. Laughter7 against Yuji Nagata and Hirooki Goto is one of the hoots of the year and if not for an unfortunate injury, could have found its way onto an even higher list. In the penultimate match of the show, Shinsuke Nakamura pulls off one of the great miracles of the year, decade, and his entire career when he’s involved in a genuinely terrific match against the solid but often underachieving Davey Boy Smith Jr. To cap it all off, the main event is not only one of the best matches of the year and of the decade, but it’s a defining moment in the history of the company.

Often times, it feels like major shows can be either great or important. This one managed to be both.

 

 

2. WWE “SUMMERSLAM 2013” (8/18/2013) ~ LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA

Another major show that managed to be both great and important.

The card here is great. The only bad matches are your token pre-2015 WWE womens match and a very silly RING OF FIRE match that was like an Inferno Match, but you could win in a regular fashion and nobody was even lit on fire.

Otherwise, it’s an exceptional card. Christian once again gets more out of Del Rio than virtually anyone else. The mixed tag team match is really fun. CM Punk and Brock Lesnar get together and have one of the greatest matches of its kind ever. And while it doesn’t quite match up to the encounter they had on an episode of Raw the year prior, and certainly wasn’t as well executed bell to bell as it was built up to or as it was followed up on (accidentally or not), it feels impossible to say that John Cena vs. Daniel Bryan failed to deliver, even if you’re someone like me who only got something out of it on a purely emotional level because of the last three seconds of the match. Following the match, the WWE ran one of its most important angles of the entire decade. Perhaps not one with the planned long terms significance of something like a stable break up angle from 2014 or Stephanie McMahon giving women the right to vote in 2015, but the start of something that the WWE brought on themselves and tried and failed to ever truly reckon with, as the company itself turns heel, only once Cena has finally anointed a successor in 100% clean fashion. If the Summer of Punk was the first squeeze of the toothpaste out of the tube, then what began here was the careful process of rolling the tube up and making sure all of it’s out, before hilariously trying to rush it all back inside.

Beyond that, there’s a personal sort of element at play based on my experience watching this show, and just how it is that I actually watched this show

By 2013, streaming technology had advanced to a point that I rarely had to. Long gone were the days of 144p streams of WWE Judgment Day 2006. Long gone were the days of a choppy stream of TNA Bound For Glory 2009, watched while immobile on a couch after an asthma attack in the most terrifying health related incident of my life to that point. However, my laptop broke the Friday before this show. So, come Sunday night and my new laptop not having arrived quite yet, the choices were either wait days and fill my Sunday night through channel hopping and waiting for Breaking Bad or to pony up the $50 and to watch the stream of the show on my phone on the WWE app.

I put up the $50.

It’s one of the best built up and best executed double main events in WWE history, and the thought of not seeing this as it happened, of having to wait days or even weeks to see it was unbearable.

I watched this show on this tiny screen on an iPhone I had bought in 2012. I kept moving it around because it was too early to lie in bed, but then it felt weird putting it propped on my desk. Eventually, I just settled for lying on the couch on my side and propping it up on the coffee table against some books. I had to restart the file every so often or reload the website or deal with buffering, but at no point did the thought cross my mind that I can just wait. It wasn’t just that I paid $50 for it and was going to get my money’s worth, it was just impossible to turn away from.

I could never imagine myself doing this now, paying $50 to watch any wrestling show ever again. The WWE Network changed everything, not just in that the price marker was lowered significantly and streaming was centralized and largely improved, but also in the fact that they would never again have to really ask anyone to pay $50 again. The result is a slow shift towards making cards that would ever implore someone to do such a thing. Most of the shows you get now feel like they’re assembled with an attitude that screams, “Here, take your fucking slop, you pathetic little pay pigs”. This is one of the last of its kind, a genuinely major WWE show assembled with more than one interesting thing going on, with some real momentum, and with a top to bottom card that might not always be great, but is never truly boring. It’s one of the best examples of a major wrestling show put together in America all decade. A real happening that demanded to be experienced in the moment. No matter the system of delivery and no matter the price. It’s the highest compliment, a pre-Network WWE show worth every cent of its asking price.

I didn’t regret it at the time, no matter how bad my eyes felt or sore my neck was from that shitty old couch with barely any armrest cushioning. Seven and a half years later, I still don’t. I’d do it all over again right now in the same circumstances. It’s one of the most memorable wrestling viewing experiences of my life and one of the last WWE shows of its kind. It’s not the last WWE show ever that I’ll go into feeling like I NEED to see, but you can count the wrestling shows that I was this excited about beforehand on one hand, and this did exactly enough to live up to the hype.

But it’s not the best show of the year.

 

 

1. PWG “DDT4 2013” (1/12/2013) ~ RESEDA, CALIFORNIA

 

Fittingly, the Obama era company begins his second term by saying goodbye to its heart and soul.

Once again, PWG does it and produces not simply the show of the year as it did in 2012 or one of the most important shows of the decade as it did in 2011. Instead, it simply produces one of the all around best shows of the era and one of the most emotionally resonant wrestling shows of all time.

It’s the end of an era, as El Generico says goodbye.

In losing its greatest babyface, most consistent wrestler, and independent wrestling’s all-time emotional center, the golden age of PWG is over. I used to be the type of guy who would have extended it to Kevin Steen leaving in 2014 or even the great run of shows again through 2015 before the bottom really fell out. But watching PWG through 2013, it becomes obvious. The increase on worse wrestlers than before didn’t help matters, but without this heart and soul, a certain quality was missing. It’s not through any fault of the company’s either. El Generico was irreplaceable. A show like this does as much as one show ever can to showing off such a thing and expressing that out to the world. Wrestling is at its best when it makes no pretenses and tells no lies, and to try and deny how special El Generico was would be a lie.

In the choice to embrace that truth instead, PWG has one of its finest hours.

In a move that elevates this to its position, the entire show becomes devoted to El Generico instead of simply one match, as he and Kevin Steen enter the annual DDT4 tournament for the PWG Tag Team Titles. The story of the tournament becomes the story of this already well-explored relationship, as they go from wanting nothing to do with each other, to begrudgingly teaming, to being fully reunited for their last ever match as a tag team in the finals. Beyond the tears, the entire show is nearly full of great matches. Some are the big epics you expect, the stuntshows you tune in to see, but Sami Callihan and Drae Younger also pop into the middle of the show and deliver a vulgar display of brutality to re-set everyone with something completely different. After them comes the storm, and the show ends with not only one of the best matches of the year, but one of the defining matches and moments of the era and one of the most memorable of the decade.

Beyond that emotional exhaustion, before any of the feeling goes into it, it’s a near perfect wrestling show. It’s violent, it’s fun, it’s such a diverse card relatively speaking,  you have a handful of real gems, there’s a complete arc through the whole thing, and it ends with as endearing and heartwarming a display as professional wrestling can ever really give you. It’s everything wrestling can be at its best. Varied and interesting and cool and just undeniably and overwhelmingly real.

A match that’s more than a match will almost always win WOTY. A wrestler who is more than a wrestler will almost always win WOTY. A show that is more than a show is going to win Show of the Year, because even moreso than those difficult feats, it’s very very hard to do that. This one did though.

This isn’t just a show, it’s a love letter, and it’s the kind you never really let go of.

 

 

PROMOTION OF THE YEAR:

 

5. ALL JAPAN PRO WRESTLING

 

It goes back to that little tagline on the March 17th show, dynamic and basic.

There was no major shift in All Japan’s focus, philosophy, or booking in 2013. Instead, it’s the most basic thing in the world, an influx of new talent.

Jun Akiyama, Go Shiozaki, Kotaro Suzuki, Atsushi Aoki, Yoshinobu Kanemaru, and Kento Miyahara left NOAH to come to All Japan, and each one of them came in with a real chip on their shoulder and all the motivation in the world. I won’t tell you All Japan made the most of their presence in 2013. Suwama was still champion for seven months, and they failed to pull the trigger on Go Shiozaki (a stunning concept, I know) after a stellar six months of build up to a potential title win. However, All Japan saw its best in ring year in some time as a result of spreading all the motivated talent out throughout the card, and he ship was steadied primarily by an arguable career year from Go Shiozaki. Of all the transfers, Shiozaki seemed most intent on doing something with the change in scenery. More on that later.

It wasn’t all them though, Before the Mutoh-led WORLD-1 exodus  in the middle of the year too, the Junior Stars of Koji Kanemoto and Minoru Tanaka were having a terrific year. Get Wild was a tremendous little tag team. And the company saw one of its finest matches of the decade when KAI, of all people, showed up to the Champions Carnival and has the performance of his life with an exceptional Go Shiozaki match and a Jun Akiyama match in the finals that, hand to God, is one of the best matches of the year anywhere, and that’s in as stacked a year as this was.

It doesn’t last, of course, because purely cosmetic changes never really do. But if there’s one thing to take away from 2013, it’s to not weigh yourself down with feeling sorry and forlorn that something great didn’t last. You still got to experience something great, and against all odds, All Japan was briefly great again.

 

 

4. PRO WRESTLING GUERRILLA

PREVIOUS: 2 (2012), 1 (2011), 2 (2010)

 

A new fan to PWG in 2013 wouldn’t exactly have come in at the end of anything, but the time to get on the ground floor is done with. The best is over.

Some of that was unavoidable, to be fair.

El Generico leaving is the sort of blow that companies don’t just recover from, losing the best babyface in the world and one of the company’s all time definitive wrestlers. He was the emotional core of the whole thing, and without him, things felt emotionless for a while. It was all bright flashes and loud bangs. Sometimes, that worked out great. With guys like the Bucks, the Inner City Machine Guns, Dojo Bros, Kevin Steen, ACH, Drake Younger, on down the line, things were still exciting and loud and fast enough to keep things moving in the right direction. For the most part.

The increasing focus on total duds like a Brian Cage or lesser talents like a Kyle O’Reilly or Michael Elgin didn’t help though. Because while I have a not insignificant amount of sympathy for losing the beating heart of the promotion, there’s still a lot of unforced errors here. The Kyle push aside, there’s still so many Cage/Elgin tags this year. Still a weird Davey Richards comeback at the end of it all. Still this decision to follow Candice’s breakout performance in that BOLA six man tag up by pairing her with a gigantic anchor, the extent of which will only really be known about years and years later.

In the end though, this company still had the show of the year. Several of the best matches of the year still came from PWG. Every show at least had something worth seeing, and with the return of Chris Hero and the formation of Mount Rushmore, PWG echoed its 2012 performance of becoming far more interesting again to end the year.

The best is still over though. The peak is done. The glory days are behind us.

But that doesn’t mean we still can’t have a whole lot of fun until the bottom drops out.

Fittingly, the ultimate Obama era indie will also be able to put off those consequences for another few years.

 

 

3. DRAGON GATE

PREVIOUS: 4 (2012), 3 (2011)

 

Is it the best year in company history?

It’s hard to ever really say, given how much contempt Dragon Gate has to putting their library out there, or keeping it out there when other people have archived it for them. My Youku source went down when I was reviewing November of 2013 and never came back. Even then, it was pretty incomplete.  It means I never really got as clear of a picture with Dragon Gate as I was able to get for virtually every other promotion of note in the world. In 2014, it’s going to go back to how it was in 2010 and 2011 and 2012. At the mercy of what’s allowed to stay undetected. This shit isn’t even on IVP until 2016. It’s just gone. This is a problem that exists with no other wrestling company in the world, and the result is incredibly frustrating.

It also gives this company a sort of mythic quality, in large part.

There’s a real satisfaction that comes from digging and digging and managing to find that Yoshino vs. T-Hawk match, or briefly getting a hold of a source again so I could watch what I was able to watch in 2013. It’s like how it used to be, back in the day. Tape trading and digging on KaZaA every day, waiting for a match to maybe be released there. Scouring forums for download links. There’s a real nostalgic and romantic kind of quality to it, because so much of it is just pure memory with no ability to confirm after the fact.

It sure doesn’t mean I like it, but it’s something that doesn’t really exist with any other kind of wrestling, save for a lot of the indie lucha that shares such a similar DNA.

What we did see was incredible. Poor booking of Shingo and YAMATO in the summer aside, 2013 saw a lot of changes in Dragon Gate after needing them for a year or so. The Millennials provided a much needed dose of fresh air to the entire company, but the entire fall 2013 unit shuffle is the best in company history. MAD BLANKEY v2.0 is one of the best heel stables in company history. Monster Express is the single best stable in Dragon System history, and belongs in an all-time conversation. Beyond changing the units up in such a fun way, it’s the best ever year for Dream Gate matches between the YAMATO and Yoshino epics in the last third of the year. It’s almost definitely the only year ever where multiple Dream Gate matches are going to make a MOTY list that I’m assembling. The tag work was as stellar as always. A lot of people came into their own, had the best work of their careers, and/or became the best versions of themselves either again or for the first time.

What we see is a company spending the first half of the year building to all these things, and most of the second half pulling these different triggers, and ending the year near the peak of its powers as a promotion, where they’ll stay for another two to three years. It’s Dragon Gate, you can never say for sure, but it definitely feels like one of the best runs they’ve ever put together.

 

 

2. WORLD WRESTLING ENTERTAINMENT

 

I KNOW!

It’s a shocker. I even considered putting them at #1!

I couldn’t do it, but it’s an undeniably great year. It’s the best that the biggest wrestling company of all time has had since that vaunted banner year of 2000.

In 2013, the WWE had their best all around year of television in over a decade. Typically, you had one brand or the other being great at one point in time, so there was always this counterweight. With the brand split basically being over and Smackdown hardly even mattering in any sort of real canon, that was less of a problem than ever. In 2013, one of the great rivalries in company history wrapped up in February, and another one unfolded throughout most of the spring, early summer, and again in the fall. So much of this comes down to Daniel Bryan against The Shield and the major matches that guys like CM Punk and John Cena had, but in general, everything just seemed to work better. Not as well as possible, but better than possible. Randy Orton became the best version of himself, the guy that I think a lot of people pretended he was in 2020. The tag team division was at its best and most prolific state in, again, thirteen years or so. Beyond all of that, they stumbled upon a piece of genuine actual magic out in the world, first with the perfect build up of Bryan through the spring and summer as a surprising-but-sensible Cena heir, pulling the trigger, and then being loudly and resoundingly fought against when trying to go back on it. It’s one of the most fascinating and thrilling things to ever happen in wrestling. It’s the best in-ring year they’ve had in a long time or will have for a longer time, and has the first half of what is, to me, the best feud or storyline that they’ve ever done. Hard to deny.

All that being said, it’s still the WWE so while the positives might match up with any other great promotion this year, the stack of negatives stood higher than ever. For a promotion like Dragon Gate or New Japan, that might be like “giving Cyber Kong a title match” or the way Shingo was treated at Kobe World, or going forward with the obviously doomed Naito thing. For the WWE, it’s punishing someone for getting concussed while continuing to reward the one who concussed them or pushing Curtis Axel for half a year or a Ryback vs. Chris Jericho feud in 2013. It doesn’t really compare. It’s misguided but understandable decisions against some of the very worst and/or most offensive stuff in the genre in a given year.

So in spite of all the great things the WWE did in 2013, and how it’s the majority of one of the more fascinating and exciting 12-14 month runs from any wrestling company in recent memory, there’s a ceiling here. There’s always going to be a ceiling here, and it’s always going to be one they’ve installed themselves.

 

 

1. NEW JAPAN PRO WRESTLING

PREVIOUS: 1 (2012), 5 (2011)

 

What’d you expect though?

The Great Match Factory has its banner year out of the last twenty plus.

Extrapolate out everything I said about the handful of shows on the Show of the Year list. Then also look at the amount of shows it had on that list. Beyond just serving up a sizeable percentage of the best matches of the year and housing several of the best wrestlers of the year, they also regularly put on most of the best top to bottom wrestling shows of the year. Not only did they do that without anything all that offensive or bad, but they did that while succeeding at nearly everything. Save for Naito in the G1 and the Okada/Suzuki feud, just about every big concept New Japan went for in 2013 came out well.

It’s a real circus of a company at this point. If you don’t like this, there’s that, or this third or fourth or fifth thing. I can’t imagine someone watching 2013 New Japan and not being able to find something they really loved, and for a majority of people, there was so much to love. There’s four different Tanahashi vs. Okada matches in 2013 and they’re all great. Katsuyori Shibata spends his first full year back in the company and it’s electric, even if he wastes a lot of that time with Hirooki Goto. Even with Nakamura largely wasted on a Suzuki-gun feud with a lame climax, he still has two of the best matches of the year. There’s the Bullet Club, there’s the breakthrough of Tomohiro Ishii, the under-the-radar Nagata vs. Sakuraba rivalry, even Okada vs. Makabe works. And I mean REALLY works.

I can’t say that literally everything worked, but fucking when does literally EVERYTHING work? Never. Take off the rose colored glasses for 90s All Japan or 2000s Ring of Honor or peak CHIKARA or whatever. Everything’s got some bad, and 2013 New Japan had a lot less bad than most companies ever.

The Great Match Factory sets new production records. One of the best individual years from any wrestling company all decade, and so obviously the best promotion of the year.

 

 

TAG TEAM OF THE YEAR:

 

5. INNER CITY MACHINE GUNS (RICOCHET & RICH SWANN)

 

A bunch of teams could have been #5 here.

I loved a bunch of Dragon Gate teams in 2013, but none of them lasted a full year or had quite the highs to make up for the lack of volume. The Usos had a lot of good matches, but always felt like passengers at best and a tribute act to another team on this list at worst. Jun Akiyama and Go Shiozaki? Maybe. Not quite enough, but I considered them for a moment. Team Hell No? Answer’s in the name. It’s all Bryan’s work anyways, and believe me, I’m gonna talk about Daniel Bryan later on. So, the field is cleared and we’ve got a team that I really like, but that I’d normally never feel specifically compelled to go to bat for in a larger conversation.

That’s not to say this isn’t a really fun tag team for a good chunk of the first half of the decade though, and this is their best year and best opportunity to get on this list.

It’s their best year because it’s in this year that we have the majority of their best matches, all generally coming from PWG. In Dragon Gate, Swann isn’t the partner that Ricochet has the big epics with, usually going with Naruki Doi or Masato Yoshino instead, but in PWG, he gets the chance and these two kill it time and time again. The second best match on the best show of the year is an ICMG match. They’re in two of the twenty five best matches of the year. In particular, I think they have one of the more cohesive and exciting pure Reseda style spotfests of the entire decade in the match that (briefly) introduced Samuray Del Sol to a larger audience and put AR Fox on the regular rotation for matches like this in Reseda for years to come.

I don’t feel incredibly strong about these two though, I don’t think you have to have them on your own list like I do about the top three or four teams, but a top five needs a #5. This is a really good tag team that found itself in a handful of really great tag team matches.

 

 

4. CODY RHODES & GOLDUST

 

I didn’t feel comfortable putting any 2013 Dragon Gate only teams here because none of them lasted the entire year. So you’re probably sitting there now asking, “Well now Simon, the Rhodes brothers only teamed up for the last quarter of the year? What gives?”. That’s a fair question.

As opposed to those teams, we have all the footage here. We have all the footage, we often have it twice a week for three months, and this is simply an incredibly great tag team.

Goldust came back with such a vengeance that this first six months back before WWE forgets about him near the end of this golden age (part of the reason it’s the end of this golden age!) that I think it’s one of the best comebacks ever. Full stop. He’s a forty four year old man when he comes back and he looks like potentially the best wrestler in the world. Not in the way that forty plus year old veterans often do, transitioning into being Big Match Guys and killing it once or twice a month in big time matches. Nothing wrong with that, but that’s not what Goldust does or what he’d ever be allowed to do, no matter how good and surprisingly open to interesting concepts the WWE was at the time. Instead, he kills it on a weekly TV match sort of level, which is honestly unheard of for a guy his age. The easy joke is to go, “…and Cody Rhodes is also in this tag team”, but I’m not going to do that. I’m no huge Cody fan, I’m not going to lie and tell you that Goldust doesn’t totally dwarf him in just about every match that they get to have. He’s good here though! It’s the most consistent period of good work of his entire career and while I like some of his post-WWE bloodletting displays, this feels like the most consistent best use of him throughout his entire career.

The matches are largely fantastic. It helps that they have great opponents, but it’s not like they’re The Usos or Erick Rowan in Wyatt Family tags, they’re not passengers. Goldust is steering the ship and Cody is adding a lot to these matches too. They’re in good to great matches every week, having one that was among the very best matches of the year, being a central part of my favorite televised wrestling experience of the year, and part of one of the most cathartic and uplifting moments of the year as pictured above.

It was only three months, but what an unbelievable three months.

 

 

3. DOJO BROS (RODERICK STRONG & EDDIE EDWARDS)

 

This is the greatest tag team that barely was.

For the uninitiated or for those who simply haven’t read all of my glowing words of praise for just about every Dojo Bros tag from December 2012 through December 2013, this is one of my favorite tag teams ever. I don’t care that they had less than fifteen matches of any real note together in that period. Doesn’t matter when the matches they did have were all this great. A perfect combination with the sort of immediate chemistry that Roderick Strong hadn’t had with anyone since Jack Evans in the mid 2000s and that Eddie Edwards never had with anyone else, no matter how much more widely exposed and lauded those more famous teams might be. It wasn’t just this perfect stylistic fit of two classical meatheads getting to do violence together instead of against each other, it was the exuberance that they brought to the table while doing it. The amount of joy they put into these horrific destructions of anyone across the ring from them practically poured out of the screen in an infectious way that very few other tag teams (even much better ones long term!) were able to really do.

Eddie Edwards and Roderick Strong together are the best case scenario for someone’s lack of volume as a team, as virtually everything that they did together was stellar. The three teams above them just happen to either have more volume (to an obscene degree, I feel like you know who won, so I can say that), higher highs, or both.

The tragedy isn’t that they didn’t win this award. They weren’t prolific enough to really ever make a fair run at it. The tragedy is that they stopped teaming after December 2013, because this is a team that could and should have continued to be up here for years and that could have been a tag team of the decade level team.

Not that I won’t throw them on in a vanity slot anyways.

 

 

2. THE YOUNG BUCKS

PREVIOUS: 1 (2012), 1 (2011), 3 (2010)

 

It’s not that The Young Bucks fell off. Not really. That doesn’t happen until 2016, and even then, they’re back in 2018.

I mean, sure, they don’t hit the highs of their best matches in 2011 or 2012. The best match they have in 2013 isn’t really about them at all. Yet they’re still in two or three of the best matches of the year. They’re still in the best tag team match of the year like they were in 2011, and if the punishment of this pair of swine isn’t the motor that keeps said best tag match of the year running, they’re still an integral part of said best tag team match of the year.

They were a great tag team, still in the peak of their powers. Elite level spotfests but with the sort of cohesion and basic structure that made them work well beyond what their most ignorant detractors might say to you. The last third of the year’s work in PWG is especially stellar, as their six man teams with Kevin Steen and Adam Cole not only breathed new life into the formula, but gave us the best version of Adam Cole that’s maybe ever existed and the most cheerful and effervescent version of Kevin Steen that we’ve ever seen, against some of the most likeable and spritely people in all of independent wrestling (and also another guy). They didn’t just make everyone against them look better, they elevated the people that they teamed with too.

For all the great work in PWG though, there’s a lot of middling to average work in Dragon Gate USA or less-than-perfect work in ROH or New Japan. Not bad, they were certainly great in those appearances, but it’s a blemish that the tag team of the year doesn’t really have, and there’s not one great Bucks performance or more that makes up for it, like they had in other years. Those away games cost them.

The truth is that if the best in the world, or even just a great and exciting new tag team, is working regularly against top level competition on television once or twice a week, succeeding, and then also being given larger stages and almost always succeeding on them…they’re probably going to win. It would take something Herculean to overcome that, and the Young Bucks have never been about strength.

So for this one year, the Young Bucks are displaced and moved off of the mountain. They’ll be back, they’ll likely be part of this list for the majority of the decade, if not the entirety of it.

For now though, the kings are dead.

Long live the kings.

 

 

1. THE SHIELD (DEAN AMBROSE, ROMAN REIGNS, & SETH ROLLINS)

 

Is it cheating?

I don’t know.

I don’t think so.

I can see the argument. It’s a three man team, to be fair. Maybe I should just go with the Roman and Seth combination, but that feels unfairly dismissive of all that Dean Ambrose brought to the team. So much of their work comes in these great six man tag team combinations, and Ambrose adds so much to them. Of the five Shield matches I put down as being among the best matches of the year, four of them involved all three. So it doesn’t feel like cheating in that respect. If I ever did a 2007 YEAR IN LISTS, I’d rank the entire Colony, all three of them.

It also might be cheating because the system in which they operated made it nearly impossible for them to fail, given the basic level of competency shown. That’s how it’s supposed to be, but WWE so often sets guys up to fail that at points like this, it can feel like someone somewhere is cheating. For most of their run, they were in the ring with wither the greatest professional wrestler of all time in Daniel Bryan or, fuck it, the best babyface tag team worker of all time in Dustin Rhodes. It’s a lot of help. It’s hard to blame someone for that though, you know? It’s not fair, as much as I love to put all of the evils of the world over the last several thousand years at the feet of Seth Rollins. They were beneficiaries of the one time the company they worked in remembered how to do this shit.

That doesn’t mean they were passengers though, because those matches wouldn’t be half as good if they didn’t deliver. There’s a real growth over their first several months, and by the time that wonderful feud kicks off, they’re in it too. They’re being led, it’s undeniable, but there’s not a member of the group that doesn’t contribute, and in the case of some of the Reigns performances in the last third of the year, he might be the second or third best performing member of the cast in the ring behind Bryan or Goldust.

So yes, they had a lot of help. Yes, the best wrestler in the match was frequently on the other side of the ring. At a certain point though, what’s out there is what’s out there. It is what it is. They had more help than other teams and the full muscle of the biggest company to ever exist behind them, and it produced this genuinely really great year. I don’t think they’re a better tag team than the Young Bucks or the Dojo Bros, on skill alone, I’m not even sure if they were the best tag team in their own company for the last quarter of the year, but when I look at all these things I consider when making the distinction, it’s not even particularly close. Volume and consistency and peaks, having many of the best matches of the year, being part of the most interesting and captivating stories of the year, it’s all there.

The Shield was not only the best tag team of the year, but one of the best things in wrestling all year, and I probably could have saved a few hundred words by just asking who else you honestly thought could take this in 2013.

 

 

MATCH OF THE YEAR:

 

This is the hardest one of these I’ve ever done.

I do these preliminary lists on a Google Doc and just throw on every ***1/2+ match that happens in a year. Sometimes, I gotta dig a little underneath that in a bad year, or in a REALLY bad year like 2020. This year, the opposite problem existed. I had to make A LOT of cuts. There’s also the lovely thing theses lists do, which is forcing you to realize that sometimes you just like a match more than another one, even if one or the other might be a hair better. I wound up with a list of several matches for an honorable mention list, and even then, it feels like I’m short changing some of these. There’s also some of these matches that easily could be on here, but then I begin asking myself things like “how many Shield matches do there have to be?” or “does there need to be a third Tanahashi/Okada match on this list?”. I’m ranking the best matches after all, but with such a bubble like the one in 2013, I think you get it at some point.

The point here is that a.) star ratings are bullshit, you can’t always put an exact number on a feeling, and there are matches on the honorable mention list that I maybe rated higher than a few matches that did make the list, and b.) there were way too many great matches in 2013. This is the most I’ve ever deliberated making a MOTY list, the hardest part is supposed to be the WOTY list, not this part.

 

HONORABLE MENTION (CHRONOLOGICAL): 

• Hiroshi Tanahashi vs. Kazuchika Okada, NJPW Wrestle Kingdom VII (1/4/2013)
• Hiroshi Tanahashi vs. Karl Anderson, NJPW The New Beginning 2013 (2/10/2013)
• Sami Callihan vs. Drake Younger, PWG All Star Weekend 9 Night One (3/22/2013)
• BxB Hulk/Uhaa Nation vs. Shingo Takagi/YAMATO, DG Dead or Alive 2013 (5/5/2013)
• John Cena/Team Hell No vs. The Shield, WWE Raw (5/13/2013)
• The Shield vs. Randy Orton/Team Hell No, WWE Raw (6/3/2013)
• Dolph Ziggler vs. Alberto Del Rio, WWE Payback (6/16/2013)
• The Young Bucks vs. Dojo Bros vs. Inner City Machine Guns, PWG TEN (8/9/2013)
• YAMATO vs. Ryo Jimmy Saito, DG Summer Adventure Tag League (9/12/2013)
• Biff Busick vs. Eddie Edwards, Beyond Tournament for Tomorrow II (11/17/2013)

 

 

25. YAMATO VS. MASATO YOSHINO, DG GATE OF VICTORY 2013 DAY FIVE (10/10/2013)

 

The second of the best successive trio of Dream Gate matches ever, all which flow perfectly into the next one.

It’s one of the best ever examples in a singles match of everything Dragon Gate can give you.

It’s fast, it’s cool as hell, there’s a meanness to it, and if you’ve come to invest in these characters over a period of time, it can be the most satisfying thing in the world. YAMATO is in his zone now as one of Dragon Gate’s greatest heels ever, the performance further elevated by the rare Dream Gate match with no structural mistakes or missteps. Not a hint of doing things just to fill space. It’s mean and direct and cruel, the perfect YAMATO performance. Yoshino matches him and then some on the other side. He’s up there with anyone else as Dragon Gate’s best underdog ever, a position he’s largely given up by now but that he can effortlessly slide into against someone as harsh and domineering as YAMATO is. Inch by inch, he creeps back into it and inch by inch, it slips away from YAMATO once again. The magic of the match isn’t just in the chemistry and all of the cool moves and the lack of mistakes that they make, it’s in the way the match begins as something so obvious and slowly calls it further and further into question, before it finally seems possible, and then it happens. Not a flawless match, but the picture perfect execution of the ideal.

YAMATO can never help himself. He sets up this house of cards to climb back to the Dream Gate after all this time, but just has to pick the same fight that undid him three years and change prior, and it undoes him all the same. It’s as good a series as any to illustrate how the same result can feel so much different at point than another. Three years ago, Yoshino taking the title off of YAMATO was the humbling of an overambitious young man and the elevation, finally, of one of Dragon Gate’s great stalwarts. Three years later, it’s YAMATO getting his just desserts after a summer and fall of treachery, and suddenly, Masato Yoshino feeling more like The Man than anyone really has post-CIMA-as-Ace DG.

One of the finest moments all-around in Dragon Gate history, if not the outright best match they ran all year. It’s one of the most triumphant moments of the year, and it feels like it just materializes out of thin air in the twenty minutes or so that this lasts.

 

 

24. THE SHIELD (ROMAN REIGNS & SETH ROLLINS) VS. CODY RHODES/GOLDUST, WWE RAW (10/14/2013)

 

I talk a lot about how great it is to see a guy like Kazuchika Okada or Tetsuya Naito eat shit, but seeing as 2013 didn’t offer a lot of either option, one of the best things wrestling could offer was seeing The Shield eat shit. It was immensely satisfying, always very well built up to, and when it happened in a big way , it would always be slightly different than the time before. There are more than three losses, but I think there are three big instances of this in 2013, and each one of them is in the top twenty five, compared to the ones on the outside looking in, which don’t have quite that same quality.

This is the last of the three, and it’s the least accordingly.

Once The Shield first lost, someone somewhere realized that they accidentally made Daniel Bryan a much bigger star throughout the build to that moment and when it was executed. So more people began doing it. They tried to make The Usos with one. They hot shotted Rob Van Dam to a US Title match against Ambrose with one. But every time it happened, they would get back at them in the title match or in a rematch. The only person who ever seemed to get to keep a win over The Shield was Daniel Bryan, who at this point was the most popular wrestler in the world and the top star in the company, no matter if it was planned that way or presented that way or not. More on that later, of course.

This follows up the more famous match from the Battleground pay per view eight days prior, in which Cody and Goldust won their jobs back and saved their father’s, in this big emotional moment. Great great all-time uplifting moment in wrestling history. But The Shield won the next night when the brothers teamed with Bryan, and now, this is the title match in which The Shield gets their win back, as always.

Except they don’t.

It’s pure formula. It’s a No DQ match and they use that very well, but it’s formula. It’s a dirty word a lot of the time, especially in WWE, but with someone as creative and motivated and experienced as Goldust though, it isn’t. Not this time, anyways. There’s changes and all these neat twists and turns. Spots and ideas built up before the end that all get paid off. There’s a bullshit finish with Big Show helping hand the match to the challengers, but given all the bullshit on the way there between ref bumps and interference, it feels a little less cheap and more like someone standing up and doing the right thing.

A lot of wrestling was great in 2013. But this is a great piece of pro wrestling TV that doesn’t just deliver the match or deliver a hell of a performance. It’s all of that paired with one of the more uplifting endings of the year, the only time throughout months of the evil authority figure stable angle that someone not only beat these guys, but took something away from them and made it stick.

The best wrestling always feels good, and this one felt great.

 

 

23. SHEAMUS VS. ANTONIO CESARO, WWE MAIN EVENT (6/5/2013)

 

The perfection of the ideal WWE b or c show match.

The matches on these shows aren’t all ways out of this world great, but they’re always this super interesting window into what WWE guys can do when nobody’s paying attention, but they’re still technically on television (later The Network) and have time to work. This is my favorite of all of them, because it’s not just a more technical display and differently paced, but it’s so aggressive and intelligent too, the sort of match that very casually develops from the ground up. Cesaro attacks the arm, not out of some grand scheme, but because he keeps managing to get arm holds on, and it’s suddenly a weakness after a few moments. Sheamus figures a way to get him off of it finally, and then immediately closes the gap with his famous Brogue Kick to win. Cesaro feels like a better wrestler, but a little too mentally complacent and ideologically rigid, underestimating someone just because they don’t wrestle as pure and perfect of a style as he does. The Swiss Superman underestimates one of the mortals once again and pays for it.

Direct, clear, and harsh as all hell.

It’s not the best match that Cesaro is in all year, but it is the best Cesaro match of the year.

 

 

22. SHINSUKE NAKAMURA VS. KOTA IBUSHI, NJPW G1 CLIMAX 23 DAY FOUR (8/4/2013)

 

You know the story. Just because it’s a boring topic doesn’t mean it isn’t also great.

It’s not their fault, it’s a simple, direct, and super fun bombfest. Ibushi proves something in the end, but the king stays the king. A new heavyweight star is born, even if he won’t materialize immediately Storytelling 101. Nothing wrong with it.

It’s a really great match. I think the hyperbole is genuinely insane, but it’s this obviously great match with two obviously great performances. Undeniable in its own way, but I simply don’t hold it in the same esteem in which I hold twenty two other matches that happened this year. I certainly don’t feel as if I have anything to say here that hasn’t already been said a thousand times since it happened or that I didn’t say in the review. And that’s sort of the thing here, that I really don’t have a lot to say about it and I have a whole lot to say about pretty much everything else, even the two Top 25 matches I couldn’t quite put above it.

This is exactly the sort of match that I put in around the top ten when assembling an outline, but then as I start writing and really thinking, I just don’t feel all that strongly about it when it comes down to it.

It’s not the first, and it won’t be the last.

 

 

21. MASATO YOSHINO VS. T-HAWK, DG CROWN GATE 2013 NIGHT TWO (11/7/2013)

 

One of my favorite things professional wrestling can do is to develop a hot heel and a hot babyface and just hurl them at each other for a first time match up. You can build it up with a story if you want, it’s nice to do that, but a lot of times you can get away with not doing that if they’re hot enough. They can even just be two well built up wrestlers of a more three dimensional kind. The principle is throwing people together for the first time after getting them both to a certain point and watching the magic happen.

I’ve got a real soft spot for the Kazuchika Okada vs. Prince Devitt title match and especially the build up to it, but this is the best version of that principle all year.

T-Hawk is a cocky young man who hates the old. Masato Yoshino’s a great sport, but ultimately, FUCK THEM KIDS. It’s a great play off of what worked about the YAMATO match, with the impossible slowly becoming possible and then coming true. T-Hawk pounds and pummels until the thing seems possible, only for Yoshino to pull it out with a real gutsy display, using that classic Ace trick of making a young challenger suddenly face doubt when their finish fails to work for the first time. Yoshino gets it done with an all-time nasty Sol Naciente. Masato Yoshino not only turns back T-Hawk for the first time, but further establishes himself as the guy to beat now, not only with one of the best title wins in company history, but with the sort of survival win that really makes someone feel legitimate in this position. A perfect sort of title match. You saw something you’d never seen before and everyone left better off than they entered.

The second of two of Yoshino’s all time great babyface performances in company history within a one-month span and the cap on top of an arguable career year for an all-time great.

 

 

20. THE SHIELD VS. DANIEL BRYAN/DOLPH ZIGGLER/ROB VAN DAM/THE USOS/KOFI KINGSTON/R-TRUTH/PRIME TIME PLAYERS/ZACK RYDER/JUSTIN GABRIEL, WWE RAW (9/23/2013)

 

The Shield eats shit in a major way, part two.

It’s not as impactful or well built up as the other two instances in the top twenty five here, but it’s still one of the most joyful and convivial sorts of matches you’ll ever get from a company like the WWE.

In this match, The Shield get thrown to the rest of the roster as a bread and circuses display so that they don’t go after Orton or Triple H after the previous month of tyranny. It’s a wonderful story idea, yet another really unique approach to something by the WWE in 2013, and the result is one of the more unique matches in company history, both on paper and in the way they went about the thing.

There was a Survivor Series elimination match months after this where Roman Reigns eliminated four men on the other team en route to being the sole survivor, which was incredibly transparent and the obvious point at which they decided Roman was Next Up. Here, he has a similar role where he takes out like half the field before he’s ganged up on and suffers his first defeat. The way that both locker room leader Daniel Bryan identifies Roman as the axis on which The Shield moves and the way that it falls apart for them once he’s gone does just as much for Roman as many far more ham-fisted piece of booking ever could. It also helps the other members shine some too, because they’re not just immediately picked off either. Everyone has to work for it even then, they have to cut off interference when the other try to save head schemer Seth Rollins from eating the rest of the shit left over in a four on one, and it’s so satisfying. It’s not on the same level of satisfaction as the first loss, and probably not as satisfying as the previously mentioned title loss either. It’s a joyful picking off of The Shield one by one, a deconstruction of who they are as a group, and even then, they come out looking better.

A miraculous thing  really, an eleven on three handicap match with the odds against the heels, pulled off intriguingly and competently, making the heels all look stronger than ever individually, without ever coming remotely close to babyfacing any of them.

On a micro level, it’s WWE’s best piece of booking all year, with a hell of a match around it.

 

19. ADAM COLE/THE YOUNG BUCKS VS. CANDICE LERAE/AR FOX/RICH SWANN, PWG BATTLE OF LOS ANGELES 2013 NIGHT TWO (8/31/2013)

 

Seemingly a pure fireworks show, it gets on here less because of that and more because of the story and heart that provides the framework for all of that nonsense.

This match is wild, to be fair. But there’s a surprising emotional core to it with Candice LeRae leaping off the page here as suddenly capable of being the very best underdog in all of wrestling, turning into a genuine hero by the end of the match. Because it’s one thing simply to be undersized and to fight, it’s another to be the only one left in a three on one, acknowledging it, and getting up to fight anyways. Heroism is about fighting the odds, but it always just hits me so much more when those odds are genuinely impossible to overcome, and this is one of my all time favorite examples of that trope. There’s some story element to it too beyond simple the performance of LeRae, as Adam Cole and The Young Bucks team up for the first time and find out that it’s perfect. Mount Rushmore rises from the Earth.

I love me a fireworks show, you know? I’m a peak PWG guy. I love me some Dragon Gate. All I’ve ever asked for is a framework and a structure within which to get the most out of the loud bangs and bright flashes. Sound and fury, but signifying something. This match gives me all of it. (Obviously, I also want the matches to be laid out and paced and executed well and to avoid any silly mistakes, which this also does.)

It’s one of the best matches like this all year, and one of the more underrated matches of PWG’s first half of the decade, particularly among the sorts of people who usually go wild for matches like this. 

 

 

18. KENTA KOBASHI/JUN AKIYAMA/KENSUKE SASAKI/KEIJI MUTOH VS. KENTA/GO SHIOZAKI/YOSHINOBU KANEMARU/MAYBACH TANIGUCHI, NOAH FINAL BURNING IN BUDOKAN (5/11/2013)

 

Pro Wrestling NOAH’s series finale.

Everything about NOAH is on display here, as the final remaining one of its main characters (Misawa, Kobashi, Akiyama) says goodbye. It’s too long, the young are eaten alive by a team of old men where the only one still active and contributing to the genre in any meaningful way is the one who gets to do the least, and there’s way too much of one or two guys who don’t belong there. Maybach sucks, he doesn’t belong here. Mutoh’s a fossil. The old guys take too long to do it. KENTA and Go never seem to get treated quite as well as they should, given how much of this is put on their shoulders, tasked with supporting their father’s weight across the finish line.

And yet…it doesn’t matter?

It should. It usually does to me, and I especially think it would when in celebration of a guy in Kobashi who I’ve never been head over heels for like a lot of other people (this is a Kawada blog, sorry). It just doesn’t. The length feels like product of nobody actually wanting the match to end rather than any pretense that it took this long, one of the all time great all star tag riff sessions. The bad wrestlers in the ring mostly stay out of the way. As for the classic Pro Wrestling Noah “FUCK THEM KIDS” mission statement, if there was ever a time to be like that, it’s in a match like this. Go and KENTA are good enough that they don’t come out of this losing anything. Kanemaru is here as your loss post, and does a fantastic job of being a real piece of shit throughout the match’s prodigious runtime to get to a place where it’s the most rewarding outcome. So it’s a match with all of these flaws and little things that usually bother me, and it just doesn’t. I’m not weepy eyed watching this, I’m not even particularly sentimental, it just rules. So much of that is because nobody ever treats this like it’s some sad thing. Saying goodbye sucks, but for once, it feels like a celebration of a career instead of a meaningful attempt to put a proper end to the thing. There’s not a hint of tragedy here.

It’s not the best retirement match of all time, not even the best one on this list, but it’s the most joyful one that I’ve ever seen.

A forty minute long victory lap.

 

17. LUKE HARPER VS. KASSIUS OHNO, WWE NXT (11/6/2013)

 

He’s competing under his fake name, but even before the comeback tour, this is the first time we get to see Chris Hero in close to two years.

Could it be more? Absolutely. Should it be more? You’re god damned right. Does it matter all that much when you have two big men this talented? Not a bit. Harper is a freight train and Chris Hero does everything in his power to make him look better than anyone else in Harper’s eight years in the WWE ever made him look, and not through lack of trying by some of the best in the world. Harper does what he can for Hero, which is not a lot given the aim of the thing. Once again though, it doesn’t matter, because Chris Hero is just so talented.

For what it lacks in ambition or scope, it’s mechanically perfect. An airtight performance from both men. There’s a hundred great little pieces of detail work. I gushed over Hero grabbing the bottom of Harper’s jeans to help with a cover already. There’s just as many great pieces to this that fit a more theatrical WWE sort of mold. Hero’s pristine underdog selling and comebacks and the build to finally taking Harper down and looking like he has a chance. The brutal and violently abrupt comeback before the end. They’re all basically ignored by production, with Hero’s huge Nestea Plunge bump being entirely missed by the cameras. Not that it would have ever mattered, because this was never supposed to be this good. Or rather, it made no difference if it was good or bad. You can’t impress people or prove anything to anyone when the mind is already made up, and these two were slotted where they were from the moment they set foot in Orlando or Tampa before it. Harper was always going to be a big man loss post for the real stars, and Hero was always just here because nobody else should get to play with the toys. Same as the next run. Buy the ticket, take the ride. One of the best matches of the year, and in analyzing it at all, one of the more depressing.

No qualifiers in front of it, in the middle of it, or at the end of it. The most underrated match of the year.

 

 

16. INNER CITY MACHINE GUNS VS. AR FOX/SAMURAY DEL SOL, PWG ALL STAR WEEKEND 9 NIGHT ONE (3/22/2013)

 

The spotfest of the year.

There’s some loose story to it, but honestly, it doesn’t matter. You can tell that one team is more practiced from the fact that one of the teams has a name and the other doesn’t. You can go in entirely blind, and still be blown away. The stuff happening here isn’t breathtaking in the same way that it was in 2013, but this match perseveres because of how well it’s put together. Perfect escalation, airtight construction, and spaced out incredibly well so you never quite glaze over with all of the similar things that a lot of these guys do. There’s really not a lot of fat on it either. It’s a supremely confident match that wastes very little time getting down to the exact sort of thing you’re watching it to see. Honestly, it’s hard to put into words what this specifically does correct. It just works. Call it Reseda Magic. Call it luck. Call it catching the perfect match up at the perfect time. It’s all probably right.

It’s the best version of a match you could ever get, the perfect stars-align sort of scenario for all four, and yet another version of a kind of unfollowed road map where one particular match gets the most out of an otherwise deeply frustrating style.

 

 

15. L.A. PARK VS. DR. WAGNER JR., TODO X EL TODO (5/11/2013)

 

The yearly lucha brawl that I am contractually obligated to put on here as a Lucha Guy.

A real wonderful and grotesque display of true barbarism. Unrefined and utterly filthy in all the best ways. There’s real gristle on this thing. Glass bottles, a mask being almost entirely torn off of Park’s head, all the blood in the world. Some of the best punches anywhere, the best crowd brawling of the decade probably. Beyond that, you have one of the coolest and most famous visuals of the entire decade, as the match begins with Wagner Jr. being burned in effigy, earning every bit of the beating he’s eventually going to receive.

The mark against the match is a weak finish to the final two falls, as Wagner’s Michinoku Driver II never once feels like the sort of impactful ending that any fall in a match otherwise this chaotic and sanguineous wreck should have. It’s too much of a wrestling move in a match that barely features any wrestling moves. Wagner’s comeback is otherwise wonderful, completely matching the level of Park’s first fall onslaught with a horrific destruction and desecration of everything Park is in response to literally being burned in effigy. But those finishes just rob this of an ending on par with the rest of it. It’s really the only problem I have with this, but with a match so famous and well regarded, I feel obligated to explain why this is “only” the fifteenth best match of one of the best years in the history of professional wrestling.

More than anything though, this match brings a rare feeling up from the pit of my stomach when I watch it. The same feeling I get watching Samoa Joe vs. Necro Butcher or the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It’s gross and real and even before anything ever happens, there’s a sense of dread that makes it impossible to look away from.

 

 

14. JUN AKIYAMA VS. KAI, AJPW CHAMPIONS CARNIVAL 2013 FINAL (4/29/2013)

 

A genuine stunner, and it’s not some carryjob either.

It’s straightforward tournament finals formula. An underdog’s fought through harder opponents and odds than the stalwart Akiyama has to get here, and throws the entirety of his being into it. For his part, it’s one of the last big trophies within his grasp that Akiyama’s never won, and the symbol of the success of Burning’s permanent incursion into All Japan. Beyond what the storytelling adds, the match just WORKS. Uncle Jun turns in his best singles performance of the entire decade as, you guessed it, a domineering and just-barely-still-professional veteran bully. KAI delivers one of the best underdog matches of the entire year. There’s Korakuen Magic in the air somewhere, and Akiyama gives KAI so much more than he could have or than anyone would have expected going into this. I’d never seen a KAI match in my life before I saw this for the first time, and I left it convinced he could be a real actual main eventer. Watching it again, I left it convinced instead that he could have been a real actual main eventer.

If history turned out different, you’d rightfully call it a starmaking experience.

The WRESTLE-1 exodus robs us of ever seeing a true follow up to this, or of a future where KAI is pushed to deliver in more spots like this in the future. As it is though, the miracle stands there forever.

A monument to the career KAI could have had, and the year Jun Akiyama did have. For once, Uncle Jun’s not on the rough end of a “what could have been” discussion.

 

 

13. THE SHIELD VS. RANDY ORTON/TEAM HELL NO, WWE SMACKDOWN (6/14/2013)

 

Every year, there’s a creeper. A match like this that I initially have slotted at like #22 or #21 or somethin around the transition between the first and second fifths of the top twenty five. And I’ll get to writing and it just doesn’t feel right. Maybe it’s not as obviously great as something else or maybe I didn’t rate it as high as something else. But that’s the thing though. Star ratings, like any sorts of numbers in a thing like this, are a guideline. So, this kept moving up and moving up. It didn’t feel right to rank it below these matches, so it kept just creeping up the list until it finally bumped into something that it didn’t feel right to rank it above, and it winds up this high. It’s high and I know it’s high and so much of it rides on emotion, but it’s emotion that holds up on rewatch, divorced from the moment. Which isn’t always the case, as these processes tend to reveal.

The Shield Eats Shit, for the third time on this list.

More importantly, it’s for the first time chronologically.

So, yes, this is the short one. It’s on Smackdown so there’s some editing that’s weird and despite the visible crowd reactions and audible real crowd reactions on top of the audio file, there’s still some smackdown_crowd.wav stuff that’s unnerving and always will be. And most of all, yes, it should have been on pay per view. On top of that, so many of the Shield six man tag matches during this run through the spring and early summer have gone fifteen or twenty minutes and on a few occasions even longer than that. This gets twelve. So there’s all these caveats to it, or it seems like there could be. But like the Kenta Kobashi retirement tag, I simply just don’t care. None of it bothers me, because very little of that gets in the way of what they’re doing here.

What it lacks in that delightful sprawl they’d all gotten so skilled at over the last two months, it makes up for in the history behind just about everything that happens. It all comes out here. The different Shield set up spots get paid off. Randy Orton figures them out more and more and avoids the ways he’s been cut off before in his own attempts to get at The Shield. Kane, who’s been the real weak link all this time, finally comes through for Bryan when it matters. Randy and Bryan manage to not implode despite still clearly not getting along.

The big moment is this frantic final minute as all of this goes off at once. They finally take Roman Reigns out first, which always felt like the key but could never be done. Kane hurls Ambrose onto him after it too, finally pulling his weight and using the anger in a productive way. Orton intercepts Rollins off the top with the RKO, leading perfectly into the Yes Lock for the long awaited win. It’s a WWE formula match, but it deals with all of this stuff you never get in the WWE. Minor pieces of in-match psychology that develop over months, trends in a repeated match, individual character roles and arcs within a larger team vs. team story, all paid off at the same time in such a way that not a single one of the “yeah, but” caveats matter much at all in the end. Beyond just the thrill of this thing happening for the first time, of getting this stunningly well built up payoff, it’s also the foundation for the greatest wrestler of all time having the platform in which to become that. Beyond that, it’s also the platform in which he somehow became the most popular wrestler in the world. A million great things happen after this, and very few of them could have happened quite like they did if not for this feud, and for this payoff.

When you have importance and match quality and just raw energy and emotion, you get one of my favorite matches of all time, and the thirteenth best match of the year.

Respectfully to some and disrespectfully to others, it’s the best payoff in wrestling all year.

 

 

12. KAZUCHIKA OKADA VS. HIROSHI TANAHASHI, NJPW KING OF PRO WRESTLING 2013 (10/14/2013)

 

For years, I was a KOPW ’13 guy. In retrospect, it’s entirely because of the captivating performance of Hiroshi Tanahashi here, and the surprise and joy of seeing him express a desperation that he’d never shown before. That’s still there, and it’s still some of the most delightful work anywhere in wrestling all year. I might even call it the best Tanahashi performance in what a lot of people would call his career year. He’s so fascinating in this, so lovably pigheaded as he re-commits to a strategy that lost earlier in the year because his beautiful arrogant brain simply thinks he didn’t do it good enough then.

Unfortunately, neat character wrinkle and great injury fake-out aside, this match has a major weakness and you know what it is.

They already did this match.

They did this match at Invasion Attack and did it better. Tanahashi’s arm work is more pronounced here and maybe on the same level, but Okada’s selling is not as good here as it was in April. The construction and layout is not as tight, and there’s just the simple fact that these beats don’t quite have the same weight behind them when the story’s already been told.

That being said, it’s the twelfth best match of an incredibly stacked year, and I’m not going to tell you that I don’t love this match. Tanahashi is beyond captivating in the role he plays here, the major difference from match to match, and the new Rainmaker variant at the end from Okada was just enough to differentiate this at the end. Most criticisms of this match are completely fair, but when it comes to these two, that really only matters up to a point.

 

 

11. SHUJI ISHIKAWA VS. MASASHI TAKEDA, BJW (6/30/2013)

 

The best deathmatch of the year, the best Japanese deathmatch of the decade, and gun to my head, the second or third best deathmatch of the decade period. One of the only good intersections of deathmatch wrestling and dumb meathead wrestling that’s ever truly worked.

A stark and startling display of violence, and if you need more than that, it’s got more than that. Invader with the title, big man vs. smaller man, all of it. Really though, it’s a showcase for some of the most audacious spots in Big Japan history, all constructed and built in the most effective possible way. Beyond everything they get right on a mechanical and intellectual level when assembling the match, it’s a beneficiary of some good old fashioned Korakuen Magic, and it elevates the proceedings that much further. It’s not deep. I don’t have a few hundred words to write about payoffs or what it means for the future or what it meant to me either in the moment or what it meant to me years later. It’s just a match that grabbed me by the throat and even when involving two guys who I very rarely LOVE, never quite let go of me.

Sometimes matches are just fucking great.

 

 

10. HIROSHI TANAHASHI VS. TOMOHIRO ISHII, NJPW G1 CLIMAX 23 DAY TWO (8/2/2013)

 

Even without the title, Hiroshi Tanahashi shows up to the G1 and delivers one of the very best Ace Upset performances in the history of wrestling.

It’s also all setting. These two had another match in 2013 that was also really great. They’ve had matches after this that I’ve loved. But this is in Korakuen Hall, and Korakuen Hall is the only place in which this match could have been this match. Korakuen Hall loves the underdog, anyone with a passing historical knowledge knows it. Anyone fighting from underneath, virtually any incumbent, they’re gonna be with the. Even then, even with that well established trend, this is different, this is more than that. If you went into this blind, you would assume that Tomohiro Ishii was born in Korakuen Hall. Functionally, he might as well be. He was raised here. He became a man here, and he’s here now to kill God, not because he hates him, but because he has to know if he can. Across virtually every promotion in Japan (because every promotion in Japan runs K-Hall), I have never quite seen them adopt somebody like they have Ishii in this period of time. The entire crowd is related to him. They are living and dying with him to a point rarely ever seen in wrestling matches. Forget simply being from here or being raised here or whatever else. He is the mayor of Korakuen Hall from 2013 through 2015 or so, and this is his inauguration.

Ishii wrestles this early tour G1 match like it’s the most important match of his life, like it is the only match of his life, and it makes all the difference. Tanahashi is Tanahashi. He’s great. To emphasize New Japan’s blue collar hero, he puts on his crispest and whitest short, metaphorically speaking. He’s not a prick, but he’s honest, you know? He’s Hiroshi Tanahashi. Come on now. Slowly but surely though, Ishii just stays in it and fights and has more than Tanahashi or anyone ever thought he did. Spiritually, physically, and even intellectually, keeping one gigantic move in the chamber that Tanahashi never expected. In the end, local boy makes good, and they do it in the most emphatic way possible, so as to make it completely undeniable. One of the greatest upsets of the generation, and one of the greatest upset matches of all time.

The shock has worn off, but this is still so completely correct in every major way that really matters, most importantly as one of the most spiritually correct and satisfying matches of the decade. The perfect meeting of time, place, and performance, and that goes for both men.

 

 

9. CM PUNK VS. THE UNDERTAKER, WWE WRESTLEMANIA 29 (4/7/2013)

 

The best performance of the year.

CM Punk turns up to a WrestleMania that he probably should be main eventing, even as a third wheel in a three way, and delivers one of the great “fuck you” performances in wrestling history.

The Undertaker brings The Streak to this, and CM Punk brings everything else. He’s a fountain of charisma, a manic bumper, an expert psychologist, and a political mastermind all at the very same time. He has to be for this to work, he has to be for this to have a chance at working, and there was zero chance he was going to come to this show and not completely steal it. Everything he does works, it’s not the last match in 2013 where CM Punk turns in an all-time great performance, but it is the last we see of the version of CM Punk from June 2011 through April 2013 that simply could not fail. Every idea he has, no matter how audacious, simply works. He gets away with it. He gets away with taking the big table bump away from the two bigger matches on the show with heavier political favorites. He gets away with kicking out of a fucking Tombstone Piledriver, and he gets away with not giving The Undertaker a Go to Sleep kickout in return, most audaciously of all. There’s a Midas Touch to all of this, the idea in your head that absolutely nobody else at this point in time and realistically in this entre era could have done what Punk did here with an opponent like 2013’s version of The Undertaker. CM Punk doesn’t win, he was never going to win, and we all knew that. There was nothing he could have done to counteract that, so instead, he made it as simple and fun and cool and impressive as possible, and took as much for himself as he possibly could.

The goal of this match, by the end, feels less like getting your Streak Match, and more like making sure every single person watching this with any sort of eye for it left knowing that CM Punk was the best wrestler in the world at this point, even if it winds up being his last match occupying that space. In a lot of ways, it’s the ultimate testament to just how great he was and the specific ways in which he was great.

It’s not even the best CM Punk match of the year. It’s not even the second best CM Punk match of the year.

But it’s against the fucking Undertaker in 2013, and it’s one of the ten best matches of the year and if that isn’t a miracle, I would really like for you to show me what it is that you consider a miracle.

 

 

8. THE YOUNG BUCKS VS. KEVIN STEEN/EL GENERICO, PWG DDT4 2013 (1/12/2013)

 

It’s another farewell, this one not as real or genuine as one earlier in the list or one later in the list, but no less heavy.

Not to diminish an utterly despicable performance from the Young Bucks or one of Big Kev’s finest ever babyface performances, but this is about El Generico. It is his show, it is his stage, and it is his match. In his last performance, he turns in one more classic babyface performance. He’s the best babyface of all time, bell to bell. The match highlights that, it highlights him against the best heels in PWG history, and it’s perfect. More than that though, the match allows the thing to finally happen in the only way it ever could. In their last chance to ever do it, Kevin Steen and El Generico finally make amends and come together one last time. It’s not enough to beat the Young Bucks. In retrospect, it’s the eventual impetus for Kevin Steen’s turn later in the year. In the moment, none of that matters.

PWG might not tell any stories, but for the way they took an obvious El Generico farewell and built the show around it and built up the story of he and Kevin Steen reuniting for the tournament, so that both the final match and everything around it felt that much bigger, they deserve all the credit in the world. It’s everything El Generico deserved, and one of the last times he got even half of that.

 

 

7. ANTONIO CESARO VS. WILLIAM REGAL, WWE NXT (12/25/2013)

 

It’s William Regal’s last match.

Even if not quite as great as the Moxley series in FCW, it’s maybe a more fitting end for him. Regal and Moxley had an immediate undeniable spark, but when you look at Regal’s style, his career, all of what he is and what he’s meant, I struggle to think of a more fitting final opponent for him than Antonio Cesaro.

The match carries that specific weight throughout, with the old villain displaying a secret heroism that only reared its head for the first time in the aforementioned Moxley series, going into a match that he knows he is most likely going to lose, because it’s a fight that can no longer be avoided. The end is here, this specific match up is always going to be the end, and there is no point in running from it. Villain or not, you can still go out with some pride. Look at it, accept it, and walk into it with your head held high.

The match itself, bell to bell, is stellar. Regal fights like hell against the dying of the light, and it does not matter at all. His old tricks do nothing. He is not as strong or fast or as technically proficient as Antonio Cesaro. On this night at the end of his career, Regal is presented with the man who feels like the logical endpoint for the style Regal spent his career exposing the American public to and for the cold, calculating, and dispassionate ideology that Regal spent most of his career succeeding through. It’s the end William Regal has spent twenty plus years creating for himself, first passively, and then by personally recruiting Cesaro to join the WWE. He destroys Regal’s knee in the way Regal used to destroy arms. It’s violent. It’s incredibly brutal. It never feels mean though, not in a personal way. It’s Regal echoed again. Regal manages another old trick and attacks the arm, but it never matters. Cesaro is disabled by it, but he’s more diverse and athletic than Regal ever was. To quote the greatest sports documentary of the last decade, “the cruel randomness of the sport is in how much changes and how quickly.” Regal was cutting edge once, and now Cesaro is. It happens to everyone eventually. Regal gets floored by a dropkick he never sees coming, his head is crushed by a double stomp, and Cesaro puts a resounding and decisive conclusion on it with the Gotch-style Neutralizer.

But this was never about the result. It was about the process.

It’s the end Regal deserved, the conclusion his character and his style and his ideology on screen always warranted. As a recent fifty hour podcast recently stated in a similar discussion on this match, it’s the best non-accidental retirement match that there’s ever been.

 

 

6. HIROSHI TANAHASHI VS. KAZUCHIKA OKADA, NJPW INVASION ATTACK (4/7/2013)

 

You’ve heard it a million times. You’ve read it a million times.

It’s boring, but it really is that great. It’s one of those matches. It’s both so great that it feels tedious to talk about and write about and so great that virtually every word of it is true. It’s the sort of boring rote opinion that I tried to fight against forever by propping up KOPW ’13, but that didn’t hold up under further scrutiny. Writing or talking about things at length has a way of clarifying things, and this really is just that great. There’s some minor flubs and I don’t care for the idea of a sympathetic Kazuchika Okada all that much, but they really do a spectacular job with this one.

It’s one of the all-time great Tanahashi performances, it’s virtually a lock for being the best Okada babyface performances ever, and it all just works out perfectly. It’s as great as the pairing can be at this point in the story they’re telling. I don’t feel incredibly strongly about it, it’s not the Tanahashi vs. Okada match that I’m ever going to spend time going to bat for, but part of that is because there are already hundreds of people constantly going to bat for it already. Just because I don’t have a thousand words flowing forth about this match doesn’t mean it isn’t incredible, that it isn’t one of the best ever, and that it isn’t even more important than it is great.

Sometimes the consensus is just right (or close to right), as boring as it may be.

 

 

5. RANDY ORTON VS. DANIEL BRYAN, WWE RAW (12/16/2013)

 

It’s not quite a miracle, but it feels close.

It’s a half hour match on television, with a career Orton performance and one up there for Bryan, unimpeded by bullshit, with a coherent fuck finish that doesn’t feel like an abrupt end to the thing, in a very un-WWE style of match.

As it is, it’s also Daniel Bryan’s take on something like Ric Flair vs. Ron Garvin from December 1985.

He’s a crowbar and he tortures the champion. Orton gets as vicious as he’s ever been. Bryan puts in one of his all-time great selling performances on the arm for once, instead of the neck or a leg. Things are done in such a unique order that it draws more attention to every big thing that they do. Everything means more. The personalities come out more. It’s not all that fancy either, save a Bryan dive or knee off the apron. It’s mean and severe and this match that feels incredibly spartan, but in which they realistically let out everything but their very biggest moves. In the end, Orton’s exhausted every avenue and comes to the realization himself finally that he simply is not as good as Daniel Bryan is. With the victory inevitable, he gives the match a finish that takes it from great and puts it in the realm of being one of the best ever, which is to deny Bryan even the satisfaction of a non-title win, and connecting with one of the cruelest and most violent low blows in the history of wrestling.

It’s a timeless sort of a match, one that would fit just as well in JCP for the most part as it would in 2006 ROH.

Beyond that, if you put it in 2006 ROH, it’d be the best match Bryan had all year.

 

 

4. KATSUYORI SHIBATA VS. TOMOHIRO ISHII, NJPW G1 CLIMAX 23 DAY FOUR (8/4/2013)

 

Dudes ROCK.

In a lot of ways, this match made a lot of wrestling worse over the years following it. That’s not their fault though, because this is the best ever version of a match like this. Every shot has a certain meanness and ferocity to it. It’s a bitter shouting match conducted with hands and elbows and feet. The modulation of the strikes is perfect, not a single one of them means the same thing or has the exact same impact. The selling is also perfect. There’s never been quite another match like this in recent memory, where even the selling felt hateful. The miracle of this is that something so virulent and spiteful managed to also be this uplifting in the end.

Nobody should ever be allowed to wrestle like this without first watching this and then being able to explain why these things worked.

 

 

3. JOHN CENA VS. CM PUNK, WWE RAW (2/25/2013)

 

The crime of this match is not in what happened in it, or what happened at the end of it. The crime of it is where it happened, on free television, six months before WrestleMania, instead of headlining the biggest show of the year. They seem to get how fucked up this is though, and beyond yet another all-time great CM Punk “fuck you” performance. The chemistry’s still there, Cena even puts everything into it like he rarely ever does on a non-title free television match.

There’s also the Piledriver.

Beyond everything about that one night in Chicago, it’s the defining moment of CM Punk’s career. I don’t think this is the match that best explains CM Punk, but it is the moment that might best explain CM Punk. Even if that arc of history always points to John Cena getting his win back, CM Punk has his pound of flesh. No matter what, you leave talking about how great of a match this was, and you leave talking about the Piledriver.

Of course, Cena wins in the end. Something something the arc of history. He finally does something CM Punk isn’t ready for with a sloppy but just barely effective Hurricanrana, opening Punk up just enough for another FU and he’s finally able to beat Punk. At a certain point, you can’t fight these things. CM Punk had a hell of a run, but it’s time to pay the fiddler. It doesn’t mean he can’t produce something this great in the process, but it does mean this sort of thing is inevitable, which is really all that holds this back. It’s hard to be too mad though when they built it up this long and when CM Punk built up such a compelling narrative that paid off masterfully in Cena finally catching him after all this time. The real shame is in it being their last meeting, in this being as big of a blowoff as one of the greatest WWE pairings of all time ever got to perform on. But it is what it is, right? 

Buy the ticket, take the ride.

These two made it a better one than most.

 

 

2. SHINSUKE NAKAMURA VS. KAZUSHI SAKURABA, NJPW WRESTLE KINGDOM VII (1/4/2013)

 

Spiritually perfect.

Behind the 2012 Match of the Year of John Cena vs. Brock Lesnar, it’s the best display of Inokiism of the decade. It’s a pair of career performances on display too, on top of all the pieces of the presentation that make this work so well. Nakamura sells fear and hesitation for the first time in a long time, like he’s a Gracie or something. Sakuraba lives up to every bit of it, creating holds out of nothing like a true alchemist and always feeling dangerous, despite never being specifically threatening. Nakamura can never beat Sakuraba at his own game, but instead has to adapt himself so that he can do things faster and more efficiently to leave with his title. Sakuraba not only provides a hell of a challenge in possible Nakamura’s career match, but leaves having created a better version of him.

Pro wrestling is the strongest.

 

 

1. CM PUNK VS. BROCK LESNAR, WWE SUMMERSLAM 2013 (8/18/2013)

 

The round robin concludes.

Like usual with these big CM Punk matches, he never quite has the clearance to get fully insane, but he once again does more with the simple touches (chair, steps) than anyone else in his generation was capable of. It works for the obvious reasons. CM Punk is just as good of an underdog working class babyface as he is a manic domineering heel. Brock Lesnar is the greatest bully in the history of wrestling. The only reason this isn’t the best CM Punk babyface performance ever or the greatest Brock Lesnar bully heel performance ever is because of the 2011 and 2012 Matches of the Year respectively.

Beyond the obvious, it’s yet another wonderful example of CM Punk refusing to play the game in what is, functionally, his last match. Certainly the last one that he ever cared about. One of the best things about CM Punk is the way he’s able to take these big corporate ideas, deliver what the paymasters want, but still attach his own agenda to everything. He’s bought the ticket and takes the ride, but what makes Punk so special is that he’s one of the only people in his generation to realize how much control he can still exercise over the ride itself.

The plan here is to make Brock Lesnar feel like a killer again after he wasted three matches with Triple H and put John Cena over to start this run (only one of these is a mistake, figure it out). Tangentially, you also start the Punk/Heyman feud for the fall, which is meant to see Punk tasked with trying to get Curtis Axel and bad guy Ryback over. Instead, CM Punk winds up in a match and once again changes what it is and what you come away from it believing. CM Punk can only do so much, still only armed with master’s tools, but creates a match in which he’s the only one in this Brock Lesnar second run in a match longer than like a minute to look like he might be better than Brock Lesnar, outside of maybe John Cena.  The people in Punk’s position after this who have lost to Brock tended to either do it clean or get cut off before the Punk gets to here, in which Brock is beaten. The people who beat Brock almost always need the help of something or someone from outside. It’s a masterful political performance by both men, as neither gives up their finish for a cheap nearfall, both of Heyman’s guys find a way to look like equals in totally different ways (the strongest and best fighter vs. the only one both gutsy, smart, and skilled enough to potentially beat him straight up), but primarily, it’s Punk’s show. He’s a politician in the old way, in the way that top guys knew how to always protect themselves, before it became so obvious and artless.

Like The Undertaker match and like the John Cena match, CM Punk does his thing and makes sure you leave talking and thinking about him.  About his performance, his selling, the obscene bumps, his comebacks, his wonderful Steamboat Rule adherence, and the way the match makes him look every bit Brock’s equal in the end. Brock’s lost matches in the WWE in which that never happened. People are lucky, they catch him right or like Cena in 2012, they catch him sleeping and wrap it up with a perfect sequence. It’s never like this, it’s never a slow deconstruction. Still, Brock wins and Punk loses. Nothing all that revolutionary happens. The time is gone in which CM Punk could do the impossible and change the world, opting now to try and show everyone else how they can do that once he’s gone. It’s one of the only times a moral victory has felt halfway real. The crime of this is that it’s the only match they’ll ever have together instead of being able to follow this up with the one where Punk’s able to piece it all together and do it clean, but nobody’s ever been able to make a “should have been more” complaint feel less relevant than peak era CM Punk.

If he can’t win, if he can’t change anything, he at least takes his pound of flesh on the way out the door against someone who never ever gave up even half a pound to anyone else.

 

 

MONTHS OF THE YEAR:

As always, this is conducted through the help of a few wikipedia searches and Facebook, on top of what I already remember. There’s no guarantee I’m not forgetting anything, but that’s sort of how memory works.

 

12. OCTOBER

We might as well get to it.

All about the last weekend here.

The last weekend of October started wonderfully. Capitalizing on the mania sweeping the nation, I bought a hazmat suit and gas mask as part of my Halloween costume. My best friend Eric at the last moment realized he needed a costume for the party we were all going to on that weekend, so some of us all went to the pop up Halloween store. Eric got some weird EYES WIDE SHUT ass mask that he was going to wear a suit with. I have an incredibly vivid memory of the car ride back from that store. “Harlem” by New Politics was blasting, because both he and another friend absolutely loved the song at the time. It’s not on that 2013 playlist because I’m ass over tea kettle or anything, you know? But it’s one of the songs I’m gonna associate with 2013 that happened to come out in 2013.

That same weekend, Our Heroes, the WMU Broncos, won their only football game of the season too, robbing us of the dignity of an 0-12 season. On the afternoon of October 26th, they beat UMass, unable to even give us the dignity of a home win.

All the same, it was the only victory to be had that weekend.

I have referenced this Halloween party weekend before. If you’re close to me, if we’ve known each other for years or if we’re in a Slack chat together, or even just read something like the WCW Great American Bash 1991 review, you either have heard an abbreviated version of this or know close to the entire thing. That will not be all of you though.

By this point, I am near the end of a relationship with a girl named Arial (yes like the font, idk, i have to think it was a choice, nobody should date people with normal names until they’re like 25) who you will be introduced to throughout this list, not to do some time skip movie stuff on you. It’s just the worst month (weekend) of the year so we start here. We met earlier in the year, hit it off immediately, but she was seeing someone and then someone else, and we didn’t start seeing each other until early September. September 5th to be specific, thank you Pro Football Reference. But she’s graduating at the end of this semester and she’s made it clear that she’s not going to stick around much after that, moving back to the other side of the state around Detroit instead. There’s a clock on this thing. I really don’t like it, I’m trying to change that, but I’m not graduating until 2015, so what the fuck am I REALLY gonna do here? We’ve been arguing about it here and there, including earlier that day when she talked about how much she’d miss things like this. So we go to this party and Eric and a few other people are there. At some point, Arial disappears. I referenced once or twice in a review a time when I had a sinking feeling in my gut. This certainly isn’t quite at the level of the infinite and sudden drop that comes from far more tragic news, but it’s the same category of a feeling. Something is up. It’s not good. And kind of, even if it’s the shitty voice in the back of your head that constantly shouts the worst things that could happen (where The Oracle comes from perhaps), you sort of know.

I’m hanging out with Eric most of the night. We bump into my old roommate Desmond and a few of his friends. It’s great. At some point, I stumble upon Arial talking to this one dude who looked a LOT like Mike Bennett. Later on, they’re making out and yeah, I am immediately not cool with this. We have a very big fight which is less private than the laundry room in this house should be, essentially break up, but nobody wants to actually leave, so we’re just both at this party. Everyone knows what’s happened, and I do not handle it especially well. I obviously should have just left. That’s not what I did, because of course. I begin drinking everything, because IT TURNS OUT, this is that dude’s house. So fuck him.

At some point, Eric leaves because this is not a good scene at all. I keep drinking. At one point, I find a bottle of Winter Jack in the freezer, which is a cider sort of thing Jack Daniels produces seasonally. It’s alright. We keep arguing off and on. At some point, she disappears with the dude, so I load up the little gym sack I came with to hold whatever we brought with all the liquor and beer in this guy’s fridge that I can fit in there. At twenty three and as far gone as I am at this point in a few different ways, “he stole my girlfriend (“stole”) so I’m going to take his booze” is a thought that just pops into your head without your brain immediately correcting everything wrong with that statement.

It is five in the morning as I walk home in a FUCKING YELLOW HAZMAT SUIT, drunk as hell, following my phone’s commands back to the building. I throw the bag in the freezer, and fall on the bad and pass out. Hazmat suit and all.

The next day (“next”), I wake up and after recapping things to Eric in the cafeteria over lunch, I head back and I keep drinking. Good decisions. Constantly making the best and most correct and definitely the most healthy decisions. Someone (I want to say Polish Mike, but maybe also Daniel or Desmond or even Roommate John via group text) tells me about another party, and this is a better solution than getting hammered in my room and being sad as hell. I have not taken off the hazmat suit yet, for the record. At this party, I encounter someone who I know is a friend of Arial’s or at least some kind of acquaintance. Anyways, she had introduced the two of us a little bit back. For those of you who have been in your early twenties, less than twenty four hours out of a relationship that ended badly, and incredibly drunk, you know where this is going. And there it went. She was dressed up as Log Lady. I pretended to know what that was, a few years away from actually watching Twin Peaks. Things happened, and I wound up leaving her place later that night just incredibly sad, because it turns out these are not adequate solutions. There are not chemical or physical solutions to a spiritual problem, or at least not this one. That did not stop me from continuing to see one. By now, the hazmat suit has a dick hole torn in it (I am wearing something underneath).

I wake up on Sunday morning, lying on a statue on campus.

It’s not quite so light out. It’s six or seven in the morning. But I’m there on the dude’s leg on the right hand side. Still in the hazmat suit. Luckily, it’s a Sunday and it’s Halloween weekend, and nobody is there to find me before I wake up, because it could have been trouble. I will walk five to ten minutes back to the building, take it off, and immediately throw the hazmat suit away. Hours later, I will finally take a shower. This story is not over, but that is a story for January 2014. (it eventually ends fine, don’t worry. somehow friends again after a series of different arguments years apart.)

Months later, someone will refer to this as “Simon’s 9/11” and I will have no response but to shrug and nod like the Alonzo Mourning gif.

It’s hard to say if this is the worst bender/mental collapse that I’ll ever have, because this was largely condensed into a day or two instead of spread out for months like the in in 2017. Either way, it’s one of the worst times I’ve ever had, and while I considered ending MONTHS OF THE YEAR with it because it is such a god damner of a story, I can’t lie. It either starts or it finishes, and I might as well lead off strong. The moral of the story is to never drink. Or to never argue. Maybe it’s to just accept things and move on? Maybe it’s to not tear dick holes in your Halloween costumes. Part of it’s to not pass out on statues for sure.

The moral of the story is to skip from 22 to 24.

 

11. JULY

if your grave doesnt say "rest in peace" on it you are automatically drafted into the skeleton war

— wint (@dril) July 28, 2013

It’s not a good month when the highlight is eating a meatball sub in a cemetery. I didn’t have a mental collapse though. Next.

 

10. JUNE

The return of The Grand Rapids Festival of the Arts. Blocks and blocks of food. So many different and wonderful variations of meat on a stick. The Edward Snowden leaks happened in June, which made a certain class of people go completely insane for a time.

There was another mass shooting. Back in 2013, this was more novel and less depressingly routine, but that might just be because I was twenty three and not thirty.

Most tragically of all, James Gandolfini died.

Boring month. I tutored and loaded trucks. But I didn’t have a mental collapse, a horribly public break up, or wind up eating a meatball sub in a graveyard in the middle of the afternoon.

 

9. DECEMBER

I couldn’t even begin to tell you how finals were. Based on nearly flunking out over the course of sophomore year, I’m sure it wasn’t great, but it was definitely better than the next semester. My mind was was elsewhere. I’m sure went to IHOP or Waldos (the local college bar) or something, but I genuinely don’t remember any of it.

I got food poisoning and was sick for a week at the end of the year. Didn’t spend it almost dying in a hospital, but it was another bad New Year’s. Not the first, not the last, but definitely the least interesting one.

The big thing is that in my depression over the end of something, I began regularly seeing the woman unaffectionately known by my friends, and eventually by my own traitorous brain, as “Window Girl”. More on that below and in 2014 and also in 2016. I KNOW.

 

8. NOVEMBER

its the weekend baby. youknow what that means. its time to drink precisely one beer and call 911

— wint (@dril) November 1, 2013

In the aftermath of The Halloween Incident aka Simon’s 9/11, I began drinking a lot. I already wasn’t going to as much class I should have been going to, but I kind of just stopped going altogether, outside of finals in December. And I started hoeing around more. It’s the dark period, really, it goes from here through the spring of 2014. Briefly becoming homeless and almost flunking out of school has a way of suddenly making things real clear real fast. But that’s a 2014 story.

I read THE POWER BROKER. I also came back to my old apartment over Thanksgiving break. Everything was gone again, except for that fucking couch, the mini fridge, and a small air mattress. It looked like the sort of place a ska band would go to shoot heroin. Thanksgiving was whatever, sort of hard to top the Butt Fumble.

Paul Walker died at the end of November, a genuine national tragedy. I saw a girl crying about it during the day, not knowing, and we hugged after she told me and I looked heartbroken (I was. I am.). No idea who she was.

A girl from a class (city planning? accounting? who knows?! not me!) saw me in my room watching a Bears game on a Sunday night or afternoon once, and knocked on the window and we began talking. She was a Bears fan too, and we watched the game and some things led to other things. I wasn’t all that interested, but in the wake of The Halloween Incident and starting to become a little bit of a slut in response to such a sting, I went along with it for longer than I ever should have. I thought it might make someone jealous. It absolutely didn’t, and up to that point, I had never felt worse. The aforementioned Window Girl. I started drinking more after this. Starting here around mid November, I’m not sure I drank things beyond alcohol and Mountain Dew for a solid four to five months, and yes, I’m sure that it absolutely contributed to constantly feeling worse and worse. There have not been more than a handful of smart twenty three year olds in recorded history.

In lighter news, Josh McCown started for the Bears during the month of November, and excelled at it. Get me drunk enough and I’ll still tell you, full heartedly, that I wish he became the starter then instead of Jay Cutler. I know it’s probably a bad opinion, almost definitely wrong, but I believe it.

 

7. MAY

Came across a homeless man playing “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” on a recorder one afternoon.

Saw a cool display.

I began working as a tutor again over the summer, as the community college I went to from 2010 through spring 2012 seemed to forget that I stopped going there and sent out e-mails asking previous student tutors who wanted to work over the summer. Good easy money. Not quite enough, as that sweet tutor money from 2011 began to finally run out. Being poor again sucked, so I also began working at a catering company that my aunt managed at the time and began loading trucks, which wound up being a much longer term position than I ever would have expected or hoped for.

Mostly though, I have this really nice memory from May. I came home from my first year at college, and went to go out and have a drink with my dad. We went to this crappy little Irish bar named Flanagan’s, and it was the first time I ever just felt comfortable having a beer or four with the old man. It was in the afternoon, we stayed for a Cubs game. I have no idea what we talked about, I have no idea who won, I don’t even know who they played. It was just a really nice day, and the sort of miniscule little thing that comes back and sticks in your brain after somebody’s gone and you wish there were more times like this one. So, even if I didn’t really do anything of consequence or make all these big memories like other months throughout the year, May 2013 has that, so I can’t ever say it was a bad month.

 

6. FEBRUARY

October 19th is a state of mind.

I won $50 on the SuperBowl. Joe Flacco is elite.

The German foreign exchange students wanted to watch. THE GRADUATE. At some point, someone noticed how often “Mrs. Robinson” is played, and it became a drinking game. I hate “Mrs. Robinson” now. All in all though, the Germans were substantially more fun than the Brazilians were. One of the better groups of transfer students, although nothing tops the South Koreans. More on that in 2014 and 2015.

Also this is the month that Chris Dorner went off. The only good cop ever.

 

5. AUGUST

Tutoring season ended, and I was just loading trucks for most of this month. It wasn’t half bad. I met a guy named Bruce who would become something like my work dad for a few years. A guy in his forties or fifties with a classic shitty goatee who used to own a bar but lost it in the recession. Sort of a dipshit, definitely a Republican, still wore a class ring, but the sort of dumbass you can really easily get along with when you work together and have to, because none of that feels at all serious in 2013. Taught me a whole lot of stuff about bartending, trucks, organization, labor (fuck the bosses, no matter if you’re related to one or not), how to work without working too hard, when to work and when to fuck off, really a whole lot. Some of my favorite memories on the clock are just being in a truck with the old guy and listening to shitty 80s metal while transporting stuff to event venues.

One afternoon, I got back from work and my landlord was operating a table saw in the hallway, so I was just blocked off from the apartment for a few hours and aimlessly wandered the streets.

We’ve been over the computer thing.

Because of that, I watched every episode of INSOMNIAC WITH DAVE ATTELL that was on YouTube, I read some books, started trying to watch THE SHIELD before giving it up when the new computer came in.

At the end of the month, I went back to college a few days early, to the esteemed Western Michigan University in scenic Kalamazoo, Michigan (for the new readers). It was a thousand degrees, I bought two more box fans to make it bearable and also left the freezer open all weekend, because you can do that in a dorm room when you don’t pay the bills. Unbearable heat. My best friend wasn’t back yet, neither were others further up in that rotation. My buddy Dom was back though, so we went out to a bar named SHAKESPEARE’S that was primarily frequented by hockey and rugby players. I didn’t really consider it at the time, having only been there once or twice before with my friend Brian, who come to think of it, was a hockey guy. The main draw was hanging out with friends again after a summer away from the environment and watching the Michigan vs. Central Michigan game. I do not fit in at all, but my buddy Dom, he plays rugby. Drinking with the rugby team is wild. Very big and rowdy men, but we all despised Central Michigan and they lost 59-9, and everything was perfect.

When we got back to the building, our buddy Aaron had moved back, and he was working the check-in desk. Hanging out there a bit to catch up, Whiskey Dan wanders his way in. The urban legend returns, and he has a new friend. The new friend is the drunkest man I’ve ever seen. Still possibly to this day. He would slur “that’s what’s up” in response to virtually everything, but occasionally, he would just shout “TRUTH!”, and it became one of those long-lasting incredibly stupid and indecipherable inside jokes that old college friends have with each other. Dom and I started hanging out a lot more after that, and he’s one of the only people from college I still talk to regularly, almost always punctuated at the end by that statement of fact. I’m glad I came back early.

Truth.

 

4. JANUARY

I began the year in a hospital bed. After a few days, the month improved. My oldest friend and I went to a luxurious Chinese buffet again. I had a pizza puff at a little hot dog stand in my home town (sorry to St. Petersburg, FL, I barely remember you) of Barrington, Illinois before getting on a train, never to return. I probably never will. It’s the sort of place that’s meant for children to move away from and never return. No real affordable housing, no real public transportation, deplorable suburban sprawl. You can move back when you become rich, which probably isn’t ever going to happen. But I knew that the moment I left in 2009, and it was just a matter of waiting until every friend moved out to the city for all the same reasons. You can never go home again, all of that.

I did go back to Kalamazoo though, which was my home already. This is the month where the foreshadowed “your people” incident happened that I mentioned in 2012 where Roommate John was hammered on MLK Day while my third roommate, Desmond, and I were talking or something, a little less so. He asked Desmond why the day was so important to “his people”, and it all just sort clicks into place that he’s just fucking racist, wow. It was the first time I’ve ever experienced an incident like that up close, where everyone is initially to in shock to properly react. It won’t be the last, but it was the first. All credit to Desmond for not knocking him on his ass then and there, but just telling him to get his ass to bed instead.

A guy whose name I sadly am forgetting and have totally forgotten broke his foot when he got into an argument with Whiskey Dan over whether or not Ben Affleck was a good director and kicked a brick wall.

Most importantly, I met two people who would make a significant impact on my life. One going forward, and the other just for the next year or so.

New transfers arrived in January, along with some new people just moving into the 21+ dorm that we lived in at the time. Our neighbor Daniel, the patron saint of bad decisions, had a vacancy in his room, and a guy named Eric moved in there. Sometimes in college, you just meet people and click. I wasn’t a gamer. He wasn’t a big sports guy.  But we had a lot of the same time periods free, liked a lot of the same TV shows and movies, and sometimes that’s really all you need. The best drinking buddy I’ve ever had too. Within a few weeks, Eric was my best friend and stayed that way through most of college, save the last semester, which is a 2015 story. It’s not sad, don’t worry. Things happen and you lose touch with people when they’re not always around you, but if I was getting married tomorrow, Eric would be a groomsman. I am fortunate to have lived in the same building and on the same floor with many of the people who have given me this terrific stories, but I’m just happy Eric moved next door because everyone needs a college best friend. Because Daniel lived with my friend now and not some random Chinese guy who bought girls watermelons as gifts, Daniel and I also became friends. He was very offended when he began playing Pearl Jam in the car and after I said I didn’t know he liked good music, and explained that I thought he liked the bad Macklemore style stuff that Roommate John did. I began hanging out in their room more and more, because Daniel was a sports guy too. That’s how we met Aaron, a guy from around the corner on the same floor, who had an NBA League Pass subscription, and in 2013, that meant the gang all became Warriors fans. The famous MSG 50 point game was in February, but it’s a thing that fits better in here. Aaron, Daniel, and I began gambling on college basketball and going to games when we could. March Madness obviously had great things in store.

We also met a pair of roommates, Arial and Clare, and another lady whose name I unfortunately cannot remember at this time and don’t feel like sleuthing around to find. We all wound up going to a fucking Cage the Elephant concert in 2013, or rather, Eric and I got dragged along because we were horribly in love with both of them. It definitely wasn’t good.

In more light hearted news, we also all began going to school hockey games with The Germans, and encountered another of the drunkest people who I’d ever met, who simply would not stop heckling the Lake Superior State goalie. “WHAT ARE THOSE KNEE PADS FOR? SUCKING DICK?” and the like. After shouting “DO YOU BLOW YOUR FATHER WITH THAT MOUTH?” when the goalie took his helmet off at the break to holler back, this absolute king was ejected and never heard from again. Rest in peace probably.

My friend Brian (from the IHOP stories) and the lady whose name does not come to mind hit it off bonding over weird gross out movies and hockey. Brian wanted one thing and she wanted another, so I wound up awkwardly around them all the time by her invitation, and constantly trying to leave to let them hit it off. One time I was unable to leave was when he insisted that everyone watch A SERBIAN FILM after she suggested that nobody actually likes movies like that. Mysteriously, she largely disappeared from our lives following that. Who could ever know why?

The icon Whiskey Dan also made a best friend named Leshaun, who was an absolute monster. Constantly mumbling to himself, interjecting himself into conversations randomly, one time asking our RA Michaela if she had gotten “filled” the night before when she walked through the building doors the next day after spending the night away. A wonderful creature. He and Dan eventually got into a knife fight in the cafeteria, but that is not a 2013 story.

Also made a snowman.

(EDITOR’S NOTE, 4:15 AM MEMORY BURST, TY  2 MACALLAN 12 DOUBLE CASK – her name was Chelsea)

((the girl not the snowperson))

 

3. APRIL

Obama chuckled. "You mean the Chaos Emeralds?"

— Fanfiction_txt (@fanfiction_txt) April 30, 2013

The last month of some classical freshman year HIJINKS.

Early in the month, Roommate John started watching the 2012 remake of THE LORAX. You may remember this from 2012, but John had this unfortunate habit of becoming obsessed with a movie and watching it every night as he went to sleep or just watching it every day. He did this for songs too. I could sympathize because I have the same sort of brain disease, but that’s what headphones are for, you know?

Anyways, I found myself singing one of the songs to the movie in the shower one day, and we finally had a talk and that’s when John stopped falling asleep to movies.

On the last day of the semester, John moved out and the rest of us were free to have fun without him. Full second floor gang shit. Whole cast besides the dead weight. It was the first time that Desmond hung out with all of us, instead of only agreeing to hang out with me and Eric a few times (one time he took advantage of $5 You Call It night in the middle of the week at a new bar by ordering some real top shelf shit because they didn’t put a restriction on it. Desmond was a genius.). Everyone was much more jovial without John there, it was fantastic. Everyone went out for karaoke. For heart in my eyes emoji reasons, Arial’s rendition of “Let’s Go To The Mall” is the one that sticks out. Daniel sang “Wagon Wheel” by Darius Rucker at the end of the night, a song he would often punish Roommate John with when he was being annoying, but now with alarming sincerity. People began singing along at his urging, because Daniel had quasimagical powers of low-stakes suggestion, and it’s had the opposite effect as the “Mrs. Robinson” drinking game, even if that’s a much better song.

I spent the next day hanging out at the Greyhound station in Kalamazoo with Arial, Eric, and Brian and waiting for buses. More on the Kalamazoo Greyhound in years to come.

At some point during the month too, special brownies got made at someone’s significant other’s off campus apartment, and I thought up a sitcom named EXECUTIVE BRANCH which was about a tree that was elected President and thankfully posted about it so I would remember it in the morning and then also nearly eight years later.

 

2. SEPTEMBER

To start off, September of 2013 also produced one of the funniest and best posts of all time, even if it did happen to come from one of the dumbest, worst, and most harmful people in recorded history.

I don’t know if this is better than March, but it is more eventful.

I met my insane sophomore year roommate Kevin for the first time. Kevin was a really weird dude. He had a bunch of posters of famous bands, stuff I liked, but he refused to ever talk about them. Or talk to me at all. I would see him on campus and wave or give the failson head nod or even just say hello, and he would never respond. Never even acknowledge it. I caught him pounding off several times, and I think Eric did once too when he entered my room first when I opened the door, but the weirdest time was when I heard it while I was with a girl in the other room. Y’all ever been beaten off to? It’s not great. There’s other Kevin stuff too. It wasn’t all in September, but I’m not sure when it was, so let’s just throw it out there. He ate at least three Subway tuna sandwiches a week and lived on Pepsi Max. One time, he bolted up out of bed at two or three in the morning, walked out of the door in a t-shirt and boxers only, and came back a few minutes later eating a banana. I think about it and about him all the time. I’m not sure if he was worse than Roommate John, but between the two of them, I never wanted another roommate in my life.

September also featured another one of those experiences that I’m going to remember for my entire life, in a very clear and vivid sort of way. It was the first weekend with everyone back at school. A group of us were going bar hopping that Thursday night. I didn’t plan on watching the Thursday Night Football game. You see, Arial had come back from summer vacation single and we had spent the last week involved in the sort of hardcore flirting that only people in their early twenties are honestly capable of. But as we were bar hopping, Peyton Manning just kept throwing touchdown passes. A new bar, a new touchdown pass. At Shakespeare’s, Demariyus Thomas caught a seventy eight yard pass in the fourth quarter for Peyton’s seventh touchdown of the game. The rest of the night went well too.

Lane Kiffin got fired and left at the airport, which would be sad if it didn’t happen to Lane Kiffin.

It was also tailgate season again. By the sophomore year, you have a tailgate routine down. Or at least, I did. Eric was never as good of a beer pong player as Roommate John was, but he was a much better person, and an infinitely better drunk. Daniel showed up with a bong  to the first tailgate we went to, two days after the bar crawl soundtracked by Peyton Manning throwing seven touchdowns. I have referred before to Daniel as the patron saint of bad decisions, and this is where he became that. Nothing evil ever happened, but Daniel had a way about him, of making objectively bad decisions seem like great ones. A few weeks later, he and Arial combined efforts to convince me that the age old bad college idea of vodka and lemonade mix would be a great thing to drink. But on this day, he got Eric to do something that unlocked the rare blackout drunk version of my best friend. I have two the deadliest words in the English language to share with you to explain it.

rum bong

Drunk Eric emerged, and he was a wonderful monster. Hugging everybody. Locking himself in a porta potty. Singing our school’s fight song, which he somehow knew by heart despite not really caring about sports at all. At one point, he put his arms around Arial and I and said he was very happy that things worked a few days earlier, said he loved me and also said he loved cereal. To this day, not a one of us is sure if he mispronounced her name, or if he was just hungry. We put him to bed, and a few hours later, he woke up and made us spaghetti in the little kitchenette by the game room.

BREAKING BAD mania also swept the nation. Arial and Eric binged it going into the finale, after it had previously just been a show Dom and I watched. In the years that followed, we’ve all sort of accepted that yeah alright, it’s not THAT great. It sure isn’t the best show of all time, if you’ve seen any of the HBO dramas, or even like THE SHIELD. But in the moment, it was powerful and intriguing, and incredibly cool to be part of a communal viewing experience like that. Arial developed a visceral hatred for the character of Todd (played by Jesse Plemmons, America’s greatest actor), so I changed her ringtone on my phone to the tone Todd used for the older woman he had a crush on in the show. Watching a shitty illegal live stream of the finale with everyone in a cramped dorm room is another one of these stupid things that’s going to just hang around the memory hole forever.

At one point during the binge, Arial turned to me and asked if New Mexico was a state or if it was just like New England.

That Bojack Horseman line about red flags, right?

In lighter news, I met a woman in a constitutional law class who said she didn’t trust prescription medicine and bragged about only having cheated on her husband once this month. I imagine she’s a state senator now.

 

1. MARCH

Antonin Scalia retire bitch

— Danny DeVito (@DannyDeVito) March 3, 2013

First things first. St. Patrick’s Day. The first college St. Patrick’s Day is always the wildest, and this is no exception.

We woke up at six am. I had a beer in the shower (Guinness obviously, the sales on Guinness at college liquor stores are irrefutable), and it’s one of the most comfortable experiences that I’ve ever had. Another piece of genius from the boy Desmond. After that, we all went out and started the day very early. Eric wasn’t with us, not wanting to wake up so early. He had a fair point, but I’ve always suffered from crippling FOMO. I had a fifth of Crown Royal Apple to go with all of the beer, but realizing I didn’t own a green shirt and neither did Aaron, we stopped at this dogshit party store named THE DEN and got some green and gold Western shirts. I threw my other shirt away in a dumpster because I didn’t want to try and cram it in my backpack full of beer. We walked around for a while before finding the incredibly cramped and deeply stupid party that existed in the courtyard of an apartment complex, where we stayed for most of the day.

At some point, Eric joined us and brought leftover Chinese from the night before. The cops came, and everyone wandered away some time around two or three in the afternoon. We lost Roommate John at some point on the way home, which was no great tragedy. By this point, I had been drinking slowly but steadily for over six hours, and I am relying largely on the accounts of strangers like Eric, Brian, and Polish Mike (he hasn’t shown up as much here as he did in 2012, but it’s very hard to top him getting laid off of telling a drunk girl that he was Macklemore in the fall of 2012. Some people peak early.). At some point we went to the cafeteria in the basement. Aaron, or rather Drunk Aaron (as he was a different man) spilled soup everywhere and then just walked out of the cafeteria. We all wandered back upstairs, and after ordering burritos and giving one to Eric as a make good for the Chinese, I fell asleep on the ground, using a bag of laundry as a pillow. The ladder up to the bed (bunk bed over the desk for extra room) must have been too much. What I do remember is waking up later that night, realizing I had a paper due the next day, and getting started writing that. This has always been a talent I’ve possessed. I went next door to hang out with Dan and Eric, but forgot my key, and by then John had wandered back and locked the door before passing out. All leading to the deeply humbling experience of walking down to find an RA while I had a green shirt, gym shorts, and no shoes on and asking her to come unlock the door. Michaela was a great sport, bless her heart.

At some point later, I did manage to get up into bed, and decided to rig up a lighting system so I could read in bed for once.

As promised, Daniel, Aaron, and I gambled so much money on the NCAA tournament. Having first won money on my dear Gonzaga in 2009 and being loyal ever since, I didn’t do so well. Daniel put the house on Michigan and did the best of all of us as a result. Aaron was a Michigan State guy. I did, however, benefit from a bullshit pick in the first and second rounds.

That’s right.

DUNK CITY BABY.

FLORIDA GOD DAMNED GULF COAST.

Saw a girl getting railed out in the laundry room when I went down there late at night on a Sunday, having forgotten to take my clothes out of the drier that afternoon.

During Spring Break, we also watched every Paranormal Activity movie in a row for some reason. Outside of a bar named THE LIBRARY, Drunk Aaron threw up on my shoes, which would be fine if I wasn’t wearing season four David Tennnant era off-white Chuck Taylors. Daniel also seemed to have the disease that John and I did, because after we got in an argument about whether or not Tokyo Drift was good (I was right, it’s a perfect movie), he watched the entire series and became obsessed. He and Aaron would watch FAST FIVE seemingly every day for a four to six week period. I love the movie, but there’s a limit, you know? It got to the point where everyone would start shouting “I’LL SEE YOU SOON TORETTO” across the hallway. He also came back from a visit home with a trunk full of guns and insisted we all go shooting.

Mostly though, March was the month everything got into a groove. Watching basketball with Daniel and Aaron. Going out with Eric and Desmond. Hardcore flirting with Arial, and also The Germans, who were less receptive. Figuring out how to best avoid Roommate John whenever possible. Going to IHOP late at night with Brian and Polish Mike. I’m sure I’ve been happier in my life, but it was this really nice period of time where basically nothing required any thought or effort whatsoever and it was all very breezy. I’m sure bad stuff happened too, I probably got sick or something, but my brain’s largely erased everything but the best stuff from this spring. Which is all anyone can ever really ask for.

A month of the decade contender.

 

WRESTLER OF THE YEAR: 

 

Weird year.

Great year, but a weird one.

So much of the great output this year came out of the two biggest promotions in the world, as the previous lists illustrated. So much of it was centralized among a group of a few guys in each of those promotions too, so you get down to the rest of the list, and you can really make a case for so many different people. Certain guys who I’d never expect wound up real high because I couldn’t find gaps in their resumes in the ways that I could for Big Match Guys like Okada or Nakamura or less regular guys like a Katsuyori Shibata.

But I just spend thousands of words getting real weird about 2013, so we might as well keep that spirit alive for the last section.

 

HONORABLE MENTION:

• Adam Cole
• AR Fox
• Dolph Ziggler
• Drew Gulak
• Kazushi Sakuraba
• KENTA
• Sheamus

 

25. SHIGEHIRO IRIE

previous: unranked

 

DDT is a real system oriented promotion. People tend to live or die there by the booking they get throughout a year, more than most other promotions outside of major American ones. Irie held the title for five months, and got the full go-ahead from DDT to fully unload everything he had to offer at this point, and that was enough to get him here, with the exact case as HARASHIMA in 2011 when he made it.

The volume isn’t there, but of what we get, all of it is great, and a sizeable percentage of it is really great. No scraps in his scrapbook.

It’s another victory for, secretly or not-so-secretly (depending on who you ask), one of the best developmental systems in all of wrestling. Irie’s been allowed to grow and stretch and develop, and if you paid careful attention, you’d know what he could do. If you were a more casual fan, this weird looking bowling ball of a man shows up, runs through the Golden Lovers and most of the old Gods, comes out of nowhere to pack the best working elbow in wrestling (sorry Hero, sorry Shibata/whoever), and lights the world on fire before losing to HARASHIMA on the main event of the biggest show of the year in DDT’s match of the year. In a worse year, you’d see up to three Irie matches on a MOTY list.

Unfortunately, despite having the best KO-D Openweight Title reign since Dick Togo’s banner year of 2011, Irie disappeared almost immediately after winning the title. So it goes. He’ll be back (even if only on a 2019 list that’s already done), he’s too good not to be.

 

RECOMMENDED MATCHES:

• vs. Kenny Omega, DDT (3/20)
• vs. Kota Ibushi, DDT (5/3)
• vs. Keisuke Ishii, DDT (6/23)
• vs. Yuji Okabayashi, DDT (7/21)
• vs. HARASHIMA, DDT (8/18)

 

 

24. RICOCHET

PREVIOUS: 14 (2012), 22 (2011), 21 (2010)

 

Without the opportunity to work more aggressively, or as more of a heel, Ricochet spent 2013 primarily used and featured as a great match highspot guy.

Fortunately, he had a lot of great matches and had some excellent highspots. Beyond being an integral part of most of the best spotfests of the year in a few different roles and in a few different companies. , his performance in the Brian Kendrick’s King of Flight tournament (available on Youtube or Highspots, highly recommended) allowed him to stretch just a little bit of those old Spiked Mohican style heel muscles. Against both veteran Amazing Red and up and comer Samuray Del Sol, it also meant he got to stretch them in a few different ways. Nothing here touches his work against El Generico or the best work of his team with CIMA, but it’s enough to bolster an already impressive volume case.

Likely the last year the guy winds up on here, as I’ve got some real clear memories of enjoying him less and less throughout 2014, once he begins to try and work in more power spots and his matches lose a certain manic spark. A hell of a run though. A hell of a year, even if his best work was already in the rear view.

 

RECOMMENDED MATCHES:

• w/ Rich Swann vs. The Young Bucks, PWG (1/12)
• w/ Speed Muscle vs. Masaaki Mochizuki/Dragon Kid/Don Fujii, DG (2/7)
• w/ Rich Swann vs. AR Fox/Samuray Del Sol, PWG (3/22)
• vs. Amazing Red, King of Flight (3/24)
• vs. Samuray Del Sol, King of Flight (3/24)
• vs. Akira Tozawa, DGUSA (4/6)
• vs. Shingo Takagi, DG (5/25)
• w/ Naruki Doi vs. Akira Tozawa/BxB Hulk, DG (7/21)
• w/ Rich Swann vs. The Young Bucks vs. Dojo Bros, PWG (8/9)
• w/ Speed Muscle vs. CIMA/Masaaki Mochizuki/CIBA, DG (9/7)
• vs. Zack Sabre Jr. vs. Mark Haskins, PROGRESS (9/29)
• w/ Rich Swann & AR Fox vs. Kevin Steen/The Young Bucks, PWG (12/20)

 

 

23. AKIRA TOZAWA

PREVIOUS: 21 (2012), 7 (2011)

 

Another year like 2012 for Tozawa, spending the year horribly underutilized and half of it in the MAD BLANKEY heel faction that he never once seemed best suited for.

Fortunately, it’s still Akira Tozawa. Heel or face, he was still a frantic ball of energy who would find ways in every match to remind you of how great he is, even if he never got to be the focus of things at the moment, or at any moment. Once again, he has the Dragon Gate USA singles work that he didn’t get too much of back in Japan, the highlight of which is a Johnny Gargano match that would be the highlight of Gargano’s 2013 if not for an even better performance by Tozawa’s greatest rival. It’s a little too on the nose, I know. Once again, a major show tag team showcase with BxB Hulk also allows him to remind you how great he is with a shout instead of simply a clear and firm statement of the fact.

Akira Tozawa is also helped out by Dragon Gate finally doing the right thing with him. Sort of. While he never really gets the chance in 2013 (or 2014 or 2015 or 2016…) to be the sort of top guy that he showed obvious ability to be all the way back in 2010, he is at least finally put in a much more natural role. With the formation of Monster Express alongside fellow WOTY regulars Shingo Takagi and Masato Yoshino and best friend Uhaa Nation, Tozawa got to put his fire and charm to its best possible use as Dragon Gate’s best sprint worker underneath babyface, ending the year by entering into an all-time superteam with Takagi.

It’s yet another year where Tozawa isn’t quite allowed to reach his full potential. It’s also yet another year where it still doesn’t matter all that much.

 

RECOMMENDED MATCHES:

• vs. Sami Callihan, DGUSA (1/26)
• vs. Shingo Takagi, DGUSA (4/7)
• vs. Shingo Takagi, DG (7/4)
• w/ BxB Hulk vs. Naruki Doi/Ricochet, DG (7/21)
• vs. Johnny Gargano, DGUSA (7/28)
• w/ Shingo Takagi vs. YAMATO/BxB Hulk, DG (9/7)
• w/ Shingo Takagi vs. Speed Muscle, DG (9/12)
• w/ Shingo Takagi & Masato Yoshino vs. YAMATO/BxB Hulk/Kzy, DG (12/7)
• w/ Shingo Takagi vs. YAMADoi, DG (12/22)

 

22. GOLDUST

PREVIOUS: UNRANKED

 

The greatest babyface tag team wrestler of all time.

He makes the list because the biggest company of the year spends a quarter of the year not only carving out regular television time in which to practice said art, but constantly gives him both compelling storylines and great dance partners with which to practice them. Secretly, Goldust vs. Roman Reigns was maybe the best one on one pairing in the WWE all year. Secretly, regularly working with his far more talented brother, Cody Rhodes has the most consistent and best run of matches of his entire career. Not so secretly, the Rhodes Brothers vs. The Shield is the best tag team rivalry in the WWE in over a decade.

It’s a complete fluke born entirely of a series of happy accidents and the overarching theme of needing to give The Shield (Roman Reigns, really) guys to work with and learn from, but the result is the same. Goldust makes his own personal leap, we get this dynamic and weird and unexpected run, and somehow, Dustin Rhodes is one of the best wrestlers of the year a solid twenty years after you first might have said that.

 

RECOMMENDED MATCHES:

• vs. Randy Orton, WWE (9/9)
• w/ Cody Rhodes vs. The Shield, WWE (10/6)
• w/ Cody Rhodes vs. The Shield, WWE (10/14)
• w/ John Cena & Cody Rhodes vs. The Real Americans/Damien Sandow, WWE (11/1)
• w/ Cody Rhodes/CM Punk/Daniel Bryan/The Usos vs. The Shield/The Wyatt Family, WWE (11/8)
• w/ Cody Rhodes & Rey Mysterio vs. The Shield, WWE (11/25)
• w/ Cody Rhodes vs. The Shield, WWE (11/29)
• w/ Cody Rhodes vs. The Big Show/Rey Mysterio vs. The Real Americans vs. Ryback/Curtis Axel, WWE (12/15)
• w/ Cody Rhodes & Daniel Bryan vs. The Wyatt Family, WWE (12/23)

 

 

21. THE YOUNG BUCKS

PREVIOUS: 17 (2012), 20 (2011), 12 (2010)

 

Having already written about them before in this piece, I think we can keep it brief.

The away games in ROH and DGUSA and NJPW at the end of the year weren’t ever quite up to the standard set by their PWG work, so it’s very difficult to call this a career year or anything, but they were still just so consistent and so much fun, all the time. They’re great. They’ve been great for a few years now after figuring the at out in 2011, and they’re still really great. People who want to just talk about superkicks and spotfests clearly didn’t watch a lot of what they got up to during the 2011-2015 peak of theirs on an artistic level. No team eats as much shit as the Bucks do, no team shows as much ass, and no team is as continually creative as they are. It’s the framework that makes it all work so well.

The teams up in the last third of the year with Kevin Steen and Adam Cole were particularly delightful and worth seeking out.

It’s the only year during this peak run without one major Young Bucks tentpole, as their best match of the year wasn’t really about them at all, but the regular quality is just too hard to deny.

 

RECOMMENDED MATCHES:

• vs. Inner City Machine Guns, PWG (1/12)
• vs. Kevin Steen/El Generico, PWG (1/12)
• vs. Dojo Bros, PWG (3/23)
• vs. Eita/Tomahawk TT, DGUSA (6/2)
• vs. AR Fox/Samuray Del Sol, PWG (6/15)
• vs. Dojo Bros vs. Inner City Machine Guns, PWG (8/9)
• w/ Adam Cole vs. Candice LeRae/AR Fox/Rich Swann, PWG (8/31)
• vs. Candice LeRae/???, PWG (10/19)
• w/ Kevin Steen vs. Inner City Machine Guns/AR Fox, PWG (12/20)

 

 

20. JUN AKIYAMA

PREVIOUS: 15 (2012), HONORABLE MENTION (2011), 22 (2010)

 

Go shit in your hat.

Uncle Jun does it again.

If not for 2020, I’d swear this is Jun Akiyama’s last year on this level. It certainly feels like it’s the last one he intends to ever have on this level. It’s classic aging top guy stuff. He wins this one last big prize he hadn’t ever won before in the Champions Carnival, but otherwise spends it first teaming with a young guy he’s trying to help and then later with his first tag team partner ever, reuniting once he remembers that, once again, fuck them kids.

And it’s all a blast.

Akiyama has one of the very best performances of the year against KAI in the finals of the Carnival, as we’ve touched on. There aren’t more than five to ten other people in the world who I’d trust to be able to pull that off, and they’re virtually all higher on this list than he is. Akiyama takes a backseat a lot of the times to Shiozaki in the tags, to help accompish the goal, but he’s still just as good as Go (if not better) in those matches while doing half as much. He’s just still so great and he’s so great at everything and he’s so great in every environment and against every type of opponent.

Even while spending eleven and a half months of the year trying to take a backseat, Akiyama still can’t help but stand out.

 

RECOMMENDED MATCHES:

• vs. Takao Omori, AJPW (2/23)
• w/ Go Shiozaki vs. Get Wild, AJPW (3/17)
• vs. KAI, AJPW (4/29)
• w/ Kenta Kobashi/Kensuke Sasaki/Keiji Mutoh vs. KENTA/Go Shiozaki/Yoshinobu Kanemaru/Maybach Taniguchi, NOAH (5/11)
• w/ Go Shiozaki vs. Suwama/Joe Doering, AJPW (6/2)
• w/ Go Shiozaki vs. SMOP, AJPW (6/23)
• w/ Go Shiozaki vs. Suwama/Takao Omori, AJPW (7/28)
• w/ Takao Omori vs. XCEED, AJPW (10/27)
• w/ Yoshihiro Takayama/Mitsuo Momota vs. Yoshiaki Fujiwara/Super Tiger II/Kensuke Sasaki, Rikidozan Memorial (12/16)

 

 

19. RODERICK STRONG

PREVIOUS: 20 (2012)

 

Another great one.

There’s really nothing fancy about it. Once again, I want to tell you that this myth that a switch flipped or something in Roderick Strong and he suddenly became great “again” in 2015 is bullshit. The real thing that happened is that in 2015, Roddy went from being really great to being one of the best wrestlers alive, period. In 2013, he’s still another one of these guys, Mr. Reliable, the same as his partner just without quite the same singles output.

Every piece of singles work he gets, he delivers. The Adam Cole series in ROH this year is one of the more understated and underrated singles programs of the decade. He does so much for ACH’s stature in Ring of Honor, the Karl Anderson midcard sprint is one of the most fun matches of the year, and he practically gifts Ray Rowe a job and probably a career with the match he has with him on a d-level house show in September. The case is primarily that electric Dojo Bros in PWG and the one tag in Beyond, but Roderick Strong is simply so great in every role, in every position, and in every single environment that each match of his I saw beyond that only helped.

He’s one of the best ever, and even in a quieter year, there’s plenty of reminders of that.

 

RECOMMENDED MATCHES:

• w/ Eddie Edwards vs. Future Shock, PWG (1/12)
• vs. ACH, ROH (2/16)
• w/ Eddie Edwards vs. The Young Bucks, PWG (3/23)
• vs. Karl Anderson, ROH (4/5)
• vs. Adam Cole, ROH (6/1)
• w/ Eddie Edwards vs. The Young Bucks vs. Inner City Machine Guns, PWG (8/9)
• vs. AR Fox, PWG (8/30)
• vs. Raymond Rowe, ROH (9/6)
• vs. Adam Cole, ROH (9/7)
• w/ Eddie Edwards vs. Biff Busick/Drew Gulak, Beyond (9/15)
• vs. Johnny Gargano, PWG (10/19)
• vs. Jimmy Jacobs, ROH (11/2)
• w/ Eddie Edwards vs. Best Friends, PWG (12/20)
• w/ Eddie Edwards vs. AR Fox/Rich Swann, PWG (12/21)

 

18. SHINSUKE NAKAMURA

PREVIOUS: 23 (2012), 23 (2010)

 

You want him to be higher, I get it. He was in the second best match of the year. There’s the Kota match too.

I want him to be higher too.

Unfortunately, that Suzuki-gun feud still happened. He still wasted time on a Lance Archer match and on three Shelton Benjamin matches when only one of them really delivered. The less said about the end of the feud against Minoru Suzuki, the better.

Still, those big two are hard to deny. Even harder to deny, even if it wasn’t quite on the same level, is the Davey Boy Smith Jr. match, somehow managing to be both great enough and to feel big enough to make for a suitable Sumo Hall semi main event. Nakamura’s got a great G1 on him too, on top of a handful of fun tag team matches, and the underrated La Sombra match where he won the IWGP Shinsuke Nakamura Heavyweight Title back from him. I’d never tell you he didn’t have a great year, and I’d probably also be comfortable calling 2013 a career year for Shinsuke Nakamura up to this point.

Still, there are some things that he does well and some things that he does not do well, and in 2013, he was asked to do the latter far too often to make the most of situations where he was allowed to do the former.

 

RECOMMENDED MATCHES:

• vs. Kazushi Sakuraba, NJPW (1/4)
• vs. Davey Boy Smith Jr., NJPW (4/7)
• w/ Tomohiro Ishii vs. Minoru Suzuki/Shelton Benjamin, NJPW (6/22)
• vs. La Sombra, NJPW (7/30)
• vs. Karl Anderson, NJPW (8/1)
• vs. Kota Ibushi, NJPW (8/4)
• vs. Yuji Nagata, NJPW (8/7)
• w/ Naomichi Marufuji vs. KENTA/Takashi Sugiura, NOAH (8/24)
• vs. Shelton Benjamin, NJPW (9/29)
• w/ Kazuchika Okada vs. Hiroshi Tanahashi/Tetsuya Naito, NJPW (12/23)

 

 

17. GO SHIOZAKI

PREVIOUS: HONORABLE MENTION (2011), 24 (2010)

 

Shut the fuck up. It doesn’t matter if he got ranked higher on the list in 2020. 2013 is sure as shit not 2020. In fact, 2013 was Go Shiozaki’s career year, or at least this All Japan run is the best version of Shiozaki we ever saw.

Finally free of the baggage of failing as champion when it was thrust on him post-Misawa, free of the baggage of being weighed down by booking in his 2011 run and abandoned suddenly, and mostly free of being eclipsed as an Ace figure by Takashi Sugiura and later KENTA, Go Shiozaki felt like a new wrestler. Energetic and vibrant and real in a way that he simply didn’t before.

He’s the focal point of the tag team with the Jun Akiyama, and is good enough in those major tags for it not to stand out as a major mistake. Near the end of the year, he goes from beating up Kento Miyahara in one of the lost super fun matches of 2012 to guiding him, and excelling in the big brother role too. If not for the stellar Akiyama/KAI match on the same card, the Shiozaki/KAI match on the final night of the Champions Carnival would be so much more fondly remembered too. The crown jewel all of it is giving Suwama his career one on one match in their three fall match in July, coming off the heels of a great tournament match in April, becoming one of the only wrestlers ever to have not one but two great Suwama matches that hit the half hour mark or longer. His legs were then cut out from under him, but that’s Shiozaki for you, and that’s All Japan for you.

A wonderful and ultimately depressing window into all that could have been, as Shiozaki finally lives up to all that potential.

 

RECOMMENDED MATCHES:

• w/ Jun Akiyama vs. Get Wild, AJPW (3/17)
• vs. Suwama, AJPW (4/18)
• w/ Atsushi Aoki/Kotaro Suzuki vs. KAI/Junior Stars, AJPW (4/24)
• vs. KAI, AJPW (4/29)
• w/ KENTA/Yoshinobu Kanemaru/Maybach Taniguchi vs. Kenta Kobashi/Jun Akiyama/Kensuke Sasaki/Keiji Mutoh, NOAH (5/11)
• w/ Jun Akiyama vs. Suwama/Joe Doering, AJPW (6/2)
• w/ Jun Akiyama vs. SMOP, AJPW (6/23)
• vs. Suwama, AJPW (7/14)
• w/ Jun Akiyama vs. Suwama/Takao Omori, AJPW (7/28)
• w/ Kento Miyahara vs. Burning Wild, AJPW (10/27)

 

 

16. KEVIN STEEN

previous: 10 (2012), 4 (2011), 4 (2010)

 

With 2012 having seen Big Kev transition from disruption to institution, 2013 saw him getting to have a whole lot of fun within that elder statesman role.

It meant that he was able to pull off something like the second most important role in the show of the year’s big emotional narrative. It meant he could do things like the Paul London or Drake Younger matches in PWG without losing anything. It meant that he could put Jay Briscoe over for the ROH World Title, and have it actually mean something and be a true elevation (the less said about his other usage in ROH through 2013, the better, let’s leave it here and not go into a two to four month long Mike Bennett program). Most of all, it meant that the turn to Mount Rushmore both had real weight to it, and it meant that he could functionally operate both as the group’s enforcer and as the big bad at the end of it all.

At his best in 2013, Kevin Steen got back in touch with the force of nature that ran through everything at the start of the decade, and it made 2013 a much more fun year for him than 2012 was, even if the output wasn’t quite as prolific.

 

RECOMMENDED MATCHES:

• w/ El Generico vs. The Briscoes, PWG (1/12)
• w/ El Generico vs. Future Shock, PWG (1/12)
• w/ El Generico vs. The Young Bucks, PWG (1/12)
• vs. Jay Lethal, ROH (3/2)
• vs. Paul London, PWG (3/22)
• vs. Jay Briscoe, ROH (4/5)
• vs. Drake Younger, PWG (6/15)
• vs. Drake Younger vs. Adam Cole, PWG (8/9)
• vs. Johnny Gargano, PWG (8/31)
• vs. ACH, PWG (10/19)
• w/ The Young Bucks vs. Inner City Machine Guns/AR Fox, PWG (12/20)
• w/ The Young Bucks vs. Drake Younger/Candice LeRae/???, PWG (12/21)

 

 

15. JOHN CENA

PREVIOUS: 5 (2012), 10 (2011)

 

It’s not that he fell off.

2013 was a better and tougher year in a lot of ways, especially if someone didn’t have the material to work with. John Cena is a company man through and through, and usually, he doesn’t have the same problems with that role that a guy like Randy Orton or a DDT guy might, because everything is always written around him as the central character of the WWE, and typically was able to overcome bad feuds through great television matches and having at least one major thing a year that worked. In 2013, John Cena was tasked with a blown up The Rock and then tasked with a multi pay-per-view feud against the fucking Ryback. And even the first one of those matches was really good.

In a cruel twist of fate, John Cena suffered an elbow injury going into the best built up wrestling match of the year at SummerSlam 2013, and the Cena/Bryan match was only a fraction of what it could have been. Even if that fraction was still great, it’s hard to really call that match a bell-to-bell success, no matter how well it worked as an idea. Following that, he had to deal with non-gimmick matches against Alberto Del Rio and a tired Randy Orton match.

In spite of the clear handicapping John Cena had in 2013 that he hadn’t experienced for a few years, he was still John Cena, one of the greatest Ace figures that’s ever lived. The CM Punk free television epic was the second best match in one of the great rivalries of all time. The Mark Henry title match was his one pay per view singles match in 2013 to totally deliver. To round it out, Cena plugs himself in perfectly to a few different formula tags as a great way to remind everyone.

The big ideas they’ve got for him might absolutely suck asshole, but end of the day, he’s still John Cena (recognize).

 

RECOMMENDED MATCHES:

• vs. Dolph Ziggler, WWE (1/14)
• w/ Ryback & Sheamus vs. The Shield, WWE (2/17)
• vs. CM Punk, WWE (2/25)
• w/ Team Hell No vs. The Shield, WWE (4/29)
• w/ Team Hell No vs. The Shield, WWE (5/13)
• vs. Ryback, WWE (5/19)
• vs. Mark Henry, WWE (7/14)
• vs. Daniel Bryan, WWE (8/18)
• w/ Cody Rhodes & Goldust vs. Damien Sandow/The Real Americans, WWE (11/1)

 

 

14. SHINGO TAKAGI

PREVIOUS: 22 (2012), 15 (2011), 20 (2010)

 

The fucking man.

I’d be lying if I said Shingo wasn’t a beneficiary of getting to see more Dragon Gate in 2013, but his greatest accomplishment is one that’s not all that hard to find at all. Nobody else could have had that match with Johnny Gargano. Nobody. He was the perfect size, a wrestler with the perfect attitude to give a fucking Secaucus, NJ show his all and to give John Boy his best, and great enough at the style to both reign in the worst excesses of the style and to amplify all the best things Gargano was capable of.

It’s not some all time performance or all time carryjob, but it’s this one big shining and super accessible piece of yet another unflinchingly consistent and great year from Shingo Takagi.

Prior to the split in the summer, Takagi and YAMATO continued to look like one of the best tag teams in the world. Once they got together in the fall, Takagi and Akira Tozawa looked like maybe the best and most unfairly talented tag team in the world. The Monster Express six man pairing with Tozawa and Masato Yoshino is the closest thing that pro wrestling’s ever come to resembling the 2016-2019 Warriors, a wholly unfair but overwhelmingly likeable team of superathletes. In between all of it, he had great singles matches with just about everyone he’s paired against.

It’s hard to call it a low key year for Shingo when he main evented his company’s biggest show of the year, but given the way the match went, and what happened to him afterwards, it’s sure how it feels.

 

RECOMMENDED MATCHES:

• w/ YAMATO vs. K-Ness/Kenichiro Arai, DG (2/7)
• vs. Johnny Gargano, DGUSA (4/6)
• vs. Akira Tozawa, DGUSA (4/7)
• w/ YAMATO vs. BxB Hulk/Uhaa Nation, DG (5/5)
• vs. YAMATO, DG (5/25)
• vs. Ricochet, DG (5/25)
• w/ YAMATO vs. Masaaki Mochizuki/Don Fujii, DG (6/2)
• vs. Uhaa Nation, DG (6/5)
• w/ Akira Tozawa vs. YAMATO/BxB Hulk, DG (9/7)
• w/ Akira Tozawa vs. Speed Muscle, DG (9/12)
• w/ Akira Tozawa & Masato Yoshino vs. YAMATO/BxB Hulk/Kzy, DG (12/7)
• w/ Akira Tozawa vs. YAMADoi, DG (12/22)

 

 

13. KATSUYORI SHIBATA

PREVIOUS: UNRANKED

 

The realest.

The only reason he’s not higher is because of how much of the year he wasted on Hirooki Goto or on people less important less able to believably match up with him than that. When eh was on though, there were few better.

Shibata is a central part of an arguable hoot of the year in his Laughter7 tag on the Invasion Attack undercard, one of the five best matches of the year against Tomohiro Ishii on August 4th, and one of the most interesting matches of the year against Hiroshi Tanahashi to end the year’s G1 Climax. Hell, outside of Ishii’s breakthrough performance in the tournament, it hardly feels like a leap to say that Shibata was the second best performing wrestler in the thing over the long haul. Add in a wonderfully violent but just slightly lesser rematch against Tomohiro Ishii in October, and it’s just this stellar stellar resume. The strength in what’s on it makes up for the noticeable gaps in it in 2013, and the strength in the last half especially makes up for the three different Goto matches, which are all basically the same match.

It’s fitting though.

Virtually everything Shibata touched in 2013 was a wild success, except for Hirooki Goto, who is allergic to the concept.

 

RECOMMENDED MATCHES:

• w/ Kazushi Sakuraba vs. Yuji Nagata/Manabu Nakanishi, NJPW (3/17)
• w/ Kazushi Sakuraba vs. Yuji Nagata/Hirooki Goto, NJPW (4/7)
• vs. Hirooki Goto, NJPW (6/22)
• vs. Davey Boy Smith Jr., NJPW (8/1)
• vs. Satoshi Kojima, NJPW (8/2)
• vs. Tomohiro Ishii, NJPW (8/4)
• vs. Hiroshi Tanahashi, NJPW (8/11)
• vs. Tomohiro Ishii, NJPW (10/14)

 

 

12.KAZUCHIKA OKADA

PREVIOUS: 4 (2012)

 

It’s a fall off from #4, but then again, it was a fall off from 2012.

In 2013, that stellar and near-perfect success rate that Little Kazu sported in 2012 wasn’t nearly there. Big drop in FG%, a “rookie” phenom suffers a sophomore “slump”, relatively speaking. Part of that’s down naturally to the fact that, like Kevin Steen in 2012 in a very different situation, Kazuchika Okada went from feeling like a disruption in 2012 to feeling like an institution in 2013. Part of it’s also just that not all the matches worked out like they did in 2012. Both Minoru Suzuki matches were bombs. The Hirooki Goto match in the finals of the New Japan Cup simply did not deliver. As good as it still was, the Karl Anderson title match was in November, it was also a major step down from the work they did in 2012 with the roles reversed.

So much of it was tied to Okada’s shift away from a dead eyed pure capitalist Young Republican ass heel into being presented as more of a cool guy hero. It worked. I can’t say it was any sort of mistake for New Japan to make that decision, But creatively, it did Okada no favors and wound up emphasizing all the lesser things about him.

Of course, the hits still hit. Okada and Tanahashi are magic together. He had surprising chemistry with Togi Makabe, a great and super simple title match with Prince Devitt, and in the occasions in the G1 when he got to be a beady-eyed unfeeling little psycho, it was exciting as ever. The hits didn’t stop coming, but they did slow down.

If Okada managed the same highs with a greater level of consistency, he wouldn’t only be a top ten guy, he’d probably be #2 or 3. As it is, ten other people had far more of that quality that I put a lot of stock into, and Okada *only* winds up at #12. It’s classic Gedo booking, really. Even in a sophomore slump, Okada’s still has one of the best years of anyone.

 

RECOMMENDED MATCHES:

• vs. Hiroshi Tanahashi, NJPW (1/4)
• vs. Karl Anderson, NJPW (3/17)
• vs. Hiroshi Tanahashi, NJPW (4/7)
• vs. Togi Makabe, NJPW (6/22)
• vs. Prince Devitt, NJPW (7/20)
• vs. Hirooki Goto, NJPW (8/2)
• vs. Hiroshi Tanahashi, NJPW (8/10)
• vs. Satoshi Kojima, NJPW (8/11)
• vs. Satoshi Kojima, NJPW (9/29)
• vs. Hiroshi Tanahashi, NJPW (10/14)
• w/ Shinsuke Nakamura vs. Hiroshi Tanahashi/Tetsuya Naito, NJPW (12/23)

 

 

11. BIFF BUSICK

PREVIOUS: UNRANKED

 

Throw ’em up.

Biff Busick didn’t just come out of nowhere in 2013, but it’s as great of a breakout year as anyone’s had in some time. The Wrestling Is stuff is deeply stupid, the Francis O’Rourke rebranding was even stupider, but he was one of the only reasons to watch any of those shows. In particular, the touring match against Drew Gulak in those companies and then in EVOLVE not only whips ass, but lays the foundation for the grapplefuck movement that explodes over the next few years, while also always feeling just different enough to not only fit the environment, but to be blowaway great.

The real case maker though is the work in Beyond and the feud against Eddie Edwards, which was the best feud of the year in independent wrestling and as picture perfect a veteran vs. newcomer (“newcomer”) feud as you could ask for, both in the ring and in terms of the structure and layout of the issue. It all culiminates in one of two Biff/Eddie matches that I’d put among the best of the year, in the best ever no-gimmick hour long Iron Man match, with the picture perfect ending to put Biff on the map permanently.

Biff’s another one of these creepers on a list. Slot him in at #21 on the skeleton. He deserves a spot. Keeps rising up and up because like, damn, he really did have an excellent year, until suddenly you get there and he’s one of the fifteen best wrestlers of the year, and it doesn’t feel all that wrong. It feels a little conservative, honestly.

Wearing that soft style yellow BIFF RULES shirt while I write this doesn’t hurt either.

 

RECOMMENDED MATCHES:

• vs. Drew Gulak, Wrestling is Respect (3/24)
• vs. Jonathan Gresham vs. Caleb Konley, CZW (4/13)
• vs. Jonathan Gresham, Beyond (4/14)
• vs. Eddie Edwards, Beyond (6/14)
• vs. Drew Gulak, Wrestling is Awesome (7/6)
• vs. Hallowicked, Wrestling is Awesome (7/7)
• vs. Eddie Edwards, Beyond (7/21)
• vs. AR Fox, Wrestling is Art (8/11)
• w/ Drew Gulak vs. Dojo Bros, Beyond (9/15)
• vs. Drew Gulak, EVOLVE (9/22)
• vs. Fire Ant, Wrestling is Respect (9/29)
• vs. Eddie Edwards, Beyond (11/17)

 

 

10. YAMATO

previous: honorable mention (2012)

 

I’m surprised too.

I’ve never been this huge YAMATO fan. Ask the people I talk with the most about wrestling and they’ll tell you, I’m honestly kind of a hater. It’s not always because of YAMATO himself, Dragon Gate’s booking through the 2010s has often felt like its only true goal was to constantly ask, “but how does this benefit YAMATO?” with virtually every booking decision. That’s not his fault, but he’s never been QUITE great enough for that not to matter. And sometimes it is because of YAMATO himself. He’s got that Bad Dragon Gate Brain a lot of the time, classic Dream Gate Sickness throughout his career.

None of that was really present in 2013, at least not in a way that affected what still exists of his work online.

The booking is annoying, Shingo Takagi was cannibalized to feed YAMATO’s heel turn, but given how great YAMATO was as a heel, it really wasn’t the end of the world. The character work as a heel was impeccable. Dragon Gate’s never produced a more vile and hateable piece of slime than YAMATO in 2013 and 2014, and getting to be in this natural element added so much to everything he touched from that point on. YAMATO turns in one of the greatest pure heel performances in a Dream Gate match ever against Ryo Jimmy Saito in September, and follows it up with one of the most joyous title loss in Dragon Gate history the following month in a match I’ve already gushed about on this list. Pair that with a string of exceptional tag team matches with his new friends, the immediate chemistry with Naruki Doi, and a string of great tags with Takagi in the first half of the year.

The highs of the last two names on the list aren’t quite here, but neither are the misses or the gaps. He was one of the focal points of one of the best promotions in the world, delivered as a character, and was a central figure in three of the best matches of a stacked year. It’s not as flashy a resume, but a guy who showed up all year in a bunch of different roles is going to impress me so much more than a pair of less consistent Big Match Guys, especially when said picture of consistency is also something of a Big Match Guy.

 

RECOMMENDED MATCHES:

• w/ Shingo Takagi vs. K-Ness/Kenichiro Arai, DG (2/7)
• w/ Shingo Takagi vs. BxB Hulk/Uhaa Nation, DG (5/5)
• vs. Shingo Takagi, DG (5/25)
• w/ Shingo Takagi vs. Ryo Jimmy Saito/Jimmy Susumu, DG (6/1)
• w/ Shingo Takagi vs. Masaaki Mochizuki/Don Fujii, DG (6/2)
• vs. Masaaki Mochizuki, DG (7/21)
• w/ BxB Hulk vs. Shingo Takagi/Akira Tozawa, DG (9/7)
• vs. Ryo Jimmy Saito, DG (9/12)
• w/ BxB Hulk vs. T-Hawk/Eita, DG (9/28)
• w/ BxB Hulk/Naruki Doi vs. Masato Yoshino/Shingo Takagi/Akira Tozawa, DG (9/29)
• vs. Masato Yoshino, DG (10/10)
• w/ BxB Hulk/Kzy vs. Masato Yoshino/Shingo Takagi/Akira Tozawa, DG (12/7)
• w/ Naruki Doi vs. T-Hawk/Eita, DG (12/8)
• w/ Naruki Doi vs. Shingo Takagi/Akira Tozawa, DG (12/22)

 

 

9. EDDIE “EDDIE EDWARDS” EDWARDS

previous: 18 (2012), honorable mention (2011)

 

Let’s talk about the picture of consistency though. I can hear you. And to some extent, I get it.

However, and I cannot stress this enough, fuck off.

I like Eddie, I guess I’m a big Eddie booster relatively, but it’s not entirely vanity. If I was just being purely vain, I’d have forced Sami Zayn into the top twenty five. It’s a career year for the weird-jawed dead-eyed independent workhorse though. With so many things centralized and so many people who are in these MOTY conversations having such sparse or maddeningly inconsistent years, Eddie doesn’t. I thought ranking him in 2012 would be the best he’d ever do, but I was wrong. 2013’s an even better year. An ultimate numbers sort of a guy, but with the numbers all coming from a bunch of really delightful matches and from a bunch of different settings.

He’s half of one of the best tag teams of the year, who constantly pumped out great match after great match. He’s also part of one of the best feuds of the year, which did the same thing. He also takes a trip over to NOAH and has one of the better KENTA singles matches of the year on top of it. Beyond that, he’s Mr. Consistency. ROH wasted a lot of his time by continuing the Davey Richards team, but even then, he found a way to hoist Davey up on his back and produce a few actually great matches. I don’t think I can name five better Kyle O’Reilly singles matches than the one Eddie had against him in July (which does not exist online, so we’re relying on memory, but again cordially fuck off). Is he the best part of his tag team? Not always. It’s a real equal team. Is he the best part of that great feud? Absolutely not. Biff is a juggernaut and already one of the best wrestler alive. But Eddie’s still really great in it, and great enough in that team and great enough against the most random dudes that he winds up being this incredibly unexpected numbers pick.

He didn’t quite hit the highs of a lot of people whose names you’ve read already, but on a match-by-match basis, there were very few better this year.

This one’s not a pick that slowly moved up. It’s not Biff. It’s not the first Shield loss on the MOTY list. It’s where the spreadsheet math had him, and it felt right. I rearraged a lot of things, but never really this one. I don’t feel bad about it.

Sometimes the spreadsheets just totally nail one.

 

RECOMMENDED MATCHES:

• w/ Roderick Strong vs. The Young Bucks, PWG (3/23)
• vs. Jay Briscoe, ROH (6/8)
• vs. Biff Busick, Beyond (6/14)
• w/ Davey Richards vs. ACH/Tadarius Thomas, ROH (6/22)
• vs. Kyle O’Reilly, ROH (7/12)
• vs. Biff Busick, Beyond (7/21)
• w/ Roderick Strong vs. The Young Bucks vs. Inner City Machine Guns, PWG (8/9)
• w/ Roderick Strong vs. Biff Busick/Drew Gulak, Beyond (9/15)
• vs. KENTA, NOAH (11/2)
• vs. Jay Lethal, ROH (11/15)
• vs. Biff Busick, Beyond (11/17)
• w/ Davey Richards vs. Eddie Kingston/Homicide, ROH (12/7)
• w/ Roderick Strong vs. Best Friends, PWG (12/20)
• w/ Roderick Strong vs. AR Fox/Rich Swann, PWG (12/21)

 

 

8. CM PUNK

previous: 1 (2012), 3 (2011), 13 (2010)

 

Sometimes though, consistency doesn’t matter all that much.

It does help if one is, admittedly, my single favorite wrestler of all time.

It also helps if they have three of the ten best matches of the year, including the match of the year, singular.

It’s the sort of thing that would normally make a slam dunk WOTY case. It wasn’t enough here, but it’s such a huge compliment to how great those three matches were that CM Punk gets to #8 off of them alone. There’s some minor hits there, but it’s mostly those three. For the most part though, he spends the last six months of the year as a complete physical wreck. The sort of guy who has no business on a list like this, who I’d never even consider for it, let alone a top one hundred.

And yet, CM Punk in 2013 spends the first quarter of the year still in his prime, with an undeniable Midas Touch to him. To whatever extent it matters, his promo against The Rock to open the year is the best piece of talking in wrestling all year, one of the rare professional wrestling promos that feels violent before punches are even thrown. Everything he does works. He delivers the best singular performance of the year at WrestleMania. His other two major matches in 2013 are two of the very best matches of all time. Even with a limited resume, functionally a the sort of part time guy he hated, CM Punk is undeniable.

Through big match efforts and importance and overall feeling, CM Punk sneaks into the top ten.

Just like he will at the end of the decade.

 

RECOMMENDED MATCHES:

• vs. Chris Jericho, WWE (2/4)
• vs. John Cena, WWE (2/25)
• vs. The Undertaker, WWE (4/7)
• vs. Brock Lesnar, WWE (8/18)
• w/ Daniel Bryan vs. The Shield, WWE (11/11)
• w/ Daniel Bryan/Cody Rhodes/Daniel Bryan/The Usos vs. The Shield/The Wyatt Family, WWE (11/18)
• w/ Daniel Bryan vs. The Wyatt Family, WWE (11/24)
• w/ Rey Mysterio/Cody Rhodes/Daniel Bryan/The Usos vs. The Shield/The Wyatt Family, WWE (11/29)

 

 

7. RANDY ORTON

PREVIOUS: 13 (2011)

 

It’s a career year for Randy Orton.

The company man benefits when the company spends a third of the year focused on him, and another third putting him in the mix with the best rivalries of the year and many of the best and most exciting wrestlers alive. It’s not to say that Randy Orton was some beneficiary of the booking. In many ways, he was more impressive than a group of people who are higher on this list, who benefitted from the booking to an even greater degree. As a midcard babyface in the first two-thirds of the year, Orton rediscovered a spark that had been absent for at least a year. Behind Daniel Bryan and Goldust, Randy was secretly something like the third best Shield opponent all year. Combine that with getting the best Big Show match anyone got all year at Extreme Rules. As the corporate champion heel, Orton became the best bad guy bell-to-bell that he’s ever been, not only producing some of the best work of the year against the best wrestler in the world, but also in weird little Raw matches against a singles wrestler as limited as Cody Rhodes. or finding a way to spice up an older match up against Christian.

They’re two vastly different roles, and he puts in some of the best performances of the year and his career in both. Beyond the usual “great at formula” argument that’s always been a fair rebuke to Orton’s volume based output at his best, 2013 allowed him to show a versatility that always seemed to exist, but was only ever hinted at before.

He was always going to wind up in the upper half of the list, but ending the year with a career performance against Bryan in the fifth best match of the year didn’t hurt either.

 

RECOMMENDED MATCHES:

• w/ Sheamus/The Big Show vs. The Shield, WWE (4/7)
• vs. The Big Show, WWE (5/19)
• w/ Sheamus/Kofi Kingston vs. The Shield, WWE (5/24)
• w/ Team Hell No vs. The Shield, WWE (6/3)
• w/ Team Hell No vs. The Shield, WWE (6/14)
• vs. Daniel Bryan, WWE (6/24)
• vs. Christian, WWE (7/5)
• vs. Christian vs. Rob Van Dam, WWE (8/2)
• vs. Christian, WWE (8/26)
• vs. Cody Rhodes, WWE (9/2)
• vs. Goldust, WWE (9/9)
• vs. Daniel Bryan, WWE (10/27)
• vs. Daniel Bryan, WWE (12/16)
• vs. Dolph Ziggler, WWE (12/27)

 

 

6. MASATO YOSHINO

PREVIOUS: 16 (2011), 23 (2012)

 

Lightning in the jungle.

It’s hardly the first year that Masato Yoshino has been one of the best wrestlers in the world. During his nine month Dream Gate reign in 2010-2011, he was one of the best champions that Dragon Gate ever had, displaying a mastery over the style and an ability to sidestep the usual singles title match traps that so many wrestlers, even better ones than Yoshino, tended to fall into. He was also part of Dragon Gate’s all time most consistent tag team unit with Naruki Doi, and the motor behind many of its best stables. We saw that once again for most of 2013. The brief Brave Gate reign in the spring and summer once again saw Yoshino either avoid or make the best of the mistakes of others in those singles title matches. Throughout the year, Yoshino was also the motor and/or anchor and/or another metaphor use to project his central value to every unit he was in. He was the piece that made the ultra exciting WORLD-1 INTERNATIONAL group feel like the best team of high energy light heavyweights that could exist, the usual perfect chemistry with Doi also being matched by how well he worked with Ricochet and Rich Swann. In the fall, he was also the piece that really elevated Monster Express from being a great and stacked power stable to feeling like the most overpowered unit in Dragon System history, packing a deceptive amount of power in his own right, but also still being the fastest and most alarmingly precise wrestler in the world. Yoshino’s the one pulling up from the logo, to extend the earlier comparison.

It’s in the last quarter of the year where Yoshino goes from a reliable wrestler who always has a chance at a WOTY list to being a top ten guy of the year. YAMATO vs. Ryo Saito happened without him, but the majority of what I’d call Dragon Gate’s all time best run of Dream Gate matches primarily happens under Yoshino’s watch. It’s not just two of the best matches of the year, it’s also getting good ones out of Doi and BxB Hulk, who have had trouble with those types of matches before, to say the least. But it’s also that he’s a major part of two of the best matches of the year, with the one against T-Hawk in particularly really leaning on his performance and his expertise against a young opponent who still had so much to figure out.

2013 is the year in which it feels like Masato Yoshino becomes one of the best wrestlers in the history of the company though, and fittingly, the year in which he feels like the top guy in the company by the end of it, an established singles main event Star on the level of CIMA, Takagi, or YAMATO.

As always, the best and most satisfying runs on top are the ones that you never see coming but make all the sense in the world.

 

RECOMMENDED MATCHES:

• w/ Naruki Doi & Ricochet vs. Masaaki Mochizuki/Dragon Kid/Don Fujii, DG (2/7)
• w/ Rich Swann vs. CIMA/Super Shisa, DG (3/2)
• vs. Dragon Kid, DG (5/5)
• w/ Naruki Doi & Rich Swann vs. Akira Tozawa/BxB Hulk/Kzy, DG (5/25)
• w/ Ricochet vs. CIMA/Dragon Kid, DG (6/5)
• vs. K-Ness, DG (7/21)
• w/ Naruki Doi & Ricochet vs. CIMA/Masaaki Mochizuku/CIBA, DG (9/7)
• w/ Naruki Doi vs. Shingo Takagi/Akira Tozawa, DG (9/12)
• w/ Shingo Takagi/Akira Tozawa vs. YAMATO/BxB Hulk/Naruki Doi, DG (9/29)
• vs. YAMATO, DG (10/10)
• vs. Naruki Doi, DG (11/3)
• vs. T-Hawk, DG (11/7)
• w/ Shingo Takagi/Akira Tozawa vs. YAMATO/BxB Hulk/Kzy, DG (12/7)
• vs. BxB Hulk, DG (12/22)

 

 

5. THE SHIELD (DEAN AMBROSE, ROMAN REIGNS, & SETH ROLLINS)

PREVIOUS: 7 (2010 – DEAN AMBROSE)

 

No need to repeat myself here. This is long enough.

Could I have separated them? Sure. Ambrose would be lower, being isolated away from the tag team of the two guys in the group that the company REALLY loved, despite often being the best guy in those six man tags. Roman Reigns would likely be the highest ranking one, adding more to the tags than Rollins, and having the best singles match of all of them against Daniel Bryan. That all feels silly though. They were a group and competed primarily as a group.

As a group, few other acts in all of wrestling produced as regularly as The Shield did, with no real misses or gaps on the resume. There are all these caveats, again. Best opposition in the world, but it’s not like they were shiftless passengers. Easy set up from the biggest company in the world remembering how to make stars, yes. Absolutely. It sucks that they didn’t remember it or more realistically didn’t care to do it for anyone else. But it all happened, it is what it is, the record is the record, etc.

Fortunately, the art is forgotten in 2014, and neither of these three will ever reach heights like this again, either while under the WWE umbrella or period, given that the other two are likely never to leave.

 

RECOMMENDED MATCHES:

• vs. John Cena/Sheamus/Ryback, WWE (2/17)
• vs. Chris Jericho/Sheamus/Ryback, WWE (2/18)
• vs. Randy Orton/Sheamus/The Big Show, WWE (4/7)
• Ambrose vs. Daniel Bryan, WWE (5/10)
• vs. John Cena/Team Hell No, WWE (5/13)
• vs. Kofi Kingston/Team Hell No, WWE (5/20)
• vs. Randy Orton/Sheamus/Kofi Kingston, WWE (5/24)
• vs. Team Hell No, WWE (5/27)
• vs. Randy Orton/Team Hell No, WWE (6/3)
• Rollins vs. Daniel Bryan, WWE (6/10)
• vs. Randy Orton/Team Hell No, WWE (6/14)
• vs. The Usos, WWE (7/14)
• Ambrose vs. Antonio Cesaro vs. Jack Swagger vs. Cody Rhodes vs. Damien Sandow vs. Fandango, WWE (7/14)
• Rollins vs. Daniel Bryan, WWE (8/26)
• Reigns vs. Daniel Bryan, WWE (9/16)
• vs. Daniel Bryan/Dolph Ziggler/The Usos/Rob Van Dam/The Prime Time Players/Kofi Kingston/R-Truth/Zack Ryder/Justin Gabriel, WWE (9/23)
• vs. Cody Rhodes/Goldust, WWE (10/6)
• vs. Cody Rhodes/Goldust, WWE (10/14)
• vs. Daniel Bryan/Cody Rhodes/Goldust, WWE (10/18)
• w/ The Wyatt Family vs. CM Punk/Daniel Bryan/Cody Rhodes/Goldust/The Usos, WWE (11/18)
• vs. Cody Rhodes/Goldust, WWE (11/29)

 

 

4. TOMOHIRO ISHII

PREVIOUS: UNRANKED

 

Look at that, turns out I lied about Okada’s debut #4 in 2012 being the highest anyone would probably ever debut on the WOTY list at.

It’s not like Tomohiro Ishii came out of nowhere though. It’s really not the same. He’s been having great matches in an NJPW ring since 2009, and great matches period since the mid 2000s, if not earlier. It always felt like, as someone who loved those Yuji Nagata matches around the turn of the last decade, that it was just down to the opportunities. If he got a fair one and they followed up on it, Tomohiro Ishii could absolutely become one of the consensus best wrestlers in the world.

Turns out, when he got a fair one and they followed up on it, Tomohiro Ishii became one of the agreed upon best wrestlers in the world.

In 2013, the dam finally broke and Tomohiro Ishii got to win matches. Turns out that after years of build up, it was some of the most uplifting content that professional wrestling had to offer all decade. Beyond simply the thrill of winning matches, Ishii got to reach his largest stages yet, and killed it virtually every time. Two of the ten best matches of the year, one of the most fun tag matches of the year, little pocket G1 bangers, you name it. Even the act of giving back G1 upsets over the fall, usually an eye-rolling and arduous process in the years to follow, was something Ishii made fun and different and far more exciting than usual autumn offerings from New Japan.

A breakout year to start Big Tom’s Wild Ride, and in a position he might just top in 2014.

 

RECOMMENDED MATCHES:

• vs. Masato Tanaka, NJPW (2/3)
• vs. Satoshi Kojima, NJPW (3/11)
• w/ Shinsuke Nakamura vs. Minoru Suzuki/Shelton Benjamin, NJPW (6/22)
• vs. Minoru Suzuki, NJPW (7/20)
• vs. Hiroshi Tanahashi, NJPW (8/2)
• vs. Katsuyori Shibata, NJPW (8/4)
• vs. Davey Boy Smith Jr., NJPW (8/7)
• vs. Togi Makabe, NJPW (8/10)
• vs. Katsuyori Shibata, NJPW (10/14)
• vs. Hiroshi Tanahashi, NJPW (11/9)

 

3. ANTONIO CESARO

PREVIOUS: 2 (2011), 3 (2010)

 

Antonio Cesaro aka Cesaro fka Claudio Castagnoli is one of the most talented and probably best wrestlers of all time. If he is in a position to have regular great matches against a variety of opponents (or sometimes not!), he is going to be one of the best wrestlers in a given year. He had to take 2012 off to do the bullshit the WWE makes or used to make virtually everyone do. It’s the same as CM Punk disappearing from WOTY lists for a few years in 2006-2007, it’s the same as Daniel Bryan having a worse year than usual in 2011, there’s so many frustrating examples. Buy the ticket, and so forth.

Thankfully, in 2013, Cesaro was back.

After WrestleMania, Cesaro was one of a handful of wrestlers under WWE employ who got a green light as part of this accidental 12-14 month golden period and he did more with it than just about anyone.

In his case, that means basically everything. Classical power vs. speed matches, technical work, power vs. power, formula tag work, an indie style epic in the main event of Raw against an old foe, and an emotional powerhouse of a retirement match to end the year. Beyond that, he did a lot of this with middling at best talents like like a Kofi Kingston, a lack of real time or major show platforms in which to do it, or while teaming with Jack Swagger and Damien Sandow, of all people. Nobody got more out of Kofi Kingston than Cesaro did in the spring for years in either direction. The only person who got more out of a Money in the Bank ladder match formula than Cesaro helped to do in 2013 is the literal greatest wrestler of all time. Everything Cesaro got to do, he excelled at.

The problem was that he didn’t get to do QUITE everything he was capable of like he’s going to be allowed to do one he breaks out on his own a little bit more over the next year, and for the two people above him, that ceiling just didn’t exist.

 

RECOMMENDED MATCHES:

• vs. Adrian Neville, WWE (4/24)
• vs. Kofi Kingston, WWE (5/1)
• vs. Sheamus, WWE (6/5)
• vs. Sami Zayn, WWE (6/12)
• vs. Sheamus, WWE (6/14)
• vs. Dolph Ziggler, WWE (7/10)
• vs. Dean Ambrose vs. Jack Swagger vs. Cody Rhodes vs. Damien Sandow vs. Fandango, WWE (7/14)
• vs. Daniel Bryan, WWE (7/22)
• vs. Sami Zayn, WWE (8/21)
• vs. Dolph Ziggler, WWE (8/30)
• w/ Jack Swagger/Damien Sandow vs. John Cena/Cody Rhodes/Goldust, WWE (11/1)
• vs. William Regal, WWE (12/25)

 

2. HIROSHI TANAHASHI

PREVIOUS: 7 (2012), 14 (2011)

 

Go Ace.

Hiroshi Tanahashi isn’t a television wrestler like the wrestlers in which he’s sandwiched between. He’s not working twice a week against all these different opponents. Tanahashi tends to be involved in sprawling multi match rivalries, but if you want to see that from him, the G1 Climax existed, and he was one of the best wrestlers in it. If he didn’t have the raw consistency throughout of Ishii or Shibata, it was Tanahashi in the majority of the most important and best matches of the tournament, and who best displayed a sort of storytelling diversity throughout the tournament. He’s not a traditional consistency case, but it’s hard to say he wasn’t incredibly consistent, outside of the Bullet Club feud that just never totally came together. The highs are also incredible. The Okada matches are all tremendous, there’s two great Ishii matches, either the best or second best match of Karl Anderson’s career in February, all the way down. The majority of those either fall apart or they’re far lesser with someone else in that role, or even merely with a 2010 or 2011 Hiroshi Tanahashi in those roles.

I really don’t have anything bad to say about Hiroshi Tanahashi’s 2013.

He was consistent. He reached some incredible peaks. He had a handful of the best matches of the year, and was the clear driving force behind most of them (read: all the Okada ones, let’s be honest with ourselves). He excelled in several different roles and positions, and spent a good chunk of the year delivering a spirited middle finger to anyone who ever said he needed the leg work to fill space and have great matches.

He got to do everything you would ask of a great wrestler, and being one of the best ever, he succeeded wildly at over 95% of it.

It’s the year he took that leap too. Somewhere between the Okada series, the Ishii matches, etc., it felt impossible to credibly deny that even if Tanahashi hadn’t firmly become one of the very best ever yet, he was regularly putting forward some of the very best work of all time and has been doing so for a two to three year period.

It’s more than enough to be the wrestler of the year, but unfortunately he wasn’t the only one making a similar leap.

 

RECOMMENDED MATCHES:

• vs. Kazuchika Okada, NJPW (1/4)
• vs. Karl Anderson, NJPW (2/10)
• vs. Prince Devitt, NJPW (3/3)
• vs. Kazuchika Okada, NJPW (4/7)
• vs. Karl Anderson, NJPW (5/3)
• vs. Satoshi Kojima, NJPW (8/1)
• vs. Tomohiro Ishii, NJPW (8/2)
• vs. Kazuchika Okada, NJPW (8/10)
• vs. Katsuyori Shibata, NJPW (8/11)
• vs. Kazuchika Okada, NJPW (10/14)
• vs. Tomohiro Ishii, NJPW (11/9)
• w/ Tetsuya Naito vs. Shinsuke Nakamura/Kazuchika Okada, NJPW (12/23)

 

 

1. DANIEL BRYAN

PREVIOUS: 8 (2012), 19 (2011), 5  (2010)

 

It’s only teenage wasteland.

If you’ve been reading the blog throughout the 2013 coverage, I cannot imagine this is a shock. It is the least shocking WOTY that I feel like I’ve ever given out, to the point that I can only imagine this is some kind of surprise if you’re a new reader or reading this back from the future, having started reading after this piece was posted.

If that’s the case, alright, fine. Let’s go over it.

Daniel Bryan is the greatest professional wrestler of all time and it’s over this top babyface run from 2013 through his injury in 2014 that I believe he makes that leap. Daniel Bryan had been great at a lot of things throughout a decade plus long career up to this point. For years, he was excellent as a traveling technician, primarily existing to make others better. He was mostly superlative as a long-term primarily heel world champion in ROH following that. He was even better as a babyface veteran gatekeeper. He excelled as an underdog underneath babyface in his first years in WWE and as a scientific heel with a manic edge to him in 2012, but it’s 2013’s turn to being a genuine main event blue collar hero babyface that was the most impressive thing of all. It’s not what you usually expect out of a wrestler with a resume like that, but Bryan flawlessly managed the transition, and I believe this 2013-2014 run is as great as any other period of his career, and arguably more impressive than any of them because of where he was able to do it.

The crown jewel of his 2013 is the feud against The Shield, in which Bryan not only built a compelling narrative around his own self doubt, but would gradually beat and stretch the trio of prospects into being markedly better wrestlers over the year. By the time the first leg of it had ended and Bryan managed to victory after two and a half months, he’d made himself too hot to ignore. While still constantly having great matches against all of these different opponents, he found himself in a feud against John Cena, and delivered the best talking work of his career, removing the final mark against him (which had been bullshit for years, for the record) once and for all. When Cena got hurt and Randy Orton turned bad, Daniel Bryan stepped into the top babyface role, and it didn’t ever feel like a step down. Because of the clean victory at SummerSlam over Cena, the way Bryan had been built up to that moment, and the way Bryan always carried himself, he was just genuinely the top babyface and arguable top guy in the WWE from that point on, whether anyone in a decision making capacity intended for that to happen or not. To put it into perspective, CM Punk became undeniable in 2011 through mic work and by delivering in the ring in the matches he built to. Two years later, Daniel Bryan did it almost entirely through the latter. He proved he could do the former, but ultimately, he was able to ruin a twenty minute WWE PPV go home segment without speaking for more than two sentences.

The matches were virtually all fantastic. Bryan ends his year with one of the best matches of the year, pulling a career performance from Randy Orton, and offerinf forth one of his own in one of the best WWE TV matches of all time. Even with lesser talents like a Chris Jericho or Ryback or Erick Rowan, Daniel Bryan had great matches. He leads less talented wrestlers to the best matches of their career. He’s been doing it for a decade at this point, he’ll be doing it (when active) for the next seven years and counting after the end of 2013. But in 2013, it’s so impressive, not just because of what he’s tasked with, but because of what he accomplished with those matches and within those matches. Creating future stars, gifting nothing WWE projects their best matches ever, and ultimately anchoring the biggest company in the world through almost pro wrestling alone.

Daniel Bryan has a great enough year bell to bell that it made the WWE a genuinely good wrestling promotion.

Nobody ever does it alone, but this Herculean task is accomplished on the back of Daniel Bryan, through the work in and out of the ring by Daniel Bryan, and while the promotion from spring on organizes itself around Daniel Bryan, on purpose or not. He isn’t just the best wrestler of the year bell to bell, he’s also the most important wrestler of the year, and that makes it as undeniable as he became by the end of 2013.

At the end of one of the best years in wrestling history, it only makes sense that the best wrestler of the year just so happens to be the greatest wrestler of all time too.

 

RECOMMENDED MATCHES:

• vs. Chris Jericho, WWE (2/11)
• vs. Dolph Ziggler, WWE (3/11)
• vs. Dean Ambrose, WWE (5/10)
• w/ John Cena/Kane vs. The Shield, WWE (5/13)
• w/ Kane/Kofi Kingston, WWE (5/20)
• w/ Kane vs. The Shield, WWE (5/27)
• w/ Kane/Randy Orton vs. The Shield, WWE (6/3)
• vs. Ryback, WWE (6/3)
• vs. Seth Rollins, WWE (6/10)
• w/ Kane/Randy Orton vs. The Shield, WWE (6/14)
• vs. Randy Orton, WWE (6/24)
• vs. Sheamus, WWE (7/8)
• vs. Christian, WWE (7/12)
• vs. Antonio Cesaro, WWE (7/22)
• vs. John Cena, WWE (8/18)
• vs. Seth Rollins, WWE (8/26)
• vs. Roman Reigns, WWE (9/16)
• w/ Dolph Ziggler/The Usos/Rob Van Dam/The Prime Time Players/R-Truth/Kofi Kingston/Zack Ryder/Justin Gabriel vs. The Shield, WWE (9/23)
• w/ Cody Rhodes/Goldust vs. The Shield, WWE (10/7)
• w/ Cody Rhodes/Goldust vs. The Shield, WWE (10/18)
• vs. Randy Orton, WWE (10/27)
• w/ CM Punk/Cody Rhodes/Goldust/The Usos vs. The Shield/The Wyatt Family, WWE (11/18)
• vs. Randy Orton, WWE (12/16)
• vs. Luke Harper, WWE (12/30)

 

Hey wow. This was the longest one yet. I hope you enjoyed this, and I hope you’ve enjoyed the coverage of 2013. Thank you for reading. If you did not read and only skimmed through the results, you are a coward. But then you are likely not reading this end piece either. To all of the fellow maniacs and The Readers, I appreciate it a whole lot. If you want to toss a few coins at me at the end of this, thanks for that too.

As always, reading all of this has made you dumber.

 

Daniel Bryan vs. Luke Harper, WWE Raw (12/30/2013)

This is part of yet another Bryan gauntlet, which ends with Bryan fake joining the Wyatt Family.

It’s the main event of the last episode of Raw of the year. The main event is Daniel Bryan running a gauntlet against the members of this largely unproven heel stable. It’s not anything having to do with the title picture or Randy Orton or John Cena. It’s Daniel Bryan and his villains of the moment, in case you needed to have it further spelled out for you who the focus of the WWE is at this point in time. Surely, they’d tell you that this is about getting Bray over for the Cena match at WrestleMania, that this is all part of that story. However, respectfully, shut up.

None of that matters, fuck that.

This is the last 2013 match I’m covering, we can talk about that arc and all it represents in 2014.

The real thing here is that this is one of three ever singles matches between these two. They met once on Smackdown in November 2013, which wasn’t great. They met again in 2015, on Smackkdown again, and it was only six minutes. That may or may not be part of the pre-WrestleMania Play Button IC Title gauntlet match. It’s around four am as I write these and schedule them, this being the last one of 2013. I’m drunk. I tend bar for a living. Yesterday was St. Patrick’s Day. I went home with a case of Guinness and I already had scotch in the freezer and picked up some Untitled Arts singles from the beer store. I’m not doing research.

This is the only meeting between the two on a show that matters and which is given time, and it rules. Accounting for commercials, they get fifteen minutes and it fucking RULES. Bryan is, at worst, the second best underdog wrestler of his generation behind Generico, and it means that this is the rare meeting between the best big man and someone who is close to being little man of a generation. It’s especially rare as it comes on something close to an even playing field. Bryan is special in that regard where he’s not some pure underdog like Generico or Rey Jr. or Kikuchi, so he’s able to fit in this space against the best big man of his generation and not be swallowed whole on some vore shit. He chips away. He dies bumping to get Brodie over in front of a crowd that hasn’t yet gotten to experience him much as a single wrestler yet. Bryan never manages the full comeback, but he’s enough of a star that he never has to.

The comebacks, of course, are out of this world great. The most impressive thing about Bryan sometimes is the way he’s able to balance this ability to get newer main roster guys over but always with such a clear sense of the exact line he has to operate with. This clear sense of what he should or shouldn’t do, what he can or can’t get away with while still feeling like the best wrestler in the world and like the most important wrestler in the world. Harper gets all of this big stuff in. He cuts him off, he counters him, but once it’s over, you realize that he was never close to winning. He can beat the hell out of Bryan, he can push the best wrestler alive and of all time, but never seemed to stand a chance despite controlling some eighty percent or more of this. He’s the rare great hand or great technician in the WWE that’s been able to transcend that through crowd connection and accidentally strong booking and feel like the best and most important wrestler alive.

Within that lens, it all feels inevitable. The WWE emphasizes heart and grit and toughness. Bryan always emphasized intelligence and stamina and grit and heart. The different ideas of what constitutes a great babyface always seem to converge on this. Heart and grit, above all else, are admirable as hell and any great babyface in any country or company seems to have that sort of a quality. Here, Bryan is able to whip ass as much as he can and stay alive as long as he can, so that eventually, he’s able to find the exact right opening and hit the Busaiku Knee for the win. The old techniques still work the best, the classic ideas still hold purchase, and in the end, the greatest of all time still has a much easier time making this all work than anyone else. Proof of concept, and all that. The king stays the king.

It’s not all it could be and it’s not all that it should be.

However, the fact that this happened at all, let alone that it happened as part of the main event of the biggest and most famous televised wrestling show of all time, is mesmerizing. It’s something that makes the hardcore and old school independent wrestling fan feel overwhelmingly good, and it’s one of these ultimate sorts of markers for the year that was or the year that’s been or whatever phrase you want to use to describe one of the best and most important years of the decade and maybe of all time for professional wrestling.

Tell yourself on December 30th, 2012 that Daniel Bryan vs. Luke Harper is going to be part of the main event of an episode of Monday Night Raw, and try not to get giddy,

The fact that this happens, the fact that it’s relatively uninterrupted, and the fact that it rules feels like one of the plainest statements possible about just how great and fun 2013 was. Few things sum up 2013-2014 WWE better than, “we gave Bryan and Harper fifteen minutes and didn’t fuck it up”.

***

Io Shirai vs. Arisa Nakajima, STARDOM Year End Climax 2013 Day Two (12/29/2013)

This was for both Io’s World of Stardom Title and Arisa’s JWP Openweight Title.

There’s a ton to like here. Io isn’t quite in her prime yet, but you can see all the hallmarks here. The striking is developing. T

Unfortunately, this went to a 30:00 draw for political reasons and neither was quite fit to work a half hour draw, let along to work the sort of politically prescient half-hour draw that this required. That being said, there’s fifteen to twenty great minutes here. Arisa is probably at her best in 2013. Hard strikes, great offense, decent selling. Io Shirai is a few years off from that point, but already feels special in a sort of frustratingly undefineable way. The big stuff is held back, you’re never really going to get it, but it’s a political time limit draw with a ton of fun stuff to offer in spirte of that.

All that being said, for someone wanting to see that Arisa vs. Io looks like, I can’t imagine you’d think that this is anywhere close to being bad, because it isn’t. It’s not all it can be, but for a match featuring two of the best womens wrestlers of the decade and one of the best of all time full stop, this is nowhere near disappointing enough for me to tell you not to watch it if you’re technologically savvy enough to find this one on the Free Internet.

Daisuke Sekimoto vs. Kohei Sato, BJW (12/29/2013)

This was for Sekimoto’s BJW Strong World Heavyweight Title.

It’s some classic big dumb meathead wrestling.

Kohei Sato is taller than Sekimoto and for once, someone who is more than an even match for him. With my all-time BJW favorite Yoshihito Sasaki being retired now, Sekimoto lacks rivals. Okabayashi lacks the experience. Everyone else lacks the raw firepower. Kohei Sato from ZERO1 though, Shinya Hashimoto’s last student, has both. The diverse striking firepower to succeed. The all around skill to not be thrown off by a single thing that Sekimoto does. He’s a perfect opponent and the kind of opponent that Sekimoto badly badly needs. It’s all striking and suplexes, but with guys this talented ay laying these sorts of matches out and this talented at every sort of striking, you get a version of that in which every moment is fun as hell. Sekimoto eventually manages the Deadlift German for the win, but not without having to bust his ass to get there, and not without having to finally establish a real contender who doesn’t come from within this well established system.

Crucially, Dice-K does a stellar job of establishing Sato as being on a sort of tippy top level of Strong BJW sort of wrestling, which will prove incredibly crucial over the next two years and change, in which we’re all forced through sheer power of will to look upwards into the sky.

The Twin Towers rise again.

I’m not sure it could ever happen without this match.

***1/4

Arik Royal vs. Trevor Lee, CWF-MA Battlecade XIV (12/28/2013)

This was for Royal’s CWF Mid Atlantic Heavyweight Title.

It’s definitely weird to see Arik Royal here as a heroic babyface, but it just WORKS.

IIt’s weird as hell to see him here as the heroic babyface against cocky youngster Trevor Lee, but it all works. It work both because Royal is already both so good in the ring so so natural in his role, but also Trevor Lee here is only twenty years old and already this great. Beyond that, he doesn’t turn twenty one for another nine months. It’s genuinely unbelievable. To find another wrestler this great at this young, you have to turn to the literal greatest of all time, Bryan Danielson, or a top twenty to thirty all time guy in Rey Misterio Jr. It’s unbelievable.

He hurts his knee early on here on something as simple as a backbreaker, but it WORKS. Royal wins in the end, as he should, but the focus is on Trevor, and he absolutely kills it. Great selling, but also while pulling off all his coolest offense, the sort of thing that people way older than him struggle with, but that he innately seems to understand at TWENTY YEARS OLD. When I was twenty, I was doing meth with my downstairs neighbor because I was bored during a Ninja Warrior marathon on G4 because I hadn’t established residency yet. At twenty, Trevor Lee looks like he’s going to be a top twenty wrestler in the country, if not the world, within twelve months. Fuck him.

The knee selling is perfect for the occasion. Not pristine, but Royal also never devotes himself to it. It’s just good as hell. Trevor sells the heck out of it while also delivering all of this really stellar offense. Trevor’s twenty years old and his performance here genuinely made me Google other super-rookies through wrestling history to see how this performance stacked up.

A mission statement for the next four or five years.

***

Randy Orton vs. Dolph Ziggler, WWE Smackdown (12/27/2013)

More incredibly fun formula TV wrestling.

These two are no stranger, but this is either the one time or one of the very few times in which they got the roles correct. Randy is best as a heel and Ziggler is best as a babyface. Both are often in the opposite roles because the decision makers in the company are psychopaths who are often so disconnected from reality and the human experience, but it’s correct here almost on accident, and it works.

It isn’t quite on the level of their 2012 pay per view match, but given that this is both not on pay per view and on the B show, they do a really nice job. Orton continues to do some of the very best work of his career, and Ziggler is finally in a role in which he’s perfect for. Killer bumps, great comeback, and a smooth finishing run against someone who he has a ton of physical chemistry against. They don’t play all the hits because this is ultimately only Smackdown, but it’s just endearingly and overwhelmingly good and fun. Everything it should be given their roles and the occasion.

Orton once again eschews hard work, and cuts of Ziggler’s ascendant slow comeback with a finger to the eye and the RKO for the win.

The only real issue here is that they never had a bigger chance at this match with these roles, because I come away from this feeling like they could have done something really special.

***

William Regal vs. Antonio Cesaro, WWE NXT (12/25/2013)

It’s the final match in the career of William Regal.

When the match against Kassius Ohno happened eight months and change before this, I was pretty upset. The matches in 2011 and 2012 against Dean Ambrose were the best end that William Regal could ever hope for, save some sort of major program against his best and most famous student on a larger stage. It was especially distressing because the match against Ohno was this obvious retread of the Ambrose matches, except against an opponent in Chris Hero who had more to offer than playing the role of someone who he was vastly different from.

This, however, is perfect for who these two are and who they are to each other.

There’s a pair of incredible pre-match promos before this match which cover everything someone would ever have to know here. William Regal recruited Cesaro for the WWE, and he’s the only one Cesaro ever looked up to, but now he wants his spot and specifically wants to be Regal’s last opponent. As for William Regal, holy shit, just watch it.

It’s one of the best promos of the decade, Regal’s entire in-ring career summed up into two minutes. The match fits every theme Regal and Cesaro put forward into the pre-match interviews. William Regal has spent most of his career with very few real peers, and is now looking at the end of his career against someone who he knows is absolutely better than he is.

In retrospect, the match seems specifically wrestled as William Regal’s last match.

To be fair, one of my favorite things that professional wrestling can do is to be able to turn around and give a longtime villain this sort of respect. It’s one of my favorite things in media, honestly. I love the way Deadwood softened on Al Swearengen as larger threats came into the camp. One of my favorite characters in television history is Bodie Broadus on The Wire, and it’s entirely because of the last season he featured on. For whatever reason, nothing gets to me quite like the idea of a villain suddenly drawing a line in the sand and saying, “I’ve done some shit, but there’s still a code here”. This, and the Ambrose matches before this for Regal, are one of the best ever versions of that in the history of professional wrestling, and it’s part of why I hold them so dearly to my heart, beyond anything that happens in them on a bell-to-bell basis.

To that point, I have a great deal of esteem for William Regal. One of my oldest friends in terms of talking about wrestling online, her all-time favorite is William Regal, and it always stood out to me as a very weird pick until I went back and watched almost lal of the Regal that there was on American television. William Regal never quite got to have the career that it seems he should have. Twenty years before this, he broke onto the scene in WCW and had a series of wonderful matches against Ricky Steamboat. From 1993 through 1997, he wound up devoted almost entirely to the World Television Title, and found himself in the sort of rarefied air occupied by Arn Anderson and Tully Blanchard as the greatest TV Champions of all time, doing so in an era largely not nearly as devoted to TV Title matches as the one in which those two prospered. After that, he had his own problems, it’s well documented. The Chris Benoit match that dug him out of that is famous, and his character work in 2000s WWE is rightfully applauded. And yet, he never quite got to do all that it seemed he could have, save for those Chris Benoit television epics, the brief tag run with Dave Taylor in 2006 Smackdown, and a match here and there in 2010 or 2011 against Goldust or Daniel Bryan on c-shows that the WWE forgot about.

This match feels like the love letter he was due from the wrestling business at large.

I’ve also watched Cesaro/Antonio Cesaro/Claudio Castagnoli in real time since 2005. I remember specifically, the first time I ever saw him was when I convinced my dad to buy the 2004 Ted Petty Invitational for me in the spring of 2005 when the ROH message board led me to that. I wasn’t a big fan until later in the year when I saw that Alex Shelley match from ROH and later the Mike Quackenbush match from the famous CHIKARA/CZW double header on August 13th, 2005. I specifically remember in 2007 when the switch flipped, and Claudio just kind of stopped having bad matches. I remember for years, before I ever wrote about 2011 at large, saying to people that Claudio might be the very best wrestler in the entire world. I say all of that to say that it is incredibly cool to see him in this role, to be the one to be allowed to retire William Regal, and it is incredibly rewarding to have seen him develop to this point where it not only feels natural, but also feels correct, and most importantly, feels inevitable.

Cesaro is better than him and has been for a long time, but this match is about William Regal. It’s about allowing him to showcase the best parts of himself. The matwork is pristine. Regal is able to show off all of these super cool tricks, while also always being outmatched. All he has is experience and trickery, but Cesaro is stronger and ultimately, Cesaro is just better. Regal tries the basics, interestingly coming off a lot like late period Steamboat in a reliance on pins and traps and all the scientific basics, only that he was never as great in 1993 and 1994 against Ricky as Cesaro is here in 2013 against him.

This is best illustrated in a moment in which Regal does what’s become a classic spot for him in the old man phase he entered in 2009 when he came to the ECW brand, where he distracts the ref in the corner while throwing mule kicks back at a seated opponent. Classic spot that’s sneaky and creative, and allows Regal to entertain everyone while also illustrating how smart he is. The problem is that this time, Cesaro just gets right up and chop blocks him. Not only do the tricks not work on someone who knows Regal and who’s idolized and emulated him, but Cesaro is above this sort of trickery. Cesaro survives the nonsense and gets right to serious damage. Even in his ultra-serious statement before the match about knowing Cesaro is better than him now, it comes off as if Regal didn’t entirely know just how much better Cesaro really is.

Of course, the old dog is still ready later on. Cesaro works the legs and Regal’s selling is pristine, but not being entirely his forte as a character in the WWE (one of his best matches ever involves him working the knee, to be fair), Regal is able to get away from it and begin to attack the arm. He attacks both of them in kind, and it forces Cesaro away from the power game, somewhat. Never enough to win, but enough to turn this into more than a simple display of dominance and a reminder of which direction time’s arrow marches in. The arms are hurt, Cesaro’s selling is magnificent, and he never again really uses them in a major way.

But he never has to, which is really the point.

No matter how creative Regal gets or in which way he disables big Cesaro offense, it just never matters, because Cesaro is so much better.

Cesaro surprises him with a classic heavyweight style dropkick and then a real gross double stomp to the skull. It isn’t just the varied skill or power that Regal never had, it’s the combination of that and the aggression that did Regal so well at his peak. Cesaro initially can’t bring himself to end the match after that when Regal is dead weight. At this point, we all know Cesaro can deadlift two hundred and whatever pounds into his deal, but he doesn’t. Cesaro’s not a big facial selling sort of guy, but he does some of the best work of his life in that area, selling hesitation and regret for one of the only times ever, before Regal can get up on his own power.

Once that happens, Cesaro makes up his mind both not to allow Regal the opening he gave him before, and also to put a stop to this for good.

After the Gotch-style Neutralizer, William Regal’s last match comes to an end.

Cesaro may have never turned into quite the villain that William Regal was at his best, but it’s a hell of a retirement for Regal, and feels incredibly fitting by the end of the match.

The very best thing to say about this match is that while it might not have the unbelievable spark of the Regal/Ambrose series, it absolutely justifies the 2012 match not being William Regal’s last stand. It’s not as unique and not as perfect given the setting, but there’s a real charm to this all the same. Facing Ambrose in 2011 and 2012 FCW is not the same as facing Cesaro in late 2013 NXT. They mean different things, the latter is much higher profile than the former, and it’s the sort of curtain call that a career like Regal’s deserved. Ultimately, it’s cool as hell that Regal gets to go out with the sort of prestige wrestling epic that he was so often denied during his career.

A masterpiece that everyone with even a passing interest owes it to themselves to hunt down.

****

The Wyatt Family vs. Daniel Bryan/Cody Rhodes/Goldust, WWE Raw (12/23/2013)

Daniel Bryan vs. The Shield is all but over now, save a match or a few in early 2014. The time now is for Bryan to try and do the same for The Wyatt Family that he did for The Shield, and specifically, to legitimize Bray Wyatt to get him ready for John Cena at WrestleMania.

It sucks, it’s a waste of Bryan, but again…given that it all turns out fine in the end, it’s hard to be all that mad. It is what it is.

This is more perfect TV formula tag work. Bryan, Goldust, and Cody is maybe the best babyface trio to ever regularly work on WWE television. Their only competition comes from a Benoit/Jericho/Edge pairing that we saw a lot in 2004, likewise suffering from some weak links, but Bryan and Goldust together is once again undeniable. The greatest babyface tag team wrestler of all time and then the greatest wrestler of all time, full stop. Both men get to work long FIP sections in this match, and it’s great. You run into the issue then of Cody working the final hot tag run, but he’s good enough at it at this point that it’s not the end of the world. The crowd never comes alive enough for Cody at this point in the way they do for either all-timer on his team, but by this point, he has a good routine. The WWE’s invested in many worse in-ring babyfaces than Cody Rhodes comes off as in this 2013-2014 tag team run, you know?

On the other side…well, god damn, Luke Harper was great. It’s the sort of clarity you get only after someone is gone, but he’s the best big man of an entire generation. He works more against Goldust here than against Bryan (as Bryan is tasked with making Rowan less bad in the same way that he did for Reigns eight months earlier), but it’s hard to complain when that’s such a great pairing. The build for Bryan/Wyatt is also exceptional here, with Bray trying to avoid him until Bryan forces the issue and begins beating the shit out of him, only for Harper and Rowan to save his ass.

In the end, the Wyatts catch Cody with a blind tag off the numbers game, and Wyatt hits the Sister Abby for the win.

Nothing that’s going to blow anyone away, but yet another match in which Bryan looks like the very best wrestler alive, and in which Goldust doesn’t look all that far off. Instructive for the sorts of lists I’m going to be obsessing over for the next week.

***

HARASHIMA vs. Yukio Sakaguchi, DDT NEVER MIND 2013 (12/23/2013)

This was for HARASHIMA’s KO-D Openweight Title.

It’s a banger, as one of DDT’s all time great pairings meets for the first time with any real consequence.

I was really critical at the time of their 2015 KO-D Openweight Title match and Yukio’s KO-D Openweight Title reign in general. I’m left wondering after this match how much of that holds up, and maybe how much of it is just being a little newer to him in those situations at the time, not being the sort of harder core DDT fan I became around 2016. Because he’s great here.

Or rather, HARASHIMA makes him look so great here.

Yukio is still pretty new, but this match is tailor made to make him look incredible. His strengths are grappling and striking, and HARASHIMA is the perfect opponent for a wrestler like that. Was and still is. HARASHIMA can do more, he can have dumber and wilder matches, but he’s the perfect guy to throw at someone a little newer to pro wrestling and with this sort of a background. His grappling is perfect. He’s not a natural or anything, but the way HARASHIMA conducts himself in the ring extends to his grappling sections. Every motion has meaning. He never does anything that doesn’t either matter or that doesn’t rule. So all the little movements on the mat all have value and all get you to a point where you realize that for the first time in DDT, the inexperienced Sakaguchi has run into someone he can’t just run through on a purely culture shock sort of level.

Yukio moves to striking but he’s also not able to steamroll HARASHIMA, who can kick, slap, knee, and elbow with him. HARASHIMA once again walks the line masterfully, giving Yukio enough to make him look like a certified future main eventer, but making it clear that he is The Man. There’s a few different ways he does it. First is that Yukio manages a Somato kickout,  which isn’t reserved for just anyone. The second is that HARASHIMA never really survives any of Sakaguchi’s big finishes. It’s all experience and maneuverability and pure smarts. I’ve always been so drawn to HARASHIMA for the reason I’ve been so drawn to Yoshino or Tanahashi or Bret Hart or whoever else you want to throw into the mold. My favorite archetype in wrestling is the sort of Ace figure who doesn’t just rely on guts and brawn, but who has a brain to go with it too. Smart enough to outthink almost everyone, and tough enough let the athleticism or science do the rest for them. HARASHIMA’s as good of an example of that archetype in action as you’ll get, and this match is yet another stellar example as to why.

HARASHIMA blocks and/or counters all the big Yukio stuff, so his toughness gets him nowhere. HARASHIMA goes big and breaks out the old AJ Styles style Cliffhanger DDT, before a second and more impactful Somato keeps HARASHIMA’s hands on the KO-D for the time being.

If HARASHIMA had a second half of the year full of matches like this instead of wasting the first half of one of his longer reigns with bullshit, he’d be a Wrestler of the Year contender, because this is yet another performance where he looks like one of the best wrestlers alive.

A fantastic starting point, which they’ve only improved on in the years since.

***1/4