This is the last edition of the series, I thank you all for the votes on the Facebook page, and the readers who followed the series through to the end. Here are the Best of 2014 voted by the EWN faithful.
- Best Female Wrestler – Paige
- Best Newcomer – Rusev
- Best Tag Team – The Usos
- Best High-Flyer – Adrian Neville
- Most Hated Wrestler – John Cena
- Most Charismatic – Dolph Ziggler
- Best Technical Wrestler – Cesaro
I was originally going to decide the best World Champion Of 2014 between the promotions of WWE, TNA, and ROH, but I had a strong feeling TNA/ROH would not be able to compete fairly in the polls. I changed it up for this year, and I want to continue like this in the coming years. Instead of deciding the best World Champion overall, we decided the best World Champion from each promotion. So let’s begin with the promotion known as Ring of Honor.
Best ROH World Champion
At the age of 25 years old, Adam Cole is already a well established independent wrestler with many accomplishments. These accomplishments include the PWG World Championship, and the ROH World Championship. Cole lost his PWG World title this year after holding it for a record reign of 538 days. He held the ROH World title from September of last year til June 22nd after winning the ROH World Championship tournament. He was voted in unanimously, although there were some votes for Jay Briscoe. Michael Elgin was the other choice for this category, and he picked up no votes due to his short reign.
Best TNA World Heavyweight Champion
The polling was a little more mixed, but it was still unanimous. Eric Young reached the top of the mountain for the first time in his long TNA career, and the TNA original was nothing more than a true fighting champion. Sadly, some wrestling fans drew comparisons to Daniel Bryan’s win at Wrestlemania, and the “underdog with a beard gimmick” (EY was an underdog with a beard many years before Daniel Bryan worked for WWE), so TNA was obviously taking advantage of it. *sarcasm*
It wasn’t the best timing, but I, and many of the fans, were happy for Eric Young. He should have been TNA Champion many years before, but he was working gimmicks like “Super Eric”, or working as a cog in the wheel for Team Canada. He was getting over as the leader of the World Elite, a stable which could have been as popular as any stable in TNA history, but as we know, Hogan & Bischoff appeared, and the stable warfare abruptly ended.
With Magnus’ momentum slowing down, TNA had to do something to push the product forward. Instead of the typical closet champion TNA relied on so much, the fans saw a champion who wanted to defend the title every night against anybody. It was incredibly refreshing to see. His biggest win as champion was the Slammiversary XII Three-Way Steel Cage match. He defeated the two worthy challengers of Austin Aries and Lashley. This was his last title defense before losing it to Lashley on June 19th.
Despite the short title reign (70 days), EY defended it many times, and he rounded off his TNA accomplishments by becoming a TNA Triple and Grand Slam Champion
Best WWE World Heavyweight Champion
The last category was really, really close. Lesnar and Cena had no chance, they barely got any votes. It was a straight up fight between Randy Orton and Daniel Bryan, and the winner was decided by two votes. The voters could not decide whether Bryan was champion long enough to earn it, or if Orton was the only logical choice. If we could have two winners, Bryan and Orton would share this, but there could only be one true winner in the end.
So without any further delay, let’s celebrate the end of 2014, a roller-coaster year with many good and bad moments. We were missing one key ingredient this year. It was a three-letter word preceded by an exclamation mark. It could only be the word chanted louder than any other, it could be only the word … “YES!”.
Merry Christmas Everyone.
