Time for the 2nd Annual Board 8 APWT Year-End Awards!
Here's how it works: All ballots are secret ballots, although you are allowed to reveal your vote to others if you'd like. Discussion is encouraged! For every category, a vote for 1st Place is required, but you can also vote for 2nd Place and 3rd Place.
A 1st Place vote counts as 5 points, a 2nd Place vote counts as 3 points, and a 3rd Place vote counts as 2 points.
Whoever gets the most points in each category is the winner.
The timeframe for these awards is January 1st 2011--December 31st 2011. Ballots are due by 3PM Eastern Time on January 2nd, 2012. You are allowed to change your vote at any time before the deadline.
Here are the categories:
Wrestler of the Year 2010 winner: The Miz Vote for the person you feel was the best professional wrestler of 2011. It is up to you to define that.
Tag Team of the Year 2010 winner: Motor City Machine Guns Vote for the team you feel was the best tag team of 2011. It is up to you to define that.
Company of the Year 2010 winner: WWE Vote for the company that put on the best professional wrestling product in 2011 overall.
Show of the Year 2010 winner: WWE Monday Night Raw Vote for your favorite weekly program of 2011 overall, internet-only programs included. **NOTE**--ROH on HDNet and the Sinclair version of ROH Wrestling are considered to be two distinct programs for the purposes of this award. If either appears on your ballot, please specify which.
Event of the Year 2010 winner: Wrestlemania XXVI Vote for the single best event of 2011 from any company. It can be a PPV, a house show, an arena show, a specific episode of a TV show, pretty much any event at which professional wrestling occurred.
Match of the Year 2010 winner: The Undertaker vs. Shawn Michaels, Wrestlemania XXVI This one is hopefully self-explanatory.
Most Improved Wrestler 2010 winner: n/a A new category added by popular demand! Vote for the wrestler whose overall skills have improved the most from 1/1/11 through 12/31/11.
Angle of the Year 2010 winner: Nexus invades WWE Vote for the storyline you thought was the most compelling and best executed in 2011. This award is for the booking and writing more so than the matches themselves, although they certainly contribute to an angle's quality.
Feud of the Year 2010 winner: El Generico vs. Kevin Steen Vote for the feud that had the best series of matches over the course of 2011. This award is for the in-ring wrestling more so than the writing, although good booking can certainly make the matches better.
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boring and mundane signature congratulating SuperNiceDog Now with more bold!Less Italics due to bold
Announcer of the Year 2010 winner: CM Punk Vote for the person you feel does the best job in their role as an announcer. Play-by-play, color commentary, or analyst. NOT ring announcer. Sorry Justin Roberts.
Maneuver of the Year 2010 winner: Justin Gabriel's 450 Splash Vote for the most awesome maneuver used this year. It does not have to have debuted this year, nor does it have to be a specific instance of the maneuver. In fact I would prefer if you did not vote for specific instances of maneuvers.
Entrance Theme of the Year 2010 winner: "We Are One" A B8 specialty! Vote for the best entrance theme used by anyone in wrestling this year. Does not have to have debuted in 2011, as long as it was used in 2011 at some point.
There you have it. 12 awards will be handed out this year. PM Jakyl25 your ballots at any point before the deadline, and the winners will be revealed before Raw that night!
Again, discussion is encouraged, so if you want to get a gauge on what others think, or try to rally support for your favored winners, by all means feel free.
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boring and mundane signature congratulating SuperNiceDog Now with more bold!Less Italics due to bold
Post regarding the purged Suicide League since it's sorta topical in here.
Bonus Q was who has more segments this week, Laurinaitis, Teddy
I picked Sheamus, Teddy eaed picked Daniel Bryan, Laurinaitis Jona picked Dolph Ziggler, Laurinaitis dp picked Laurinaitis GTM picked Laurinaitis XIII may have picked FUNKHAUSER
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I tried to have a fierce rivalry with SuperNiceDog, but he made me look worse than a GameFAQs Contest!
Dave Meltzer stated on the Dec. 27 edition of Wrestling Observer Radio that Zack Ryder being placed in a romance storyline with Eve Torres and away from the main event scene stems from the staggeringly low quarter hour rating for last week's Raw SuperShow main event, which saw Long Island Iced-Z, CM Punk and Daniel Bryan stand tall against The Miz, Alberto Del Rio and Dolph Ziggler.
The main event garnered a 2.67 cable rating (2.55 for the first half of the bout), which was the lowest-rated main event on Raw in 2011 and possibly the lowest since Dec. 8, 1997 for a non-holiday show in its regular time slot. The overrun gained 59,000 viewers, which is considered terrible.
The Ryder/Torres storyline is slated to continue for at least a few weeks.
JaKyL25 posted... And hey, if it means more matches with Tyson Kidd for Zack, he's gonna come out the other side a better wrestler for it.
A couple vs. couple rivalry?
Thatd be okay, but I WILL remind you that this same basic setup murdered the career of Ted Dibiase.
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http://img.imgcake.com/nio/81edpngej.png edwardsdv and swordz9 are basically the comedy heel tag team of this topic, why would people be taking them seriously?
You know, this touches on something I've been thinking about for awhile now.
There seems to be a HUGE disparity between the fans that actually spend money on WWE through buying tickets and merch and PPVs, and the fans that just follow along on TV, with regard to what's popular.
The three people on the active roster (well, at least until tonight's injury) who get the most support from crowds by far are Punk, Ryder, and Orton. The crowd is always way into these guys, and it makes their matches better on TV because a lot of times for other guys the crowd can kinda die sometimes.
But yet they're all failing as ratings grabbers, at least recently.
Cena gets the third-biggest heat on the roster outside of Laurinaitis and Vickie. He also gets tons of support, but still, he's one of the very few people on the roster that any crowd will automatically boo lustily.
But yet he spikes the biggest ratings WWE gets on a weekly basis, not counting special stuff like Rock being on. The slight majority of the live crowd despises him, but he's the ONLY guy casuals tune in for.
Many Divas matches cause fans to sit on their hands or go for a bathroom break in the arena, but they spike ratings too. The non-paying fans at home WANT to see more Divas matches.
So now WWE has this conundrum. The tastes are split. There are millions more non-paying fans watching on TV than fans who paid to see the show, but the fans who paid to see the show are giving WWE a lot more money.
It's really a tough situation to balance, and I can't recall any other time in history like this.
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Thank you, Eddie Guerrero. http://bryandanielson.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/photo3.jpg
Yeah, I think this problem is exasperated further by people like us. Who like the product but dont purchase the PPVs. We're more likely to spend money on the people we like who are getting pushed, but the paying fans like different things.
Personally, I love Cena and what he does for the product but it is BONKERS that he and the Divas are major draws. I think it stems from the fact that Cena is just a cut above in terms of getting people to care about him OUTSIDE the hardcore fans.
I think the REAL trick is there are no Rocks and no Austins who cut across all lines to be MAJOR relevent stars. For as much as Miz and Punk talk about it, Cena IS the only relevent dude and the WWEs challenge is to make it so that Punk and Miz pan out on that level and I honestly don't know if either can pull it off.
But I think itll be exciting to see them try.
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http://img.imgcake.com/nio/81edpngej.png edwardsdv and swordz9 are basically the comedy heel tag team of this topic, why would people be taking them seriously?
Divas are shallow ratings draws, though. Those are just people channel surfing and see women fighting and are like "hey what's this" then flip away after they get bored of it. John Cena same thing. I doubt most of these people who cause the ratings spike last the whole segments, even. It's just a cycle of people tuning in for a minute or two when they'd normally dash right by, which causes the rating to get an artificial boost.
The solution isn't to make those aspects more prominent-- it's to keep them around, but make the product more interesting to keep people watching. And I'm convinced the thing there isn't a lack of stars but a lack of storylines. There aren't really any good storylines these days. There are "this wrestler was used well" and "this guy cut a good promo" and "this guy had a good match" which are fine in a vacuum but doesn't get people interested in watching the whole show, or watching next week.
I feel the announcers are also largely to blame here-- without a guy like Tony Schiavone hyping the goings on when it isn't relevant, or Jim Ross yelling about everything, it doesn't make things seem as exciting, so people aren't as likely to stick around. Josh Matthews is a good announcer, but only because he can do PBP and keep the annoying personalities in check. You need three components in a good announce team-- PBP, Color, and HYPE. WWE does PBP if Josh is there, Color if Booker (and King on a good night) is there, but all the other announcers are a waste of space quite frankly. And Cole is a waste of space to the point where it's annoying.
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I tried to have a fierce rivalry with SuperNiceDog, but he made me look worse than a GameFAQs Contest!
Yeah, that's one of the main issues I have with Cole at this point--his UNhype.
It was a cute idea to try out a heel PBP guy on the Road to Wrestlemania last year. That's not a bad time to try some radical experiment like that, since that's when people are gonna watch regardless, and typically WM is when established stars shine the most, so viewers need less "guidance." I have no real problem with that. But by WM it was obvious that the experiment had failed, and they should have cut bait right then and there with Lawler squashing Cole and humbling him back to his old self.
But yet here we are a full year into the experiment now, and still Cole lingers, telling us how awful everything is except for the top heels. I'm sure WWE thinks that's just an alternative way of getting the top guys over--people hate Cole and thus will love what he hates. Some problems with that:
1.) It worked for Daniel Bryan on NXT (and ONLY on NXT), and it has never worked since.
2.) Even if it does work, it adds an extra step to the process. Instead of "announcer says this is great, it must be great," it adds the extra step of "announcer says this is awful, I don't like announcer, it must be great." AT BEST it needlessly complicates the process to get the same result at the cost of having to listen to someone you hate all night.
3.) The biggest problem WWE has right now is attracting new viewers to become fans of new wrestlers. Every show is someone's first show, so exposition is always necessary to ease a new viewer in (a concept WWE in general excels with and TNA sometimes stumbles with). New viewers don't know that Cole is supposed to be an idiot and that when he says something sucks you're supposed to like it. Thus new viewers are either misguided or confused or both, and likely won't come back.
It just boggles my mind that WWE has stuck with this character this long.
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Thank you, Eddie Guerrero. http://bryandanielson.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/photo3.jpg
From: edwardsdv | #032 Yeah, I think this problem is exasperated further by people like us. Who like the product but dont purchase the PPVs. We're more likely to spend money on the people we like who are getting pushed, but the paying fans like different things.
Personally, I love Cena and what he does for the product but it is BONKERS that he and the Divas are major draws. I think it stems from the fact that Cena is just a cut above in terms of getting people to care about him OUTSIDE the hardcore fans.
I think the REAL trick is there are no Rocks and no Austins who cut across all lines to be MAJOR relevent stars. For as much as Miz and Punk talk about it, Cena IS the only relevent dude and the WWEs challenge is to make it so that Punk and Miz pan out on that level and I honestly don't know if either can pull it off.
But I think itll be exciting to see them try.
Yeah, those 2 bolded things combined, you are correct. You are the problem.
From: Lopen | #033 And I'm convinced the thing there isn't a lack of stars but a lack of storylines. There aren't really any good storylines these days.
It really sucks that the top storyline on Raw is YET ANOTHER REHASH of "Heel authority figure abuses power to feud with rebellious babyface."
What exactly is the blowoff to Punk vs. Laurinaitis, writers? There is no St. Valentine's Day Massacre to be had this time around. If they end up CHARGING for Punk vs. Ace on PPV, they're more delusional than I thought.
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Thank you, Eddie Guerrero. http://bryandanielson.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/photo3.jpg
Yeah #3 is the big issue with it-- people don't get to #2 they just tune in briefly and hear this guy putting the dudes down. And to expand on it, Cole is annoying. New viewers that find an announcer annoying aren't going to tune in long enough to know "you're supposed to hate him and here's why it's great" they're just going to say "god that guy's voice is annoying time to change the channel." Him burying guys doesn't help either but I'm not sure that even matters as much as the guy just being grating.
Good booking of the Cole thing would've been to turn Jack Swagger face on him-- that was so perfect and they ruined it by having Swagger stick with Cole.
But even without Cole, I don't think the current teams quite work. Even without un-hype working against you, I feel the HYPE guy is very important for new people to watch more than a few minutes.
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I tried to have a fierce rivalry with SuperNiceDog, but he made me look worse than a GameFAQs Contest!
From: Lopen | #042 But even without Cole, I don't think the current teams quite work. Even without un-hype working against you, I feel the HYPE guy is very important for new people to watch more than a few minutes.
Let's get Matt Striker back!
<_<
He may have gone overboard a lot and been weird and crazy and generally made stuff up that makes no sense on a daily basis, but at least he seemed excited about a lot of stuff!
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Mistake you're making - overlooking the fact that we might not want to be saved.
That's a good point. I think ideally he works best in the role he has now as color commentator on the B-Shows, but you gotta work with what you've got.
Overloading the audience with information is still better that outright misleading them.
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Thank you, Eddie Guerrero. http://bryandanielson.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/photo3.jpg
MIKE HOGEWOOD is the most underrated announcer of the last ten years.
I do think Dave Prazak was the perfect foil for him though. Someone who would comedically counter him without getting too vicious or anything. I don't think Hog/JBL or Hog/Ventura would work, for example.
"Come on Hog, you know you want one of Joey Ryan's mustache rides!"
"Dave I definitely do not!"
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Thank you, Eddie Guerrero. http://bryandanielson.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/photo3.jpg
Matt Striker's not good enough to carry the HYPE but if he was with a team where everyone seems excited he wouldn't drag it down. I think if you wanna use Josh Matthews though you need someone who's really into it for an optimal team though. Don West is the only guy other than JR that still works and is alive unless you can get Tony Schiavone or Joey Styles (assuming they can still seem interested-- kinda doubt it especially in Schiavone's case) to announce somehow.
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I tried to have a fierce rivalry with SuperNiceDog, but he made me look worse than a GameFAQs Contest!