wrestling / Columns

411’s Wrestler of the Week – Cena Battles Hardy

October 6, 2015 | Posted by Larry Csonka

Welcome to YEAR ELEVEN, WEEK 27 of 411’s Wrestler of the Week. A quick overview of the rules to kick things off for us as a reminder…

Each writer chooses FIVE wrestlers (although ties and tag teams are allowed, and more on a special occasion) from any promotion and each wrestler gets a point total attached to that ranking. It looks a little like this…

1st – 5
2nd – 4
3rd – 3
4th – 2
5th – 1

Then we tally up the votes and the official 411 Wrestler of the Week is crowned. But wait, there’s more! Each week the top SIX vote getters get a points value for their ranking which looks something like this…

1st – 15
2nd – 12
3rd – 9
4th – 6
5th – 3
6th – 1

…and they go towards the 411 Wrestler of the Year award to be announced each year around WrestleMania. This will be posted every Tuesday (the voting week runs Monday through Sunday). Let’s see who wins this week…

Larry Csonka
1) Matt Hardy:
Matt Hardy became the TNA world champion at Sunday’s TNA Bound For Glory PPV. Hardy was a last minute addition to the main event, and in his home state won the title. In a way it felt like a lifetime achievement award for Hardy. But the moment with his wife, son, father and brother after the match was pretty damn cool. This was easily his biggest moment as a singles performer, so he gets the top spot this week.

2) John Cena: I am not a fan of Seth Rollins being John Cena’s bitch, but Cena picked up another victory over the WWE Champion at Saturday’s WWE at MSG: Show vs. Lesnar event. Someone explain to me why Cena isn’t the #1 contender.
3) Atsushi Kotoge & Daisuke Harada: Defeated El Desperado & TAKA Michinoku to become the NEW GHC Jr. Heavyweight Tag Team Champions
4) The Wolves
5) Kevin Owens

Kevin Pantoja
1) Atsushi Kotoge & Daisuke Harada:
I haven’t been following Pro Wrestling NOAH as much as I’d like but I do have a buddy that has kept me posted on results and reviews of their shows. The big angle in the company right now has been the invasion and dominance of Minoru Suzuki’s stable, Suzuki-Gun. They hold every championship in the company and with it, all of the power. Atsushi Kotoge and Daisuke Harada’s GHC Jr. Heavyweight Tag Team Title win was more than just a normal title victory. It represents a shift in the balance of power in NOAH as it’s the first time Suzuki-Gun has dropped a belt since the invasion began.

2) Matt Hardy: To close out Bound for Glory 2015 in North Carolina, Matt Hardy captured the TNA World Title by pinning Drew Galloway in a Triple Threat match. I think the decision to put the title on Matt was pretty terrible, especially with it coming at the expense of Ethan Carter III’s reign. EC3 has consistently been, far and away, the best thing about TNA this year, so him losing the title, even if he didn’t get pinned, is a bad move. Especially to Matt Hardy. Still, winning a World Title is enough to land someone high on this list, regardless of how I feel about the booking decision.
3) Shinsuke Nakamura: Probably the best show on television this week was ROH TV. To close out a fun episode, Shinsuke Nakamura took on Adam Cole in the main event. While I don’t believe the match was as great as I expected it to be, it was still the match of the week for me. Nakamura, who recently won back the IWGP Intercontinental Championship, bested Cole. With ROH and NJPW working together and what happened at Field of Honor between Jay Lethal and Nakamura, part of me wonders if there will be a title match down the line. Maybe a ROH Title match or an Intercontinental Title match if Lethal really wants to be greedy. Either way, Nakamura once again performed well.
4) John Cena
5) Kevin Owens

Mike Chin
1) Matt Hardy:
I feel this should be a runaway pick for a popular veteran winning what was arguably his first world championship (the arguable pertaining to his ECW Championship reign and whether you still classify the TNA strap as a world title) at TNA’s biggest annual event. That said, given Hardy’s super late addition to the match and reports of TNA papering the town to fill seats removes some of the luster from the victory. all that said, Hardy won a solid triple threat bout to emerge from the show with the title in front of a home crowd, only to celebrate with his family, which is good enough for the top spot.

2) Atsushi Kotoge and Daisuke Harada: The new GHC Jr. Heavyweight tag champs have not only struck gold for the first time in Pro Wrestling NOAH, but look to be a t the fore of a major shift, costing the Suzuki-gun stable its strangle hold on all of the promotion’s titles.
3) Brock Lesnar: Lesnar’s MSG match with Big Show wasn’t a classic, but was a reassertion of how special he is as a talent, featuring that killer belly-to-belly suplex after the match and not one, but two F-5s.
4) Kevin Owens
5) John Cena

Mike Hammerlock
1) Shinsuke Nakamura:
You can fault Nakamura and Cole for not approaching their ***** potential in their ROH TV match, but it’s still easily the best thing that happened in this dog’s breakfast of a week. Nakamura in greatest hits mode even makes when you figure the match aired in front of a lot of people who haven’t seen him before. Also nice to see Cole get an important match. He’s criminally underutilized these days.

2) The Wolves: Picking them here partially because they had the best match at Bound For Glory and partially in protest of the idiotic booking we saw this week from TNA and WWE. Matt Hardy winning the TNA title at a time when the promotion’s future hangs in the balance is almost unfathomably stupid. Likewise, John Cena emphatically spiking the ball on his feud against the reigning WWE champion just as Cena’s headed out on an open-ended break represents just how thick Vince McMahon’s blinders are. Honestly, in both cases it’s booking so lunkheaded I can’t justify voting for it. The Wolves beat Trevor Lee and Brian Myers. Wasn’t a great match, but Eddie and Davey always have at least a good match, and that places them high on my list this week.
3) Matt Sydal: He continues to do cool things since his return to ROH. Beat KUSHIDA this week in a match that might set Sydal up for a future challenge for the IWGP Jr. Heavyweight Championship, which KUSHIDA held at the time this match was taped and subsequently lost to Kenny Omega. Sydal definitely is a guy who is doing much better for himself after leaving the WWE.
4) Bobby Roode
5) Kevin Owens

Jack McGee
1) Matt Hardy:
Defeated Drew Galloway and champion EC3 to win the TNA World Title at the Bound for Glory PPV. This is Matt biggest victory as a singles star, and came off as a cool moment.

2) The Wolves: Defeated Lee and Myers at Bound for glory to retain the TNA Tag Team Titles at the best match at Bound for Glory.
3) Gail Kim: Defeated Awesome Kong to retain the TNA Knockouts Title. She also did a really good job of working around Kong’s limitations and made the match work.
4) Bobby Roode
5) John Cena

Wyatt Beougher
1) Brock Lesnar:
The Beast not only survived three chokeslams from the Big Show, he went on to squash him for the rest of the match, which lasted a grand total of 4:11. Definitely not the best match of the week, or the most exciting, so why did its winner land in the top spot this week? Just because it shows how much WWE values Lesnar – contrast this match with their encounter at Royal Rumble 2014, where Lesnar had to wear Show out with a chair for several minutes before the match started in order to get what felt like a cheap win. That was pre-Streakbreaker Brock Lesnar, though, and he showed Big Show just how much more impressive he’s gotten in the past year and change. Lesnar continues to be perhaps the only character that WWE books correctly with any consistency, and as a result, he takes my top spot this week.

2) Shinsuke Nakamura: While his match with Adam Cole on RoH television this week was not as good as I think many expected it to be, Nakamura still picked up the win in what was probably the match of the week. In a relatively slow week like this, that’s good enough for second on my list.
3) Matt Hardy: I really wish I could have given a journeyman wrestler winning his first world title a higher ranking, but the fact that the ending of Bound for Glory’s main event was the typically overbooked main event nonsense TNA has utilized since the Planet Jarrett days left a bad taste in my mouth.
4) Atsushi Kotoge & Daisuke Harada
5) John Cena

Jeremy Thomas
1) Matt Hardy:
We can point out how close to the precipice TNA is all that we want, but the fact remains that they’re still a US promotion with a national TV deal (for the rest of the year, anyway) and that runs PPVs. That gives Matt Hardy’s TNA World Title win at least some weight. I joked last night that the win sealed Matt’s legacy as “the Other Hardy” in stone, but in all seriousness it’s actually nice to see that he has a World Title reign to his name now.

2) The Wolves: Beat Lee and Myers in a really solid match at Bound for Glory to retain the TNA Tag Team Titles.
3) Atsushi Kotoge & Daisuke Harada: Won the GHC Jr. Heavyweight Tag Team Titles off of El Desperado & TAKA Michinoku in NJPW over the weekend, which is a nice feather in their cap.
4) Kevin Owens
5) Brock Lesnar

THE WINNERS~!
* Special Mention…Kevin Owens – 7 Votes

* Fifth Place…John Cena & Brock Lesnar – 9 Votes

* Fourth Place…Shinsuke Nakamura – 12 Votes

* Third Place…The Wolves (Richards & Edwards) – 14 Votes

Still your reigning and defending TNA Tag Team Champions!

* Second Place…Atsushi Kotoge & Daisuke Harada – 17 Votes

The NEW GHC Jr. Heavyweight Tag Team Champions!

* And 411’s Wrestler of the Week is…
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photo Hardy TNA Champion_zpsesrbenwi.jpg

Matt Hardy – 28 Votes

Your NEW TNA World Champion!

The Standings
Here are the standings after week twenty-seven…

1. John Cena – 79 pts.

2. Seth Rollins – 61 pts.

3. Kevin Owens – 58 pts.

4. Kofi Kingston – 47 pts.
4. Big E – 47 pts.

6. Shinsuke Nakamura – 45 pts.

7. Jay Lethal – 42 pts.

8. Xavier Woods – 34 pts.

9. Mil Muertes – 31 pts.

10. Sasha Banks – 30 pts.
10. Matt Hardy – 30 pts.

Hiroshi Tanahashi – 27 pts.
KUSHIDA – 27 pts.
Kyle O’Reilly – 27 pts.

Prince Puma – 25 pts.
Ethan Carter III – 25 pts.

Drago – 24 pts.
Fenix – 24 pts.
Kazuchika Okada – 24 pts.
Dean Ambrose – 24 pts.
Kota Ibushi – 24 pts.
AJ Styles – 24 pts.

Finn Balor – 22 pts.

Nick Jackson – 21 pts.
Matt Jackson – 21 pts.
Cesaro – 21 pts.
Hirooki Goto – 21 pts.

Eddie Edwards – 19 pts.
Davey Richards – 19 pts.

Brock Lesnar – 18 pts.
Aerostar – 18 pts.
Alberto El Patron – 18 pts.
Roman Reigns – 18 pts.
Bubba Ray Dudley – 18 pts.
D-Von Dudley – 18 pts.

Zack Sabre Jr – 16 pts.

Hideo Itami – 15 pts.
Randy Orton – 15 pts.
Jeff Hardy – 15 pts.
Angelico – 15 pts.
Son of Havoc – 15 pts.
Kurt Angle – 15 pts.
Undertaker – 15 pts.
Bobby Fish – 15 pts.
Togi Makabe – 15 pts.

Kazarian – 13 pts.
Christopher Daniels – 13 pts.
Sting – 13 pts.

Samoa Joe – 12 pts.
Rey Mysterio Jr. – 12 pts.
Atsushi Kotoge – 12 pts.
Daisuke Harada – 12 pts.
Katsuyori Shibata – 12 pts.
Mike Bennett – 12 pts.
Matt Taven – 12 pts.
“Speedball” Mike Bailey – 12 pts.
Rich Swann – 12 pts.
Ivelisse – 12 pts.
Bayley – 12 pts.
Bobby Roode – 12 pts.
Drew Galloway – 12 pts.

Becky Lynch – 10 pts.
Roderick Strong – 10 pts.

Ryback – 9 pts.
Jeff Jarrett – 9 pts.
Karl Anderson – 9 pts.
Sheamus – 9 pts.
Sami Zayn – 9 pts.
Rocky Romero – 9 pts.
Trent Baretta – 9 pts.
Kimber Lee – 9 pts.
Cherry Bomb – 9 pts.
Timothy Thatcher – 9 pts.

Michael Elgin – 6 pts.
Minoru Suzuki – 6 pts
Tigre Uno – 6 pts.
KAI – 6 pts.
Masato Tanaka – 6 pts.
Takashi Sugiura – 6 pts.
Charlotte – 6 pts.
King Bad News Barrett – 6 pts.
Nicole Matthews – 6 pts.

Neville – 5 pts.

Johnny Mundo – 3 pts.
Jack Evans – 3 pts.
Cage – 3 pts.

Chris Hero – 1 pt.
PJ Black – 1 pt.
Pentagon Jr – 1 pt.
El Siniestro de la Muerte – 1 pt.
Barrio Negro – 1 pt.
Terce – 1 pt.
King Cuerno – 1 pt.
Mark Andrews – 1 pt.
Kenny King – 1 pt.
Nikki Bella – 1 pt.
Kalisto – 1 pt.
Titus O’Neil – 1 pt.
Aiden English – 1 pt.
Simon Gotch – 1 pt.
Darren Young – 1 pt.
Kenny Omega – 1 pt.
Minoru Tanaka – 1 pt.
Masato Yoshino – 1 pt.
Jun Kasai – 1 pt.
Manabu Soya – 1 pt.
Tetsuya Naito – 1 pt.