Matches DO Matter – Who are the Worst Wrestlers of 2016? Lesnar vs. Owens vs. New Day

The Matthew Effect is a sociological theory that is spawned from a biblical parable in the book of Matthew that basically indicates how “the rich get richer and the poor get poorer”. More specifically, this means that famous or decorated elites will get disproportional credit for their work when lesser known or popular peers do the same work, or better, and get little acknowledgement.

In 2016, the Matthew Effect in the WWE was never more apparent, as a number of stars and main event performers maintained this status due to their popularity rather than their actual in-ring work. Specifically today I’m talking about Brock Lesnar, The New Day and Kevin Owens, all nominees for Worst Wrestlers of the Year because their celebrity status in the industry allowed them to float at the top throughout the year rather than what they actually accomplished in a wrestling ring.

This is particularly heinous since there have been wrestlers pushing the envelop in the ring across 2016 in much less popular promotions such as New Japan, Big Japan, All Japan, Lucha Underground, EVOLVE, Beyond and Progress, doing the same gimmicks as these three nominees, from an MMA-inspired strategist, badass workhorse, to tag team specialists, but none get the level of credit they deserve. Even inside the WWE there are examples of peers to Lesnar, Owens and New Day who gain less fame from much harder work in the ring.

Sure, you could say that there are worse professional wrestles in the WWE, or beyond, like say a Bo Dallas, Jinder Mahal, R-Truth, Grado, Mahabali Shera, or Dolph Ziggler, but these wrestlers don’t have the spotlight and opportunity to wrestle in the important matches the way today’s nominees do. So if matches DO matter in this world of seemingly 4+ star matches coming out daily, and you’re just getting by on your fame without pushing the artistic level of your craft, then I’m calling you out today as the Worst Wrestlers of 2016!

The 411mania Wrestling 3-Way Dance matches up three opponents in an intellectual battle every week. The biggest advantages and disadvantages of each contender will be highlighted before a final ranking will declare the ultimate winner. This week’s 3-Way Dance:

Who is the Worst Wrestler of 2016?

Kevin Owens vs. The New Day vs. Brock Lesnar

Reasons for…

Brock Lesnar = John Cena

John Cena was basically in just as many big PPV matches as Brock Lesnar this year, and managed to have a truly good-to-great-to-excellent match every time out, whereas Brock continued to be a cocky, one-move bore who callously ruins entire cards with his lackluster performances in main event spots that are traditionally reserved for the best match on the card.

Cena maybe have picked up the slack on his shows, but very few in the WWE in 2016 were able to overcome the plague of the “special” Brock Lesnar match syndrome. While Brock had been having nice, long, interesting matches with wrestlers since his return from the UFC, including a fantastic one with John Cena himself at Extreme Rules 2012, we have been forced to accept since that infamous SummerSlam 2014 main event squash of Cena to accept that a Brock match is now “special” because he’s so dangerous (apparently because he broke the Undertaker’s streak in what was a terrible match) and it doesn’t matter if he does nothing but the same move over and over.

This new style of main event is a symptom of the Network-era, where I guess it’s okay to not give you $30+ dollars of wrestling because you’re really only paying $9.99, and that’s including all the other content you get that month. Whereas Cena in his prime worked his ass off to make sure that last match on the show was worth your PPV dollars, Brock has these glorified squash matches that I guess are supposed to be more realistic or something.

Kevin Owens = The Miz

All you have to do is look over at Smackdown and see what The Miz has accomplished to know how lame Owens has been. The Miz was given a bullshit title, like Owens, and in both his ring work and promos made it seems like a title worth fighting for. The Miz found himself a new ring valet, his real wife Maryse, who helped to prop up Miz while shinning as a performer herself, not completely stealing the spotlight like Chris Jericho has done to Owens in their team-up. Whereas The Miz has been able to pull even with even workrate darling AJ Styles on his show, World Champion Kevin Owens has been outshined on the undercard by the matches of the consistently irrationally shit-on Roman Reigns.

And while everyone insisted that the Career vs. Title match between Miz and Dolph Ziggler should have main evented the Smackdown PPV No Mercy, on the RAW side everyone also felt that the Women’s Title Hell in a Cell match should main event the Hell in a Cell PPV, thus making Kevin Owens the first male world champion to concede the main event spot to gender affirmative action, and no one cared.

Easily the biggest wasted opportunity of the year. Owens went from being almost forgotten to World Champion overnight due to the injury to Finn Balor, who’d debuted and leapfrogged everyone to the main event because it was assumed he was capable of great in-ring work. Instead, Owens has disappointed all those Kevin Steen fans who were dying for the chance to see what he could do in this spot by putting on generic, forgettable matches.

The New Day = The Revival

On NXT, a traditional tag team has dominated the tag team scene in 2016 by doing the inexplicable: wrestling great matches. In the WWE, on the other hand, The New Day have dominated the tag team scene by, um, well, dancing, singing and making jokes?

Certainly you can’t say The New Day had as historic a year in the ring as their record breaking title run should indicate. Without looking it up, I can’t remember one particularly great match they had last year, or ever. The Revival on the other hand had two marquee feuds, one that made the green team of American Alpha look so good that they got hot-shotted to the main roster and turned the make-shift team of Gargano and Ciampia into world beaters. And when The New Day wasn’t in clusterfuck multi-man matches, they had feuds with the Vaudevillains and The Club that were so shit they made you wonder why those two teams were even in the WWE.

If matches matter, and certainly watching the The Revival in NXT easily makes that case, then The New Day are much more gimmick than match

Reasons against…

The New Day = #BlackExcellence

#BlackExcellence pic.twitter.com/YrnijaTfOY

— ShinigamE (@WWEBigE) December 14, 2016

While I’m not sure that Ava DuVernay or Jesse Williams would consider selling Booty Os to white people cultural excellence, but hey, this is pro-wrestling and I guess we have to keep our standards low.

Having an African American team transcend the mid-card and become an A level act in the WWE is still something to be happy about. Even if that “division” has historically been where the WWE has given minorities a place to succeed while still reserving the World Title for their handsome, white superstars. This would explain how truly ready for prime time solo talents like Kofi and Big E were relegated to the tag team division in the first place, while say, a Finn Balor doing a questionable black-face gimmick gets the World Title in his first ever PPV match. Always a running back never quarterback, thus is the American way it seems.

Brock Lesnar = UFC

There’s very little from Brock’s 2016 in the WWE that would indicate he has any ability to put on an interesting pro-wrestling match anymore, however he did surprisingly dominate Mark Hunt in his return to the UFC octagon in the summer.

Performance enhancing drugs aside (the effect of whatever he supposedly did probably was most likely negligible), being able to avoid the deadly strikes of a true killer like Hunt is pretty phenomenal. It also had the extra bonus of preemptively embarrassing CM Punk, who made his UFC debut a couple months later and proved that a straight-up pro-wrestler just can’t hang in a real fight.

Therefore, the work of Brock in his UFC comeback does illustrate the difficulty of that sport in comparison to the entertaining in the WWE, and while dull, still makes a Brock match seem like something that could be realistic-ish.

Kevin Owens = Sami Zayn

Without Sami Zayn, Kevin Owens would truly have nothing impressive on his resume in the ring for the year that weren’t gimmick matches or multi-man nonsense. Not sure what this feud got for Sami, but at least it showed that Kevin is still capable of the excellence in the ring that made him one of our favourite wrestlers of all time.

But that dumb feud isn’t doing anyone any favours outside of the ring. The whole thing is incredibly vague for such a specifically personal rivalry. You’d think two guys who were such good friends could have gotten over that one time Owens betrayed Zayn like 3 years ago now. That those two great Owens/Zayn matches this year happened in a kind of forgettable vacuum is due to this weak premise; we get it, they “hate” each other, except we all really know they don’t.

The Final Ranking

Okay, these are all reasonable options, but who officially is the worst professional wrestler of 2016?

#3 = Kevin Owens

If matches still do matter for determining the best wrestlers in the world then Kevin Owens did have a couple of great matches in 2016, including those Zayn matches, his early Dean Ambrose feud, and even some of his tag team matches with Chris Jericho, including that Survivor Series elimination match epic. However, we can’t forget that he squandered an opportunity as the face of the RAW brand (so far), and 2016 has left what might be an un-washable stain of mediocrity on the career of Kevin Owens.

#2 = The New Day

Wrestling amnesia comes in the form of New Day matches, it’s just impossible to remember a single great match this team has ever had. As wrestlers, on paper, they’re good, and sure, maybe some of these matches they had throughout the year against the Vaudevillians, League of Nations, The Club, the Wyatts, were fine enough. But for a team that gets so much attention, so much fanfare, and so many chances to shine, they continually underperform, relying instead on a tired routine of songs, jokes and dances.

#1 = Brock Lesnar

You just can’t justify the crap Brock produces given the stage he’s on and the power he seemingly has as a performer. Kevin Owens’ weak 2016 could be blamed on a bankrupt WWE creative regime, The New Day’s 2016 might have been bad because they were satisfied with a popular merch-moving comedy bit, but Lesnar has no excuse. He’s milked the WWE for millions and is satisfied with his hacky performances. This dude’s one-note gimmick is about as bad as we’ve seen historically in the WWE main event, and that’s including the Ultimate Warrior, early-career Undertaker, late-career Triple H, and the high-bar of lowlights himself, Diesel.

Well, fuck you Brock Lesnar, for taking a big shit in the ring in 2016, trying to convince us all it was gold, and when we didn’t buy it you laughed all the way to the bank anyways! So you can have the esteemed honor of being the 411mania Wrestling’s 3-Way Dance Worst Wrestler of the Year, and I’ll be looking forward to seeing you right back here the same time next year.