The 411 Wrestling Year-End Awards: Part Five – Best Female Wrestler of the Year

Welcome back to the Wrestling Top 5, year-end awards edition! What we are going to is take a topic, and all the writers here on 411 will have the ability to give us their Top 5 on said topic, and the end, based on where all of these topics rank on people’s list, we will create an overall Top 5 list. It looks a little like this…

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

It’s similar to how we do the WOTW voting. At the end we tally the scores and get our overall top 5! It’s highly non-official and final, like WWE’s old power rankings. From some of the best and worst, the 411 staff is ready to break down the awards! Thanks for joining us, and lets get down to work.

Mike Hammerlock
5. Mia Yim
4. Sexy Star
3. AJ Lee
2. Gail Kim

1. Charlotte – NXT has done some amazing stuff with its women’s division. Charlotte has established herself as the current gold standard in women’s wrestling (yes, even ahead of Gail Kim). The Charlotte-Natalya match at NXT Takeover was the female MOTY. It’s amazing how good women’s wrestling can be when you let them put their talent on display. Lucha Underground gets this too. It has Sexy Star and Ivelisse playing alongside the boys. They’re not just eye candy. Anyway, if the WWE is smart, it will build to AJ vs. Charlotte at WrestleMania, where we’ll get a legitimate passing-of-the-torch match.

Mike Chin
5. Taryn Terrell
4. Charlotte
3. Havok
2. AJ Lee

1. Paige – No one really broke out from the pack this year in this category, so I’ll give the nod to Paige for a memorable debut the night after WrestleMania, a well-executed heel turn and turning in her share of good in-ring performances, despite consistently having limited time to work with.

Alex Crowder
5. Mia Yim
4. AJ Lee
3. Charlotte
2. Paige

1. Gail Kim – Paige if you include her NXT work early in the year had a great year as did Charlotte. However, I still consider Gail Kim the most consistent talent. I still think Gail Kim is one of the best women wrestlers in the world, and she never seems to lose a step. I may not have enjoyed everything in TNA this year, but Gail Kim was always a bright spot. Gail seems to get better with age and its going be a sad day, when she does decide to retire from the squared circle.

Kevin P
5. Charlotte
4. Gail Kim
3. AJ Lee
2. Nicole Matthews

1. Paige – I came very close to picking the current SHIMMER Champion Nicole Matthews to top this list. I’ll probably be alone in listing her period but she’s great. Anyway, back to the topic at hand, and that’s Paige. She started the year down in NXT, where she reigned as Women’s Champion. On the first big show on the WWE Network, NXT ArRival, she defeated Emma in the best women’s match of the year to that point. (Charlotte and Sasha Banks have since bested that.) She never lost that title. Instead, she was stripped of it after debuting on the main roster the night after WrestleMania and dethroning AJ Lee for the Divas Championship. She fumbled as a face, but would win a second Divas Title from AJ at SummerSlam by the age of 22. She beat AJ twice, something no Diva could do in nearly a year. She has fallen a bit off the radar lately but with a spot on Total Divas at the start of 2015, we haven’t seen the last from Paige.

Justin Watry
5. Renee Young
4. Gail Kim
3. AJ Lee
2. Charlotte

1. Paige – Not too many choices unfortunately. That is okay. Paige was my number one vote anyways. She debuted on the WWE main roster the night after WrestleMania XXX on RAW and immediately won the Divas Championship. To say the (obviously smarky) live crowd were ecstatic would be an understatement. She burst onto the scene right away and took over the division while AJ Lee took time off. Upon her return, the two would trade the title back and forth for a little bit, as Paige transformed into a heel character. While not all was smooth for the newcomer, her name was put on the map in 2014, and a spot on Total Divas in 2015 may (or may not) mean the best is yet to come…

Paul Leazar
5. Nicole Matthews
4. Ivelisse
3. AJ Lee
2. Paige

1. Charlotte – Charlotte has really turned 2014 into her year. Taking the reigns of the NXT Women’s Division after Paige’s terrific run was going to be no easy feat (especially having to follow her exit match with Emma), but Charlotte has stepped up marvelously. Her interactions with Bailey & Sasha Banks (and to a lesser degree, Summer Rae) made for enthralling television, but her ring work has also helped elevate her into being one of the very best female wrestlers in the country. Her big matches at the NXT Specials this year versus Natalya, Bailey, and Sasha Banks were wonderful and some of the best matches of the year, period.

Ryan Byers
5. AJ Lee
4. Paige
3. Charlotte
2. Nikki Bella

1. Brie Bella – I have to say that this was a somewhat disappointing year for women’s wrestling. WWE didn’t really try to do anything out of the box on its main shows and didn’t produce a hot women’s product, even though there is a contingent online that wants to pretend that everything AJ Lee and Paige do is great. (It’s not.) Japanese women’s wrestling seems like it’s more underground and more for pervy businessmen than ever, and, while US indies like SHIMMER and Shine are there and producing some good matches, they don’t have the same buzz that they had a few years ago. As a result, my number one pick here is based not primarily upon quality of performance but rather upon whose overall career fared the best over the past twelve months. If you stop and think about it, Brie Bella received a surprisingly strong push this year from WWE, as she and her sister were once again booked as the focal point of Total Divas (which, love it or hate it, outdraws all non-Raw/SD wrestling shows in the United States) and was booked in a feud with Stephanie McMahon for Summerslam which in many ways was treated by the company as being the second most important match on the entire show, i.e. the semi-main event. In both of those roles, though her ring work was no great shakes, she more than carried herself with good poise and came off like a star. So, she’s not the best pure wrestler of the lot, but she’s probably the female wrestler who had the strongest career trajectory in 2014.

LEN ARCHIBALD
5. Brie Bella
4. Sexy Star
3. Paige
2. AJ Lee

1. Charlotte – 2014 was one of the strangest years I can recall when it came to women grapplers. AJ Lee pretty much continued to be the focal point in WWE, even when she was embroiled in a feud with Paige, who became a 2-time Divas champ. Gail Kim continued to impress in TNA with matches against Havok before the promotion temporarily shut down. SHIMMER always brings the goods, but there were no real standouts in 2014 (as much as that pains me to say.) Then we have what was happening in NXT that proved to be the main standout in regards to the difference between WWE’s developmental system and the treatment of performers once they reached the main roster. The women at Full Sail were treated as individuals and real people with a competitive edge that was more than the characters they portrayed. No one embodied this more than Charlotte. Once seen as greener than sticky Jamaican ganja, Charlotte grew by leaps and bounds to become the most well rounded female wrestler – WRESTLER in North America. With matches against Bayley, Paige, Natalya and Sasha Banks, the current NXT Women’s Champion proved that she was more than just her namesake and displayed a versatility that we had not seen in years, pulling out new moves and a greater grasp on match psychology with each new appearance. 2015 is going to be Charlotte’s year – and I hope when she is officially called up that she will become the face of a resurgent Diva’s division in WWE (but I won’t hold my breath.)

Larry Csonka
5. Paige
4. Mia Yim
3. Ivelisse
2. Gail Kim

1. Charlotte – Usually I have a clear cut list when it comes to the wrestlers of the year, sure I may go back and forth on some things, but I generally have a good idea of where I want to go. This year was more difficult in some ways, but at the end of the day after weighing all of the evidence, I have to go with Charlotte for the top spot. She’s delivering in the ring, she’s excelling at an insane degree and I really feel that she’s the future of the WWE’s women’s division. The other ladies I listed did some good work this year; Gail Kim continues to be the most consistent female performer, Ivelisse had a great run as SHINE champion, Mia Yim continues to improve and provide great performances and Paige did good stuff in WWE. But Charlotte seemed to be the one to constantly knock it out of the park on a regular basis, especially the big events, and she takes the top spot from me this year.

AND 411’s TOP 5 Female Wrestlers of 2014 ARE…

5. Brie Bella – 6 points

4. Gail Kim – 17 points

3. AJ Lee – 23 points

2. Paige – 29 points

1. Charlotte – 32 points

THE 2014 411 WRESTLING AWARDS:
* The Biggest Disappointments of The Year: Daniel Bryan Achieves His Dream – Then Has to Miss The Rest of The Year – 40 points
* The Best Promo Person of The Year: Paul Heyman – 58 points
* The Best Tag Team of The Year: The Usos – 52 points
* The Worst PPV/Major Show of The Year: WWE TLC – 37 points
* The Best Female of The Year: Charlotte – 32 points

* The Best PPV/Major Show of The Year: TO BE DETERMINED (January 12th)
* The Best Promotion of The Year: TO BE DETERMINED (January 13th)
* The Best Match of The Year: TO BE DETERMINED (January 14th)
* The Best Wrestler of The Year: TO BE DETERMINED (January 15th)