The 411 Wrestling Year-End Awards: Part Four – Worst Major Show/PPVs of 2014

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 Chin
5. TNA X-Travaganza 2
4. TNA Jokers Wild 2
3. TNA World Cup of Wrestling 2
2. WWE Battleground

1. TNA Knockouts Knockdown 2 – TNA’s One Night Only PPV series has not delivered much in the way of good programming, but Knockouts Knockdown 2 may have marked a new low for the brand, featuring zero good matches, the unfortunate booking of soon-to-be-dominant champ Havok losing to Madison Rayne, and a spectacularly bad ODB-Rockstar Spud match. This show was not only ay bad one in a vacuum, but was actively harmful to long-term booking, putting over one-night visitors at the expense of full-time roster members, and operating in a different universe from the Knockouts booking of the time. Pre-taped PPVs necessarily have their limitations, but still can be a vehicle around which to plan ahead, and put over someone who is going to be important to the division’s long-term future. This show got everything wrong.

Mike Hammerlock
5. WWE Money in the Bank
4. WWE TLC
3. WWE Battleground
2. TNA Genesis

1. WWE Survivor Series – I didn’t think anything could overtake TNA at the height of its absurdity, but dammit if the WWE didn’t do it at Survivor Series. Genesis, for the vast majority of you who skipped it, is a former PPV that TNA turned into a television event. Not only were most of the matches terrible, but TNA performed a bait-and-switch by turning it into a two-night affair, meaning you had to wait an extra week to see the supposed good matches. It all ended in a clusterfuck where Magnus, the worst champ in professional wrestling history, sent Sting packing. Somehow Survivor Series outdid it. They started with a 20-minute talk segment. I assume that’s when most of the viewers who were watching for free gave up. Then we got a four-team tag match that had been given no build. The crowd remained flat. It got flatter with a divas Survivor Series match that was putrid. Dean Ambrose and Bray Wyatt started in front of a fully dead crowd and woke them up a bit, but just as that match caught fire it turned into a teaser for their TLC match (which did not deliver) a month later. Then we got a 30-second divas title match. The main event was generally well-done, though the outcome was a foregone conclusion. And I know Sting’s supposed to be all enigmatic, but would it have killed them to explain why he chose that moment to make his WWE debut? Because he finally signed a contract is NOT a good answer, even if it’s the right one.

Scott Rutherford
5. TNA Bound For Glory
4. WWE Battleground
3. TNA World Cup of Wrestling 2
2. TNA Genesis

1. WWE TLC – It’s almost a joke that the biggest wrestling promotion in the world has completely forgotten what made them so great in the first place…can’t miss PPV. Coming off NXT’s fantastic R Evolution show, you’d think the main roster would be up for making the “minor league” look inferior. FAIL. Maybe it’s the fact the NXT was so good only 4 days earlier but the lack of effort in the booking and the wrestlers themselves was blindingly apparent. Sure a guy like Dean Ambrose tried hard but he’s lost every PPV match he’s had since the breaking up of the Shield and he’s one of your headliners! When the most memorable part of the show was Dolph Ziggler and Luke Harper legit nearly killing themselves in a ladder match, then you need to rethink what you’re doing. Zero brass rings for this company.

Kevin P
5. TNA World Cup of Wrestling
4. WWE Battleground
3. TNA Genesis
2. TNA Knockouts Knockdown

1. WWE TLC – I’ll admit that I haven’t seen many PPVs outside of the WWE this year. I was at TLC live and while I did not find it spectacularly terrible, it was their worst offering of the year. With the main roster supposedly motivated after NXT stole the year with R Evolution, they went out and shit the bed. Ziggler/Harper was great and Ambrose/Wyatt tried, but everything else was lackluster. It seemed more like they phoned it in than stepped it up. It tops the list out of disappointment mostly.

Justin Watry
5. WWE TLC
4. WWE Battleground
3. WWE Royal Rumble
2. WWE Night of Champion (just for the final five minutes)

1. Anything TNA related (Bound for Glory 2014 in particular) – Oh boy, where do I begin? Keep in mind this category is for pay-per-views AND major shows. Since there is no such thing as a ‘major’ show in TNA, it was hard to really judge. Either way, anything TNA related gets the top vote for two reasons. First was the ridiculous cheap ploy earlier in the year to spread out a television special into two parts. Blatant ratings grab (that actually worked relatively well if you consider their numbers) that turned me off big time. Second was the inexcusable handling of Bound for Glory. You know, their BIGGEST event of the year…and yes, Mike Tenay specifically called it the biggest event of the year just days beforehand, TNA was still trying to promote it that way. Absolute embarrassment in every single way possible. if you one specific show, it is BFG 2014. However, it is truly the whole year of TNA taking a massive dump…but fear not folks! The year of 2015 will be TNA!!! Just you watch. The Cubs will also win the World Series, and the Jets will go 16-0 too! Yes, 2015 will be the year for TNA!

LEN ARCHIBALD
5. TNA Bound for Glory
4. TNA World Cup of Wrestling
3. TNA Genesis
2. WWE Battleground 2014

1. WWE TLC 2014 – I stand by my choice of WWE’s final major event being their worst offering. While Battleground 2014 was drizzling and Bound For Glory was just weird all around, TLC’s abysmal event was further accentuated by 1) the NXT roster blowing the main WWE roster out of the orbit a mere few days beforehand and 2) Dolph Ziggler and Luke Harper showing their peers how it’s done to open the pay per view. Twice – TWICE, WWE main eventers were given the opportunity to step up to the plate when developmental and midcard talents shone brightly and offered fans hope that they would do all they could to not be overshadowed. Instead, we were given a confusing, uninspired and all around boring affair that showed WWE, for some rhyme or reason just does not seem to care about being seen as just that. Maybe the main roster realized they could never live up to the expectations of NXT and gave up – and if that was the case, that makes TLC 2014’s final presentation even more disturbing and alarming.

Paul Leazar
5. WWE TLC
4. TNA Genesis
3. WWE Royal Rumble
2. WWE Battleground

1. TNA Bound for Glory – As somebody who has had a love/hate relationship with TNA this year, nothing really tops the debacle that TNA had on it’s hands with TNA Bound for Glory. Their biggest show of the year misses out on most of it’s top tier talent, and pretty much gets taken over by Wrestle-1. Three matches on here had something to do with what was happening on TNA at the time. That’s 1/3 of the card. If this was a Wrestle-1 show that TNA happened to have some big matches on, this wouldn’t be on my list. But this is TNA’s biggest show of the year, and it utterly failed being that.

Ryan Byers
5. WWE Hell in a Cell
4. WWE Night of Champions
3. WWE Survivor Series
2. WWE Battleground

1. WWE TLC . . . and Stairs! – The story of WWE TLC is the story of WWE seemingly having given up on things. Promoting pay per view shows in the traditional fashion is no longer their priority because the major shows are used as part of an overall package of product sold with a WWE Network subscription instead of standing alone as a major revenue source. Promoting wrestling in general in the month of December is no longer a priority because they’ve seemingly adopted the defeatist attitude that nothing really matters until they start moving on the road to WrestleMania. The result of the company just not caring was a show that felt thrown together, including pairings like Erick Rowan/Big Show and Kane/Ryback that were horrible on paper and retread matches like AJ Lee/Nikki Bella and Alex Rusev/Jack Swagger that we’ve seen far too many times before. Luke Harper and Dolph Ziggler put on a brutal (in a good way) performance in the opener, but, beyond that, it was up to Dean Ambrose and Bray Wyatt to prevent this from being a one match show and, despite the talents and popularity of those two performers, they failed in part because the crowd was deadened by the mostly boring show that preceded them and in part because they were given one of the more moronic main event finishes in recent memory, in which the main event babyface not only lost but lost for no reason other than a stupid mistake that he made and easily could have avoided. On top of all this, they booked a stairs match. Seriously, a stairs match?

Jack Stevenson
5. WWE Hell in a Cell
4. EVOLVE 28
3. WWE Battleground
2. WWE TLC

1. WWE Royal Rumble – Perversely entertaining it undoubtedly was, but the 2014 Royal Rumble was still an absolute disaster. Having set the tone for the evening on the pre show by taking the tag team championships off the inspiring team of Cody Rhodes & Goldust. and placing them on the lethargic, annoying and semi-retired New Age Outlaws, the actual PPV set about gleefully sabotaging itself and was really rather good at it. TLC was a mess, Battleground was flat as a British style pancake, and Hell in a Cell was a massive disappointment, but were any of those events so bad that they received worldwide mainstream media coverage? I mean, just how bad does a wrestling event have to be that actual respected media outlets will make a point of noting how bad it was? Yes the day after the Royal Rumble you could read about the event on the BBC News website, and how the assembled fans had completely revolted against it. And who could blame said fans? John Cena and Randy Orton was spectacularly ill-judged, and Pittsburgh judged them spectacularly. The Royal Rumble match was mundane and lazy even before the live crowd figured out Daniel Bryan wouldn’t be in it and treated everything that occurred afterwards with no mercy. Brock Lesnar-Big Show was a not especially memorable Raw angle. It wasn’t really a show of outright bad wrestling, but it was definitely one of the most thoughtlessly booked cards in recent memory, and flopped so spectacularly that it torpedoed the planned WrestleMania main event. Which isn’t really what’s meant to happen at the start of the Road to WrestleMania.

Arnold Furious
5. AJPW Okinawa Impact
4. NJPW Best of the Super Juniors Day 7
3. NOAH Summer Navigation
2. AJPW Champion Carnival

1. Wrestle-1 Outbreak – I should probably point out that I’ve not seen much in the way of American wrestling this year but with my cherry picking of US stuff I’ve not seen anything bad anyway. So this list reflects the worst Japanese major shows of the year. Outbreak was Wrestle-1’s big PPV event, featuring a load of TNA stars and it came off like a weak TNA show rather than anything else. All Japan’s annual Champion Carnival (their big tournament show) was a huge disappointment with injuries and poor matches ruining the tournament. Although I could quite happily have stuck any All Japan show in here prior to Akiyama taking over. And a few from afterwards!

Alex Crowder
5. TNA Bound for Glory
4. WWE Night of Champions
3. WWE Hell in a Cell
2. WWE Battleground

1. WWE TLC and Stairs – I give TNA credit for trying something different but it did not work out well at all. On the other hand, WWE churned out numerous mediocre efforts on their special events. Every year WWE gets in a post WrestleMania lull, but this was difficult to watch. The matches were completely predictable and downright tedious. I do not think anyone was clamoring for a Kane and Ryback match. Plus, Ryback had a competitive match with him instead of running through him. AJ Lee and Nikki Bella had a rematch as did Dean Ambrose and Bray Wyatt. The only worthwhile match was Luke Harper and Dolph Ziggler, which was the first match. After that, everything continued to go downhill. John Cena and Seth Rollins was an atrocity of a match similar to Cena’s cage match with Bray Wyatt. Bray and Dean did not click enough to have a memorable effort even if it was the second best match of the night. This event did not suck, it was worse because it was monotonous and boring. I have already forgotten a few matches on the card I’m sure. At least, Royal Rumble was entertaining in a so bad it is good way.

Larry Csonka
5. DGUSA – Mercury Rising 2014
4. WWE Hell in a Cell
3. Dragon Gate Scandal Gate 2014
2. WWE TLC

1. TNA One Night Only: Knockouts Knockdown II – I watched and reviewed 100 major events/PPVs in 204, and one has to be the worst, and unfortunately it was this show. I truly appreciate TNA putting on an all women’s PPV, but this was not a good show in any way. Taz and Tenay were once again horrible on commentary, making jokes and or focusing on the attire of the women, which does nothing to make them come off as serious competitors. Also, Taz calling Spud a virgin, expounding on it for several minutes and singing “Like a Virgin” during the ODB vs. Belle match may have been a new low, even for him. Good work, you guys continue to suck on a consistent basis. If you two clowns actually put half the effort into putting over the product that you do to your little jokes you may actually come off as if you gave a shit. Overall the wrestling wasn’t very good. We had some truly horrible matches, and everything else was solid to good. When there is so much dead time and filler on the show, the matches are all short, some of the ladies aren’t ready for the spot and some of the ladies you employ aren’t actually that good working with people from outside the company, you get a poor event.

AND 411’s TOP 5 Worst Major Show/PPVs of 2014 ARE…

5. TNA Bound For Glory – 13 points

4. TNA Knockouts Knockdown 2 – 14 points

3. TNA Genesis – 16 points

2. WWE Battleground – 27 points

1. WWE TLC – 37 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: TO BE DETERMINED (January 9th)
* 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)