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The 411 Wrestling Year-End Awards: Part Five – The Best Female Wrestler of 2015
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.
5. Io Shirai
4. Asuka
3. Becky Lynch
2. Bayley
1. Sasha Banks – I don’t watch anywhere near as much Japanese women’s wrestling as I do men’s wrestling, otherwise this list might read differently. With them out of the equation it’s all about NXT. Their women’s division has been superb all year long. A real gem in an offshoot promotion that would be good without the women being a success but is a real difference maker with the women at the forefront. Sasha vs. Bayley at TakeOver Brooklyn was a genuine contender for match of the year, the first time I can remember that happening with a women’s match since the giddy heyday of All Japan Women in the 90s. Sasha and Bayley were neck and neck in my thinking for this award but Sasha just about edges it by having had a few classics with different opponents. Bayley’s matches without Sasha have been good but not great. When the two collided, magic happened. Sasha has been in a creative funk on the main roster but she earned her way there through world-beating performances in NXT.
5. Charlotte
4. AJ Lee
3. Paige
2. Sasha Banks
1. Bayley – No, that is not a typo. AJ lee didn’t do a thing all year, and was still better than half of the roster. 2015 brought about the Divas Revolution, which – to be honest – was anything but. There were little, to no, redeemable qualities of the Divas Revolution, and it’s a damned shame because while Stephanie was shilling some bullshit on the main show, two women were tearing up the joint over on NXT. Bayley and Sasha Banks did amazing things throughout their program, and they put out not only some of the best women’s wrestling, but some of the best wrestling matches in general. One cannot take anything away from these two, and I don’t care if it was only a handful of matches, both Sasha and Bayley became something amazing to watch. I don’t know about you guys, but I hadn’t felt an emotional pull or investment into a match or matches in a long, long time. Yet, when I turned to NXT to watch these two take over a main event slot, it became apparent just how much I was invested in these two characters, these two women, these two WRESTLERS. Just amazing stuff all around. I chose Bayley due to her work after the program compared to Sasha after it, but in all honesty, they both deserve this man.
5. Charlotte
4. Becky Lynch
3. Bayley
2. Sasha Banks
1. Nikki Bella – *sighs* I bit the bullet and went with Nikki Bella. For those of you who remember, my #1 NXT Superstar of 2015 was Sasha Banks. That was NXT. This is for the entire landscape of the industry. Like it or not, Nikki Bella was THE main star on a hit reality television show on the E! Network and became the longest reigning Divas Champion in WWE history. All the while, she was the focus of the division and delivered inside the ring. This year was all hers for women’s wrestling, although a new group is more than ready to take over. Sorry haters, read it and weep…
Just a reminder everybody… @nodqdotcom #DivasForMainEvent pic.twitter.com/tiTT3kAPvr
— Justin Watry (@JustinWatry) September 14, 2015
5. Nicole Matthews
4. Kimber Lee
3. Santana Garrett
2. Bayley
1. Sasha Banks – By far, the easiest pick I had to make. After a great breakout match in December 2014 at TakeOver: R-Evolution, it was clear that Sasha Banks was on a path to the NXT Women’s Title. She would capture it in, the best women’s match I’d ever seen to that point, at TakeOver: Rival by pinning Charlotte in a Fatal Four Way. She topped that performance against Becky Lynch at TakeOver: Unstoppable and had another great match with Charlotte in July, shortly before making her damn main roster debut. That was a lot to take in within five months. Sasha was saving her best for last though. In August, in front of the largest crowd to ever see NXT, she and Bayley not only put on the greatest women’s match I have ever seen, but outshined the likes of Brock Lesnar, the Undertaker, Seth Rollins, John Cena, Shinsuke Nakamura, Kazuchika Okada and many other great wrestlers that performed on that same weekend. She would only go on to make history two months later, headlining a TakeOver special in the first ever women’s Ironman match against Bayley. The girl just flat out delivers. She went 4-4 in spectacular TakeOver performances while building herself up to be a hot commodity. When I went to see NXT live, she was just as big, or right there to being as big of a star as the top guys. She had the best women’s title reign based on match quality in history and is still the woman that fans want to see most. Despite being unbeaten at the time of writing this, her handling on the main roster has been less than stellar. The WWE needs to be careful and not blow this because they have a bonafide star in Sasha. She can lead the way to ushering in women’s wrestling as a very viable part of the pro wrestling industry. Sasha Banks is not just the best female wrestler of 2015, she’s the best the WWE has ever had.
5. Charlotte
4. Santana Garrett
3. Princess Kimber Lee
2. Bayley
1. Sasha Banks – The NXT brand has changed the way people look at WWE developmental and, by extension, WWE as a whole. In particular, the NXT women’s ranks have shone brightly and in 2015, there was no star greater in that domain than Sasha Banks. In February, Sasha Banks won a fatal fourway, pinning champ Charlotte to win the NXT Women’s Championship. Banks held onto the strap for six months to follow, putting on good to great matches opposite the likes of Charlotte, Bayley, and Becky Lynch, all the while further refining the “Boss” persona. She dropped the title to Bayley, in epic fashion at NXT Takeover: Brooklyn, before moving on to an excellent Iron Man rematch main event at NXT Takeover: Respect. While Banks hasn’t exactly lit the world on fire since graduating to the main roster, she has arguably the performer responsible for the strongest overall body of work amidst the “Diva’s Revolution,” and given the groundswell of fan support behind her, I wouldn’t be surprised at all if the powers that be were not so much denying her, as saving her crowning moment a special time—perhaps a Raw or Network special main event; perhaps a WWE Diva’s Championship win at WrestleMania.
5. Becky Lynch
4. Candice LeRae
3. Charlotte
2. Bayley
1. Sasha Banks – This truly was a fantastic year for women’s wrestling thanks to the NXT brand. Never before have I had one women’s match as a MOTYC, this year I have three and all of them involve the Legit Boss herself with fantastic Takeover matches against Becky Lynch and Bayley. The real shame here is that since her two phenomenal matches against Bayley in August and September we have been left with nothing memorable from Ms. Banks. This of course is due to WWE having NO IDEA how to book a proper women’s division, even with their “developmental brand” doing it to perfection. Because of this I am now dreading the day that Bayley, Asuka and Emma are on the main roster.
5. Santana Garrett
4. Kimber Lee
3. Emma
2. Bayley
1. Sasha Banks – The Boss takes this one in a walk, and the scary thing is, the gap between her and Bayley could have been even more severe if Sasha hadn’t been all-but-forgotten since being called up as part of the Divas Revolution. With nearly half of the year wasted on the WWE main roster (the Iron Man match against Bayley being the notable exception), it just goes to show what a tremendous year Sasha truly had. She plays her character arguably better than anyone else employed by WWE, she’s one of the top five wrestlers on WWE’s payroll, regardless of gender, and she was a focal point of the NXT Divas division for the majority of the year. Hopefully 2016 sees the fans get some payoff to their “We Want Sasha” chants and Banks is able to help change the Divas division the way we’ve all been hoping someone would since Paige/Emma at arRIVAL.
5. Gail Kim
4. Kimber Lee
3. Santana Garrett
2. Sasha Banks
1. Bayley – Man, this may have been the most difficult of the awards for me to pick. There were a lot of ladies who had success in the year 2105. Gail Kim is still the best in ring performer as far as the ladies go in TNA, and no one is even close right now. Kimber Lee found success in both tag teams and singles action, including winning the CHIKARA grand championship to close out their season. Santana Garrett has grown as a performer, has gotten even better, and at one point held something like seven titles and did he best Ultimo Dragon impersonation. But for me it came down to Bayley and Sasha Banks. I have to judge on the things I am watching, and from what I have been watching, these two have been the tops. Sasha Banks and Bayley both had great years through August, and through that time I could give Sasha the nod, but after that is where things started to change. Sasha went to the main roster, the booking was poor, but the match efforts (when given time and even with familiar opponents) weren’t great. I didn’t think that they were bad, but they fell off considerably. Bayley continued to grow as a performer, she is wildly over and judging by the match with Nia Jax, proved that she’s more than just a poplar babyface and a good story, she can adapt and even tough I generally hate the term, carried a very inexperienced Jax to a more than acceptable PPV style match. In many ways it’s a toss up, but at the end of the day, Bayley just felt like the right choice even though she’s not going to win the overall.
5. Ivelisse
4. Santana Garrett
3. Princess KimberLee
2. Bayley
1. Sasha Banks – We should not overlook what Sasha and Bayley did in 2015. They had the feud of the year. Hands down. They wound up having a 30-minute iron woman headliner at NXT TakeOver: Respect. As great as Bayley’s ascendance was, what really put it over the top was Sasha setting the bar impossibly high in the first place. Everything she touched turned to gold. Classic case of a great heel putting over a babyface. The key was NXT accentuated how good Sasha is. She wasn’t getting cut off at the knees on a regular basis like Seth Rollins was in WWE. If it hadn’t been clear before Sasha became champion, the NXT women’s belt now means a whole lot more than the WWE Divas belt. Perhaps Sasha will change that in 2016. Quick note of praise for Princess KimberLee: she became the first woman to become the overall champion of a wrestling federation. Get ready for more of it in the future, but KimberLee is the one who broke the glass ceiling. For anyone who hasn’t seen her, she’s a tiny, little badass in the ring.
5. Candice LeRae
4. Princess KimberLee
3. Becky Lynch
2. Bayley
1. Sasha Banks – What an astonishing 2015 Sasha Banks has had. Out of curiosity, I took a look at the ballots from 2014’s Best Female Wrestler of the Year award, and Sasha didn’t feature on a single one of them. Obviously she was nowhere near as prominent then as she is now, but still, she was beaten by Brie Bella and, genuinely, Renee Young. 365 days-ish later, and not only has she topped this poll, but I’m pretty sure she’s going to feature heavily in the overall Wrestler of the Year voting as well. And quite right too- in the blink of an eye, Banks has morphed from NXT also-ran into one of the greatest professional wrestlers on the planet. Her match against Becky Lynch at Unstoppable was really great, as was her 30 minute Ironman against Bayley at Respect, but it was the night before Summerslam, at Takeover: Brooklyn, that Sasha had her finest hour. She and Bayley (who really deserves some kind of honorary award because she’s fucking brilliant as well) had the kind of match that anyone who saw it will never be able to forget, and not just the action either, but the way it made them feel. There are experienced wrestlers with impressive careers and an extensive array of championships who have never made people feel such emotion as Banks and Bayley did on that night; watching it made you feel like you were witnessing something transcendent, not just an artfully arranged collection of entertaining moves, but something that is going to live forever. Everything about it was note perfect, from the entrances to the post match celebration of the Four Horsewomen and all the wrestling in between. Sasha Banks, by the way, is 23 years old. 23 years old! How good can she become? Can she become the greatest women’s professional wrestler of all time? Can she become one of the greatest professional wrestlers of all time full stop? It’s going to be exciting to see if she can. Unquestionably, though, she was the women’s wrestler of 2015. There’s a reason why they call her the Boss.
5. Naomi
4. Natalya
3. Charlotte Flair
2. Brie Bella
1. Nikki Bella – No female wrestler on the face of the earth had nearly as much going for her as Nikki Bella did in 2015. First off, she was the Women’s Champion of WWE for three-quarters of the year, continuing a reign that began in November 2014 and carrying it through September 2015, a company record. On top of that, she continued her status as the lead character on the E! Network television series Total Divas, which averaged about a million viewers per episode, making Nikki a bigger ratings draw than anybody on the TNA or ROH rosters. Plus, in terms of quality of performance, she was consistently good throughout the year, having competent matches with a variety of opponents. While some female wrestlers in contention for this award could put on a periodic great match when given all of the right circumstances, Nikki was a consummate professional and had quality matches at a consistent level regardless of who she was paired with and regardless of the setting of the match. In fact, she fought so hard for so long that it’s recently come out that she’s suffered a fairly bad neck injury and may be a candidate for the same fusion surgery we’ve seen performed on the likes of Steve Austin, Edge, and Rhyno. Nikki is a very hard worker, she’s a solid performer, and she is the face of the women’s division of the biggest company in the world for the vast majority of fans. She deserves every accolade that she can get.
5. Nikki Bella – 10 points
4. Santana Garrett – 11 points
3. Kimber Lee – 14 points
2. Bayley – 40 points
1. Sasha Banks – 48 points
THE 2015 411 WRESTLING AWARDS:
* The Biggest Disappointment of The Year: The WWE Main Roster Creative Is Largely Shit – 26 points
* The Best Non-Wrestler of The Year: Dario Cueto – 43 points
* The Best Tag Team of The Year: The New Day – 65 points
* The Worst PPV/Major Show of The Year: WWE Survivor Series – 34 points
* The Best Female Wrestler of The Year: Sasha Banks – 48 points
* The Best PPV/Major Show of The Year: TO BE DETERMINED (January 11th)
* The Best Promotion of The Year: TO BE DETERMINED (January 12th)
* The Best Match of The Year: TO BE DETERMINED (January 13th)
* The Biggest Stories of The Year: TO BE DETERMINED (January 14th)
* The Best Wrestler of The Year: TO BE DETERMINED (January 15th)
