Top 7 Wrestling Moments of 2019

2019 was a very interesting year for professional wrestling in & out of the ring. WWE certainly had its ups & downs. Raw, SmackDown & NXT all saw a lot of turmoil through the year. AEW started up and began to establish their product. Regardless of which promotion or show is your favorite, wrestling fans got to see plenty of magnificent moments take place on their televisions. Or computer screens, or smartphones.

This week, we look at what I consider the seven most magnificent moments of 2019.

7. Cody & friends fight the Inner Circle

I feel like AEW could have done so much more with the Cody vs. Chris Jericho feud than they ended up doing. You had the hottest face & the hottest heel going at it every week in amazing segments like this one with Cody, his brother Dustin, his best friend MJP & his mentor DDP going all crazy on Jericho & his Inner Circle with the fans going banana. They could have kept this going much longer, but instead Cody can no longer challenge for the championship and he’s busy with MJF, Butcher, Blade, Bunny, Darby Allin & whatever else.

I get what they’re going for, but so far we haven’t seen anything like this that can crack Moment of the Year lists.

6. Firefly Fun House Debut

Bray Wyatt’s WWE career has had more ups & downs than the Dallas Cowboys. He took a hiatus halfway through 2018 and didn’t resurface until April 2019, when he debuted his children’s television show. He started off pretty cheerful, but things kept getting darker by the week because he was still Bray Wyatt. An alter-ego called “The Fiend” would make its appearance later in the year, and would eventually become the Universal Champion at the expense of Seth Rollins. Bray has his moments of irrelevance, but when he’s turned loose and allowed to fully access his creativity, he can do some really interesting things.

5. Rhea Ripley wins the NXT Women’s Championship

Yep, there’s some recency bias afoot here, but why not? Shayna Baszler had two NXT Women’s Championship that combined for 549 days. Except for two months of Kairi Sane, Baszler has dominated an NXT Women’s division full of incredible talent that didn’t seem capable of beating her. Io Shirai, Bianca BelAir, Dakota Kai, all sorts of talented women tried, but none of them were in Shayna’s league. Not until Rhea came along. She dominated NXT UK, and she’s doing the same thing now in America. The twenty-three year old seems like the future of the Women’s Evolution, and who knows how far she can go in 2020.

4. Jon Moxley makes his AEW debut

All Elite Wrestling was off to a pretty good start at building a talent roster, but there was one thing they were missing. There wasn’t a complete lunatic with years of worldwide television exposure that could generate some pretty good fan interest. Then Jon Moxley became a free agent. As much as he accomplished in WWE, he never quite reached the lofty expectations that some people had. He didn’t change the business. Could he do it in AEW? We’re going to find out.

3. Cody asks Dustin Rhodes to team with him

This probably doesn’t rank as high if you don’t remember Dusty doing basically the same promo in the buildup to Fall Brawl 1994. It was still a damn good emotional moment like few you see in wrestling these days. Cody & Dustin had one of the best matches of the year just before this moment, and if you watched all that and didn’t feel something you probably don’t have a pulse.

2. Kofi Kingston wins the WWE Championship

WrestleMania 35 featured three major title changes. You could make an argument for Seth Rollins’ win over Brock Lesnar being on the list, and Becky Lynch’s win probably would have made my list had it not come in front of a burned out crowd. Kofi’s match with Daniel Bryan was the highlight of the evening and the climax of an eleven year journey to a major singles championship. It was a huge moment for minority wrestling fans to see a dark-skinned performer win the WWE Championship. Doesn’t happen every day.

1. Roman Reigns Returns

Was anybody really that surprised that leukemia couldn’t hold Roman Reigns down? It was only going to be a matter of time before the Big Dog was back on WWE programming, taking on all challengers & never backing down from a fight. Reigns has received largely positive reactions since his return, and the scuttlebutt is that we can expect him back at the top of the card in 2020. Whether that crowd reaction will remain positive remains to be seen. Wrestling fans will give you credit for beating cancer, but you better get those high star ratings, pal!