Hello again, and welcome once more to the Golden Snowcones for another year. For the sixth time, the Freakin’ Awesome Network forum has cast their vote in the annual FAN WWE Awards, and this year has seen another record turnout in voting, which I thank you all very much for.
2016 might have just been one of the craziest years ever for Vince’s island of misfit toys. Almost from the jump, when it was rumoured, then confirmed, that a major talent acquisition from New Japan Pro Wrestling was about to take place, to the rebirth of the brand split, to a cruiserweight tournament and subsequent cruiserweight show, to a whole bunch of talents getting everything from moments in the sun to Wellness suspensions… WWE had a year of extremes. A lot of it will be covered by the following 21 awards, featuring the best and worst of the WWE wrestling year.
Let’s begin with our first winners…
Best Tag Team – The Revival (Scott Dawson and Dash Wilder)
When it’s put together just right, wrestling can be as beautiful as the music of Mozart or the art of Rembrandt. This may be a very pretentious thing to say, but when it comes to the winners of this award and their 2016, the body of work speaks for itself. Scott Dawson and Dash Wilder could not find a better name for themselves as a tag team than The Revival, because that’s exactly what they’ve done for classic tag team wrestling.
Working by the mantra “No Flips, Just Fists”, The Revival are a genuine throwback tag team, inspired by vintage tag teams like The Midnight Express and The Brainbusters. They don’t need flashy moves (other than the utterly brutal flapjack/Codebreaker combination move they call the Shatter Machine) or your applause, just teamwork and a willingness to bend a few rules to get the job done. Dawson and Wilder’s chemistry and heel tactics are unmatched on the roster today, and it’s almost as if there’s a telepathic bond that keeps them knowing what the other is doing at all times, and one step ahead of their opponents. The Revival have been at the epicentre of an incredible run of NXT Tag Team Championship bouts at NXT Takeovers and on TV this year, and somehow each one has been better than the last. From the American Alpha series at Dallas, The End, and the 2/3 Falls feud ender on NXT TV, to the classics against #DIY at Brooklyn II and Toronto, another 2/3 Falls bout that was voted as WWE.com’s Match Of The Year, the show was stolen every single time by the North Carolina duo and their opponents. For as much open disdain that they have for things like star ratings, they sure end up with a lot of snowflakes after all is said and done.
They may no longer be NXT Tag Team Champions, but if they can get the right momentum behind them, The Revival seem set to have a massive 2017 once they get the call-up to the main roster. As for right now, there’s only one thing left to do. Clink those Snowcones, jack, because the top guys are taking them home.
Honourable Mentions: The New Day, Heath Slater and Rhyno, American Alpha
Worst Tag Team – The Golden Truth (Goldust and R-Truth)
Normally, comedy teams don’t get a lot of attention in these awards, but this year things are different. Either that, or the Ascension and Shining Stars votes cancelled each other out a bit. Anyway, The Golden Truth have broken the Puerto Rican/Wasteland-ian stranglehold and are 2016’s Worst Tag Team.
The in-ring was solid, but that was never what the team was for. Obviously, this was an attempt by WWE to capture the same kind of wacky chemistry that the much-beloved pairing of Booker T and Goldust did in 2002-2003. However, there were a few problems. Most notably was how long the original “Will they?/Won’t they?” angles played out. This began at the start of the year, yet they weren’t officially a team until the middle of May, padded out by switching the roles around in the middle of it. First, it was Goldust begging a reluctant R-Truth to team with him, but oh no, then it became R-Truth begging a reluctant Goldust to team with him! And also, most of these skits just weren’t funny. Well, except for the one where R-Truth tried to offer Goldust a pizza, only to be rejected and for Mark Henry to eat the pizza instead. It was the longest-running angle in the company at one point. Eventually, it led to the two of them using two uninterested patsies to make the other one jealous, and it finally worked… Although it took them being beaten down by the other partners for them to team up. So after all that buildup and TV time, we just end up with a lower card enhancement team, occasionally appearing to do silly things like play Pokemon Go in the middle of someone else’s match. A poor use of two of WWE’s most respected veterans.
All that said, even The Golden Truth has a silver lining. The jilted spares, Tyler Breeze and Fandango, ended up joining forces as Breezango, the self-professed fashion police of SmackDown’s tag team division, and are now one of WWE’s hidden highlights whenever they get a chance to show it. Shame that Goldust and R-Truth couldn’t capture the same magic.
Dishonourable Mentions: The Shining Stars, The Ascension
Best Promo – The Miz, Talking Smack 8/23
One of the best-kept secrets of WWE TV this year has been Talking Smack, a SmackDown post-show hosted by Renee Young and General Manager Daniel Bryan that has been uncharacteristically honest and upfront in regards to the promos and statements made on the show. However, it was a Team Blue champion that saw red which put the show on the map and put the eyes of the wrestling world upon him.
At the time, The Miz was in the middle of a successful Intercontinental Championship reign, one that had mostly been continued off the back of luck and assistance from his wife Maryse… But hey, the ends justify the means. With Miz and Maryse as a guest on Talking Smack, Miz would take offense to a comment made by Bryan that rookie talent Apollo Crews, whom Miz had defeated to retain the belt a couple of days earlier at SummerSlam, was better because “he didn’t wrestle like a coward” like Miz supposedly did. That Miz represented a soft “WWE style” that Bryan didn’t like. From there, Miz unleashed a mighty tirade, stating that he wrestled the way he does to preserve his body for the rigours of the WWE ring, the same one that Bryan himself had only recently retired from, arguably because of his own high-energy wrestling style. He would claim that Bryan was the coward, making promises that his body couldn’t keep and told him to quit WWE if he wanted to wrestle again so badly. Bryan was noticeably rattled and left the set at this point, but Miz continued on right down the barrel, voice quivering with the anger of a veteran passed over just one too many times, putting over his Intercontinental Championship as the single most important thing on the show. Poor Renee Young was rendered speechless after Miz had finished, violently throwing down the mic as the exclamation point.
The Miz/Bryan feud simmers on to this day, and it’s a bit of a lottery as to where it’ll end up. Will Bryan be miraculously cleared for one more match? Will Miz’s discontent lead to a switch to RAW? All we know right now is that on the back of this promo, The Miz became what he once claimed to be, and that is the most must-see champion in WWE today.
Honourable Mention: Daniel Bryan (RAW 2/8)
Worst Promo/Most Embarrassing Moment – The Club and “The Old Day”, RAW 9/5
It’s been a strange year of contrasts for Luke Gallows and Karl Anderson. On one hand, their work in New Japan has finally paid off in a run in the world’s largest wrestling promotion, a return in Gallows’s case. On the other hand, they’ve struggled to find their footing in the ring and out of it for the most part, with some glaring botches in big matches and some poor angles under their belt.
And this was one of them. By this point of the year, The Club had been split up away from AJ Styles in the draft and were back to being a two-man unit, challenging The New Day for the RAW Tag Team Championship. To get under their skin, they presented a series of increasingly groan-worthy vignettes, mocking them for having such medical afflictions as “ringpost-itis”. One of the last ones of these happened in-ring during RAW, as Gallows and Anderson, fresh off of putting The Dudley Boyz out of the company, claimed themselves as “retirement specialists” and promptly brought out “The Old Day”. Now, admittedly, some of the presentation here was clever. Their entrance music was slowed down and their little cartoon logo was made old too, but the rest of it… Jeez. It was DIRE. Motorised carts, big fake bellies, suspenders, a miniature Francesca the trombone used as a hearing aid… Soon, The New Day had had enough just like fans around the world had and came out to beat down The Club, but they got the hell out of dodge, so… They danced for a minute and beat up the “old” guys instead. Yup.
When your only highlight of a segment is the entrance, then it’s telling that there’s not a lot of substance worth reminiscing over. Even the company themselves were burying it by the next RAW, with The New Day expliciting stating that they had burned the footage so they would never have to show it again. You can’t burn memories, though. A runaway winner in these two categories, and I’ll never forgive you people for making me watch this again.
Dishonourable Mentions: Kalisto (Draft Center 7/19), Paul Heyman/Brock Lesnar (RAW 10/24), Mick Foley (State Of The WWE Universe 11/14)
Best Feud – AJ Styles vs John Cena
For most of the 2000s, John Cena and AJ Styles were the faces of their respective promotions. Cena, the perpetual leader of WWE’s superstars. Styles, the man known as Mr. TNA. Many hoped their paths would cross one day, but didn’t think it was possible until one day, not only was it possible… It was happening.
This began when Cena made his official return to WWE on Memorial Day after the shoulder injury that kept him out over WrestleMania season. Styles would interrupt his return promo and, in another surreal moment in a year full of them, Styles and Cena were sharing a WWE ring (with the strange addendum of Cena honouring a wager to wear a pair of sparkle-trimmed cargo shorts with Ellen DeGeneres’s face on them for this RAW). However, the good vibes wouldn’t last when, just as it looked like Styles and Cena were going to join forces against Luke Gallows and Karl Anderson, Styles instead joined his Bullet Club buddies and… BEAT UP JOHN CENA, turning heel in the process. This set up the first match of the feud at Money In The Bank, won by Styles after interference from Gallows and Anderson despite Styles signing a contract that barred them from ringside. After costing each other a place in the WWE World Championship match on the same card, the second bout at Battleground saw Cena enlist some assistance from Enzo Amore and Big Cass for a six-man tag victory against The Club, with Cena getting the winning pin on Styles in that one. This set things up for a tiebreaker at SummerSlam, Styles v Cena one-on-one, with no outside help from the rest of The Club or Enzo and Cass. This was the icing on the cake, as Styles took everything that Cena had and beat the man clean in the middle.
Right as 2016 was about come to an end, Cena called his shot… One more time with Styles, this time with the WWE Championship gold on the line, at the Royal Rumble. It’s already one of the most anticipated matches of 2017, and it’s because of the matches and moments that this feud produced.
Honourable Mentions: AJ Styles vs Dean Ambrose, Sami Zayn vs Kevin Owens, The Miz vs Daniel Bryan
Worst Feud – Darren Young vs Titus O’Neil
Very rarely does a tag team breakup feud work out for the two wrestlers involved. The one involving The Prime Time Players in 2014 was no exception, which tanked so badly that Titus O’Neil and Darren Young were teaming up again within 12 months. So WWE, in their infinite wisdom, thought in 2016… Let’s give this one a do-over, yeah? No.
Their next separation was a lot more amicable initially, with the team quietly disbanding into babyface singles runs over the winter, and it seemed like their paths weren’t going to cross any time soon. But then Darren Young decided he needed Bob Backlund to make him great again and for whatever reason, that just grinded O’Neil’s gears. He claimed that Young was never all that great to start with, and that started off a series of dull singles matches that, in a time where RAW needed hot and compelling matches and feuds to hook people in the new brand split, were exactly the opposite of hot and compelling. The Young/Backlund pairing, which had some actual momentum and popularity behind it as it started out to the extent that Young ended up getting an Intercontinental Championship match against The Miz at Battleground, was made ice cold. O’Neil essentially rode this feud into the Golden Snowcone for Worst Male Superstar. And the worst thing about it… there wasn’t even a proper ending. They just stopped having matches against each other. Even a lot of other unpopular feuds this year had somewhat proper blow-off matches.
Young has mostly been stuck on Superstars and Main Event ever since, which is an incredible waste of the services of a legend like Backlund. O’Neil appears on RAW occasionally, but pretty much only as enhancement talent for midcard babyfaces. I’d wager that it’s only a matter of time before they’re suddenly teaming up once more and the cycle begins all over again.
Dishonourable Mentions: The New Day vs The Club, Roman Reigns vs Rusev
Most Improved Superstar – The Miz
Speaking for myself, I’m not so sure that this particular winner has so much improved, as much as people have finally noticed how good he’s actually become because of some great booking and a hot storyline. Either way, 2016 has been almost a career-best year for The Miz.
The turning point for Miz was the night after WrestleMania. 24 hours earlier he had his hands on the Intercontinental Championship belt and in trying to milk the moment, was pushed off the ladder by eventual winner Zack Ryder. That night on RAW, with an assist from the returning Maryse, Miz would beat Ryder for the IC belt and, other than a 37 day reign by Dolph Ziggler late in the year, would not relinquish that belt for the remainder of 2016. This would include the longest IC Championship reign by any wrestler in nearly five years. The addition of Maryse, his real life wife, to the Moneymaker persona has been the best thing to happen to Miz in years, adding the special kind of chemistry one can only get from a husband and wife combination madly in love. As such, Miz has rarely been more motivated in the ring or out of it. Of particular noteworthiness in regards to Miz’s in-ring work this year, I suggest both the Fatal 4-Way match against Cesaro, Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn at Extreme Rules and the Title vs Career match against Ziggler at No Mercy as necessary viewing. Promo-wise, the more gimmicky aspects of his character have been mostly shed to reveal a driven man yearning for respect from his bosses, as evidenced by his molten fire promo on Daniel Bryan on an episode of Talking Smack. As of right now, Miz is embroiled in a feud with Dean Ambrose, one that has even led to some of the first storyline actions of interviewer (and Ambrose’s real life partner) Renee Young.
Several WWE superstars may have a claim to having actually made greater improvements over the course of the year, but none have commanded the spotlight more than our winner here, proving himself above just a mere Participation Award.
Honourable Mentions: Alexa Bliss, Braun Strowman, Heath Slater
Most Exciting Moment – AJ Styles debuts in the 2016 Royal Rumble Match
The reputation of the Royal Rumble has taken a battering in recent years, off the back of a series of undesired and unpopular winners. 2015 was the nadir, a match that won many of our more ignominious Snowcones, and the 2016 edition needed to be a big improvement straight from the jump. It only took three entrants for that to be the case.
For the first time since the legendary 1992 match, the WWE Championship was on the line in the Rumble match, but this time it was on a defending champion in 2015 match winner Roman Reigns. And to boot, he was #1. Handily disposing of the #2 entrant Rusev, Reigns waited in the corner for #3, and when the buzzer hit… An understated organ riff began to play. Neither Reigns, nor the crowd had any inkling as to who this was until three simple words appeared on the TitanTron… “I AM PHENOMENAL”. The crowd exploded, as that seemed to be the only clue necessary to identify the man walking out onto the ramp. For the love of all that is good and decent, it was AJ Styles himself, and dammit he was going to be in the Royal Rumble a mere 20 days after wrestling for New Japan at Wrestle Kingdom 10. And it was against the much-maligned Reigns too, ensuring that crowd support was with The Phenomenal One. What followed was a decent introductory run in the match, eliminating Tyler Breeze and Curtis Axel early on and lasting almost 30 minutes in the match before being eliminated by Kevin Owens, one of the few men that could have eliminated him and the crowd would have been mostly OK with it.
Styles’s shock appearance was the shining moment of what turned out to be a much improved and better-booked Rumble on last year, even if the winner was underwhelming again… Yet it wasn’t even the shiniest moment of his first year in the company. Still, it always goes to show that you never know who could be stepping through that curtain next in the Royal Rumble.
Honourable Mention: Shinsuke Nakamura debuts at NXT Takeover: Dallas
Most Hilarious Moment – James Ellsworth in general
I’m going to level with you good brothers and sisters… I kind of mangled the voting for this particular award by forgetting to keep it at the beginning of the nomination period, and as such, this is the least voted in category for the year and there was a low-scoring tie at the end of the nomination window. However, both of those top nominations, as well as a few scattered nominations, centered around one man. One hilariously strange-looking man.
James Ellsworth was never meant to be a featured player in WWE for as long as he has. A journeyman of the north-east US indy scene, he was originally only going to be the first of many enhancement talents fed to Braun Strowman as he began his singles run. But there was just something about this guy that caught the imagination of the world. Was it his skinny, homely appearance, capped off by Offspring tattoos, crappy red boots and a noticeable absence of chin? Was it his infectious enthusiasm in the face of certain demolition? Who knows. All we know for sure is that after Strowman murderised him, that was meant to be it… until he started showing up on SmackDown, somehow entwined in the feud between AJ Styles and Dean Ambrose. And this is where things get REALLY off the wall. Off the back of enough interference by Ambrose where Ambrose may as well have wrestled the match for him instead, Ellsworth scored three televised victories over the reigning WWE Champion Styles, gaining a SmackDown contract in a ladder match and even managing to be only one second away from beating Styles for that belt after hitting his signature “No Chin Music” (David Otunga, with the greatest call he’ll probably ever make). He even got revenge on Strowman, causing him to get eliminated from a crucial Survivor Series match. For those who didn’t quite get into the act, even they were able to find great laughter in the many, many times that Ellsworth got his ass beaten by Styles, Strowman and even Ambrose eventually. That was because Ellsworth had bought into his hype so much, he cost Ambrose the WWE title at TLC so he’d get the next shot at Styles and thought himself a legitimate chance! As of right now, Ellsworth may be about to enter his first romance, with Carmella recently taking pity on him after getting destroyed by Styles again.
It’s one of the most bizarre stories of not just WWE this year, but WWE history. The story of a man, described by JBL as looking like “a turtle without a shell”, getting that face on worldwide TV and on his own t-shirt and proving to the world that any man with two hands has a fighting chance. Now he can say that any man with two hands can win a Golden Snowcone.
Honourable Mentions: Dean Ambrose’s Ottawa adventures, The #GloriousBomb series
Most Disappointing Moment – Finn Balor vacates the Universal Championship due to injury
Injuries are a real motherfucker. Halting, shortening and even ending careers in the blink of an eye. While this one may not be the most devastating of recent years, it surely ranks up there as one of the most cruel, putting one of WWE’s rising stars on the shelf just as he was claiming his throne.
Finn Balor had everything lined up perfectly for him. He was picked straight out of NXT in the first round of the WWE Draft for RAW, won his first two matches on RAW (the second one a clean win over none other than Roman Reigns) to advance to a match for the new WWE Universal Championship, and then at SummerSlam he would defeat Seth Rollins to win that belt. Not to mention that his “Demon King” bodypaint is a merchandiser’s dream. However, it was during that match with Rollins that his burgeoning main roster run would be brought to a screeching halt. In the process of taking a powerbomb into the barricade, Balor landed awkwardly on his shoulder in bracing for the landing, tearing the labrum. Popping his shoulder back into place and fighting off the pain, Balor fought on to win the match, but the damage was done. A mere 24 hours after becoming the first Universal Champion, Balor would appear first thing on RAW to vacate the championship. This was a setback that RAW has yet to really recover from momentum-wise, as SmackDown galloped ahead in the battle of public goodwill and RAW ended up rushing the beginning of their planned WrestleMania feud between Triple H and Rollins. Triple H would cost Rollins the Universal Championship in favour of Kevin Owens, only to disappear off of TV afterwards, and is still yet to return at the time of this article going to print.
Balor, meanwhile? He’s well into a recovery cycle that was expected to be anywhere between four to nine months. Nobody knows when he could show up next, but hopefully he can regain the momentum that he was building up before bad luck befell The Demon King.
Dishonourable Mention: Roman Reigns wins the WWE Championship at WrestleMania
Most WTF? Moment – Goldberg beats Brock Lesnar in 86 seconds at Survivor Series
It was hyped up by WWE as “fantasy warfare becoming real”. Bit of a lie there from the Titan Towers spin masters, as Brock Lesnar v Goldberg was a bout that had already happened once in 2004, and actually became one of WWE’s most notorious flops due to two uninterested participants and a hostile Madison Square Garden crowd that picked up on that instantly. Thus, nobody in 2016 was really fantasising for it. Well, after the stunning result of their rematch at the Survivor Series, that might have changed.
For years, Goldberg would say in interviews that he would like to come in for one more match, for the right price naturally, to show his young son just what his old man used to do for a living. WWE finally named that price off the back of a deal with 2K for Goldberg to be a featured star of the new installment of the annual WWE 2K game, and a bout was set against Brock Lesnar. Goldberg came in and was an instant hit, more over and more motivated than he ever was in his previous WWE run in 2003-2004. Lesnar, meanwhile, had become complacent, dismissing Goldberg’s threat due to Goldberg’s age and Lesnar’s own recent run of demolishing wins over top stars Dean Ambrose and Randy Orton. And that was how the bout in Toronto started, Lesnar casually picking up Goldberg and dropping him into a corner. Little did he know that it was going to be his only offensive move of the entire match. Goldberg shoved Lesnar onto the ground, and as The Beast Incarnate laughed and turned his back to get to his feet, Goldberg charged in and hit him with a Spear… And then he went back to the corner and waited for Lesnar to get up again, and hit him a with a second Spear. Lesnar was reeling, clutching his ribs. Paul Heyman was on his knees, begging for Lesnar to fight. Goldberg was standing tall, the haunting chants of his name echoing through the Air Canada Centre. There was only one thing left to do… Front facelock, up in the air and down to the floor. Jackhammer. 1. 2. 3. From bell to bell, only one minute and 26 seconds had elapsed. Lesnar took his first clean singles loss in years, and probably the quickest loss of his entire wrestling career, in one of the most stunning results in wrestling history. Goldberg, who turned 50 only a few days ago, had put The Beast Incarnate to the sword like no others ever had. WHAT THE FUCK JUST HAPPENED?
At this time, both men are scheduled to compete in the Royal Rumble. Goldberg believes that he has another run at the gold in him after the victory, and Lesnar is looking to reclaim his dignity. This will likely lead to another, probably longer singles bout at WrestleMania 33. No matter the result there, it is very unlikely that any rematch will come close to the shock and surprise of the one night in The Six where Goldberg put Brock Lesnar down in 86.
Best Spot – AJ Styles hits a Springboard 450 Splash to the outside through a table on Dean Ambrose
In an age where injuries are happening so often that it’s almost as though Papa Shango himself was cooking up curses on the reg, big-time spots are becoming more and more cringeworthy. On one of the last major shows of the year, AJ Styles would put his partially-exposed ass on the line for this Golden Snowcone-winning spot.
This was the conclusion of the long-running WWE Championship feud between Styles and Dean Ambrose, and it was being settled at TLC, in the specialty match of the same name. Both men were beaten up, particularly Styles, who had already been back body dropped through a row of standing chairs (a move which famously tore a hole in the back of Styles’s tights), elbow dropped off a ladder through a commentary table and was nursing an ankle sprain from earlier in the match that would actually put him out of action for a couple of weeks after this. But somehow he ended up with the upper hand late in the match. Ambrose was laid out on a table on the outside, and Styles could have easily set up a ladder to retrieve his championship. Instead The Phenomenal One, with his dodgy ankle and all, chose to leap up to the top rope and fly out onto the prone Ambrose with a springboard 450 Splash. A normal 450 Splash, with time to get balanced, is dangerous enough. A springboard one? To the outside? Through a table? Off the charts. In fact, Styles’s own momentum led him to awkwardly faceplant on the floor upon hitting Ambrose.
Once upon a time, Styles was doing this exact same move in a TNA that was fast circling the drain. Now he was doing in the main event of a WWE PPV, fighting for wrestling’s top prize. He didn’t need to do it in either company, but this goes to show exactly what you get when you have AJ Styles in your promotion. His body and every ounce of commitment that comes with it.
Honourable Mentions: Shane McMahon dives off the Hell In A Cell (WrestleMania), James Ellsworth hits “No Chin Music” on AJ Styles (SmackDown 10/18)
Worst Match – Brock Lesnar vs Dean Ambrose, WrestleMania
This winner here originally ended up as a tie with another highly-built “Shield guy v part-time guy” match in Roman Reigns v Triple H at WrestleMania, but I’ve used my tiebreaker vote to go with Brock Lesnar v Dean Ambrose from the same card, on the grounds that nobody was really expecting Reigns v Triple H to be any good. Expectations were much, much higher for this No Holds Barred Street Fight, and as such it was excessively depressing when it wasn’t even close.
In the buildup for this match, Ambrose sought the advice of hardcore legends Mick Foley and Terry Funk, each bestowing upon him a signature weapon for the match. I don’t think anyone expecting Ambrose to literally take a chainsaw to The Beast Incarnate, but maybe a shot or two with the barbed wire bat? Not even that, if rumours are to be believed that Lesnar played creative control on many spots in the match, likely to preserve himself for his short-lived UFC return. This was a very one-sided match, but unlike the Cena and Reigns matches where there was the almost cathartic experience of watching the company Supermen being made to look like mere Jimmy Olsens, most wanted Ambrose to get his licks in. This was supposed to be Ambrose’s breakout match. He didn’t have to win, he just needed that Steve Austin WrestleMania 13 moment where he looked like a damn tough son of a bitch. Nope. A couple of scattered hope spots aside, Ambrose was resoundly and definitively defeated, an F5 onto a pile of steel chairs finishing the job. This is probably the match where the Brock Lesnar “Suplex City” gimmick reached its expiry date to many, where it went from watching a wild animal toying with his prey to a guy just being lazy by spamming the same move over and over.
WWE had a chance to cement Ambrose as close to indestructible as one can get, and all he got was some token offense and an ass-whupping. It made his Money In The Bank win and subsequent cash-in look almost like an apology as opposed to a reward. And in the process, it managed to make many people never want to see Lesnar ever again. Maybe not the worst-wrestled match of the year, but definitely the most disappointing.
Dishonourable Mentions: Roman Reigns vs Triple H (WrestleMania), Brock Lesnar vs Randy Orton (SummerSlam), Dean Ambrose vs Chris Jericho (Extreme Rules)
Best Match – AJ Styles vs John Cena, SummerSlam
This was a hotly-contested award among three exceptional wrestling bouts. For most of the voting, it was some sort of tie between them until, just at the death, one managed to get enough of a gap to win the award outright. That match was AJ Styles vs John Cena at SummerSlam, one that adds to an incredible record for Big Match John in this category, his fourth win in six years.
This was the closer of a feud that had been running for months. Styles had gotten a disputed win over Cena at Money In The Bank, while Cena pinned Styles in a six-man tag match at Battleground a month later. One all. Time to decide a winner. Naturally, many were trepidatious about a feud closer involving Cena, as it often meant Cena was probably winning. Well, after 20 minutes of exhilarating in-ring competition where both Styles and Cena gave the other everything they had in their arsenals, Cena pulled out his ace card, the Avalanche Attitude Adjustment. It was the very move that Cena had won with at Battleground… 2 count. The Brooklyn crowd that was already on the edge of their seats, were now completely off the chair. Commentator Mauro Ranallo described this as “conjoined twins close”. JBL, colour commentator for this match, made the astute observation of Cena’s bewildered reaction… The frustration that so many fans had felt with Cena for over a decade, he was now feeling about Styles. After composing himself, Cena picked up Styles for one more Attitude Adjustment, only for Styles to counter it into his patented Styles Clash. Instead of going for the cover, Styles rolled out to the apron, ripped off his elbow pad and drilled Cena with a Phenomenal Forearm… 3. Clean as a sheet, Styles won it and within a week he would be wearing Cena’s famous “Never Give Up” armband as a trophy.
Lots of dream matches get left on the table for one circumstance or another. Be thankful, wrestling fans, that the stars aligned just so that we got one of them right here, and that they delivered just as we hoped they would.
Honourable Mentions: Shinsuke Nakamura vs Sami Zayn (NXT Takeover: Dallas), #DIY vs The Revival (NXT Takeover: Toronto)
Worst PPV/Major Event – WrestleMania 32
You’ve all heard the old adage about how bigger is usually better, right? Unfortunately, WrestleMania 32 proves that to be somewhat presumptuous. In front of their largest ever single show crowd, both in terms of inflated numbers and legitimate, WWE put on a show of supremely underwhelming proportions.
We should have known things would have been a bit odd on that hot Texas day when the ticketing system at AT&T Stadium crashed, leaving tens of thousands of fans stranded outside the stadium as the pre-show card happened within. The main show began with what ended up being the best received result of the night, a shock Intercontinental Championship win for perennial struggler Zack Ryder in a seven man ladder match. From there, however, things went downhill. AJ Styles was an unbackable favourite against Chris Jericho, but promptly lost. The New Day were white-hot having solidified their face turn, but lost to The League Of Nations. And then both teams were laid out by guest legends Steve Austin, Shawn Michaels and Mick Foley, as we needed THAT pecking order re-inforced. Brock Lesnar v Dean Ambrose was an utter, one-sided flop, delivering on none of the violence that was promised in its buildup. Charlotte Flair, Sasha Banks and Becky Lynch wrestled the greatest women’s match in WrestleMania history for the revived WWE Women’s Championship, but Charlotte winning that belt was a disappointing result on a night where most were expecting Banks to get her big moment. In his first WWE match since 2009, Shane McMahon wrestled The Undertaker in a plodding Hell In A Cell match that was 25 minutes of waiting for Shane’s big crazy jump off the Cell, which ended up having none of the gravitas of the infamous Mankind fall at King Of The Ring 1998, and five minutes of selling it before the finish. In a pleasant surprise for new talent, Baron Corbin won the Andre Battle Royal in his main roster debut, noted for the surprise cameo of basketball legend Shaquille O’Neal in the bout. In one of the more baffling pieces of WrestleMania history, The Rock took his ceremonial flamethrower to the credibility of The Wyatt Family, defeating Erick Rowan in six seconds and fighting off Bray Wyatt and Braun Strowman with the help of John Cena. And finally, in the main event that very few wanted to see, Roman Reigns finally got his WrestleMania coronation, defeating Triple H for the WWE World Heavyweight Championship. Some seven and a bit hours later, WrestleMania 32 was in the books.
The crazy thing is, by the end of the week, none of these results mattered. Ryder lost the IC belt to The Miz 24 hours later on RAW. Despite losing the night earlier, Styles won #1 Contender status for Reigns’s WWE Championship, and there was brief intrigue in his title run as a result. After losing a title match to The New Day, The League Of Nations kicked King Barrett out of the group and the company, essentially ending the group then and there. Ambrose was being put over as a relentless scrapper having fought a strong fight that didn’t really happen. And most of all, McMahon, who had explicitly lost a match that would have given him managerial power had he won… was given managerial power anyway. WWE treated this WrestleMania as though it were non-canon. Given it’s lack of quality, maybe it’s best we do the same.
Dishonourable Mentions: Clash Of Champions, Fastlane
Best PPV/Major Event – NXT Takeover: Dallas
It was quite a couple of days of contrasts in early April 2016. The Sunday saw one of the most critically-panned WrestleMania shows in the history of the event, but it was the Friday night before that, at the much more intimate Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center, that held not only the strongest show of the WrestleMania week festivities, but of the entire calendar year. That’s right, once again, your Best PPV/Major Event Golden Snowcone winner is an NXT Takeover.
The card was only five matches, but quality over quantity was the order of the night. It began with an utter ball-tearer of an NXT Tag Team Championship match, as American Alpha claimed the gold for the first time over The Revival. Up next, Austin Aries made his NXT in-ring debut in a victory over Baron Corbin, yet The Greatest Man That Ever Lived was not the most shocking debutant of the night… No, that was reserved for Shinsuke Nakamura. In a 20 minute match that was both the beginning of The King Of Strong Style’s NXT run and the end of the NXT run of his opponent Sami Zayn, the two warriors of the canvas wars had Dallas in the palms of their hands, and it was Nakamura taking the win. Next up, it was Asuka cementing her place as the alpha female of NXT’s women after winning the NXT Women’s Championship from a gallant Bayley. And finally, in a main event that literally had blood from the very first strikes of the match, a chainsaw-wielding Finn Balor retained the NXT Championship over Samoa Joe, a result that was somewhat of an upset given Balor was expected to be going to the main roster soon.
This, combined with the continued success of the Takeover Brooklyn show on SummerSlam weekend and the success of the Takeover Toronto show on Survivor Series weekend, has now led to NXT Takeover following WWE’s traditional Big 4 PPV shows and hosting shows in the days before in the same host city. Despite some difficulties in adapting to an ever-changing roster, NXT haven’t let us down yet, so they will almost always be in the battle for this Golden Snowcone.
Honourable Mentions: Backlash, Battleground
Worst Female Superstar – Eva Marie
From Concord, California, comes the most stylish, elegant, bewitching, eternally beguiling, contentiously charismatic, and fantastically fascinating woman to appear in this or any wrestling awards article. Allow yourself to be seduced, enchanted, dazzled, and entranced by All Red Everything herself, EVA MARIE… who is now a four-time consecutive winner of this award and will have it named after her in perpetuity from next year.
Eva’s 2016 started by drawing the ire of Asuka after eliminating her from a #1 Contender Battle Royal in NXT. Eva almost won the thing by dumb luck, but was too busy with her Hiroshi Tanahashi air guitar tribute to notice Carmella, and promptly lost. After retrieving her face after it was kicked off of her head by The Empress Of Tomorrow, and somehow ending up on a winning babyface WrestleMania team, the wheels were in motion for Eva’s grand return to full-time main roster competition. After being drafted to SmackDown (in shocking contrast to her All Red Everything mantra) and being accompanied by a disembodied voiceover man, Eva was set to make her return in singles action against Becky Lynch, only to be subject to a series of continously convenient misfortunes. One week, she’d tweak a knee in her entrance. Another week, she’d be caught in traffic and be too late for her match against Naomi. One time her top came apart in her hands. Finally, she was set to compete in a six woman tag match at SummerSlam, only to be sidelined by a Wellness suspension. A legitimate one, not part of the gag. She has yet to return to TV. Oh, and she’s still pretty rubbish in the ring, too.
Officially, she hasn’t had a TV match in over half a year, and hasn’t appeared one second on TV since August. But clearly Eva Marie has left enough of an impression on the voters over the last few years for it to be deemed necessary for Eva to leave a permanent impression on the Golden Snowcones. And that’s why the Eva Marie Award for Worst Female Superstar is going to be a thing from 2017 onwards.
Dishonourable Mentions: Dana Brooke, Nia Jax, Stephanie McMahon
Best Female Superstar – Charlotte Flair
The WWE women’s division has come along in leaps and bounds in recent years. While it may have a tinge of market research artificiality and self-congratulating about it, there is no doubt that the days when it was deemed as a “pissbreak” are gone. And at the forefront of that is our winner of Best Female Superstar. 2016 was the year Charlotte Flair finally stepped out of the shadow of her legendary father Ric and into the spotlight as WWE’s premier female wrestler.
It was a rare occasion in 2016 where Charlotte wasn’t seen with some kind of championship belt. She entered the year as the reigning Divas Champion, and as of WrestleMania, the last. This was because the division was rebranded, being labelled as Superstars alongside the men, and a new Women’s Championship was commissioned. And Charlotte would come out on top in a thrilling Triple Threat bout against Sasha Banks and Becky Lynch, albeit with some assistance from daddy. However, that partnership wouldn’t last much longer as Charlotte threw Ric aside and enlisted Dana Brooke as her protege… albeit to mixed results. The remainder of her year was in a long-running (although somewhat overpromoted) featured rivalry with Banks, one that entered into various foreign domains for women’s wrestling in WWE. The street fight, the Hell In A Cell, even the iron man match was deemed necessary to contain these two, and so even were they that the Women’s Championship (later the RAW Women’s Championship) changed hands six times between the two in the space of five months, until the Sunday specialist Charlotte emerged as the ultimate winner. But it wasn’t just in-ring where Charlotte got it done. She has refined her persona and promo ability to the point where she is one of the most despised wrestlers in the whole company and can get consistent heel reactions, and that is a hard feat in this cynical age.
The aim now for Charlotte in 2017 is to try and cement a long reign with her belt after the back-and-forth with Banks. If she can keep up her rate of improvement from the very start of her career, this should be a piece of cake for the reigning and defending queen of the women’s division.
Honourable Mentions: Becky Lynch, Asuka, Sasha Banks
Worst Male Superstar – Titus O’Neil
Usually, the Worst Male Superstar award goes to someone who has been pushed above their station in the face of indifference from the fans. However in 2016, it has gone to a man that just looks like he has never quite managed to make progress as a wrestler, looking as gangly and awkward now as he did in 2010. He likes to Make It A Win, but this is not how Titus O’Neil would like to do it.
O’Neil has some good qualities, definitely. He’s a great ambassador for WWE’s many programs outside of the ring, he’s got a decent amount of charisma and he’s proven to be a solid hand in the tag division at times, as shown by the modest success of the Prime Time Players team with Darren Young over the years. As a singles guy in the ring, though… He’s all arms and legs, often looking like he is never quite in control of what his body is doing. He’s not notorious for causing injuries, but it always looks like it’s a matter of time until one happens with him. 2016 was a very contrasting year for O’Neil, as many TV wins as a babyface early on were swept to the wayside by a weird incident after a RAW in Seattle, where he grabbed Vince McMahon’s arm seemingly in a playful manner after the roster was assembled on the stage for the emotional retirement of Daniel Bryan. O’Neil was duly suspended for two months, missing a WrestleMania payday in the process. Shortly after a failed run at Rusev’s United States Championship, O’Neil turned heel by mocking former partner Young’s lack of success with his new partnership with Bob Backlund, leading to a long, tiring feud between the pair. As this article goes live, O’Neil has been in the process of building up his “Titus brand”, although all this has led to was an extended run of defeats, including a 25 second, one-move loss to Mark Henry mere weeks ago.
As the WWE roster has become increasingly athletic between the ropes, expectations have changed in terms of how good a WWE Superstar should be. Quite simply, Titus O’Neil does not meet those expectations right now, and the polling results reflect that. I don’t think we’ll be expecting a press conference in response to this, though.
Dishonourable Mentions: Alberto Del Rio, Roman Reigns
Best Male Superstar – AJ Styles
It’s not all the time we can say that FAN’s Best Male Superstar was actually wrestling for a completely different company as the calendar ticked over to 2016, but it’s true. Barely three weeks after his final bout for New Japan Pro Wrestling, defending the IWGP Intercontinental Championship against Shinsuke Nakamura at the famed Tokyo Dome, AJ Styles would be entering the WWE ring for the first time as a contracted wrestler in the Royal Rumble match. What came next may be one of the strongest rookie years in WWE history.
After a strong performance in the Rumble, Styles feuded with Chris Jericho after a failed run together at the WWE Tag Team Championship (the title match on RAW against The New Day is one of 2016’s hidden gems). While he may have lost the blowoff match at WrestleMania, Styles had garnered enough momentum to become the first post-WM challenger for Roman Reigns’s WWE World Championship and subsequently took the champion to the limit in two thrilling championship bouts at Payback and Extreme Rules. However, it was after this that things went into overdrive for The Phenomenal One. After coercing from his recently arrived Bullet Club running buddies Luke Gallows and Karl Anderson, Styles BEAT UP JOHN CENA and turned heel, allowing Styles to flourish in the arrogant prick heel role he had fine-tuned into perfection in New Japan. Styles won their first singles bout at Money In The Bank after interference from Gallows and Anderson, but would take the fall from Cena in a six man tag bout at Battleground, leaving things open for a tiebreaker at SummerSlam that for all money looked like the usual CENAWINSLOL conclusion fans had come accustomed to for years… Until Styles beat Cena clean as a whistle, 1-2-3. This wasn’t a new feat by any stretch, Kevin Owens and Alberto Del Rio had done it in 2015, but this was the first time in ages that someone had beaten The Face That Runs The Place clean in the feud closer. And Styles wasn’t done yet, as he would go on to defeat Dean Ambrose at Backlash barely a month later to become the 48th WWE World Champion, in a reign that is still ongoing at the time of publication. In just under nine months, Styles went from main roster debutant to The Champ That Runs The Camp.
It’s easy to say that Styles should have been in WWE years ago instead of wasting the prime of his career in TNA, a company that never truly realised what they had in him until he was gone, but without that and the New Japan run that revitalised him so, Styles may never have become the well-rounded main eventer that is taking home a Golden Snowcone. In-ring, promos, even comedy… Nobody was better in 2016 than The Phenomenal One.
Honourable Mentions: The Miz, Chris Jericho
And with that, the 2016 Golden Snowcones come to a close. Once again, thank you to everyone at the FAN forum who voted this year, and also thank you to WWE for providing us with another year of wrestling television to meticulously analyse, criticise, have fun with and make fun of. And we do this all over again starting on January 2, with Monday Night RAW live in Tampa, with a football stadium-sized Royal Rumble and an all-UK tournament already on the horizon.
Enjoy your wrestling, and I’ll be seeing you down the road.
(Image Credit: WWE.com and WWE Network)