Wrestler of the Week, Week 6

February 7th – February 13th

5. Jeff Cobb
Cobb raised his profile in a big way this week, debuting on AEW as Chris Jericho’s hired gun and being immediately booked in a match with one of the hottest guys in the business for next week – alongside scoring a win in Ring of Honor over Jay Lethal and Jonathan Gresham

4. Hiromu Takahashi
Hiromu is seemingly out of the gates in 2020 trying to prove he’s every bit Will Ospreay’s equal as the centerpiece of the Junior Heavyweight division, with two straight bangers in title matches – this time with his perennial rival Ryu Lee. He then went on to make official what many had penciled in their calendar after Wrestle Kingdom – a first time ever singles match with faction leader and IWGP Champion, Tetsuya Naito at the Anniversary show on 3/3

3. Nyla Rose
Nyla not only won the AEW Women’s Championship from Riho on Dynamite this week, she did so in a great match that might be the best women’s match in AEW to date, and coming just as Britt Baker is starting to click combines to give a feeling of a revitalized women’s division. Nyla has continued to deliver in major matches and I’m interested in the division with her as champ.

2. Yuma Aoyagi
This week All Japan finalized another part of their evolving main event scene as they continue to use Kento Miyahara and his incredible title reign to elevate all those around him, this time landing on former tag partner Aoyagi. While 2019 was the story of Jake Lee and Naoya Nomura both stepping up to be on that same level as Kento, 2020 started with Aoyagi doing the same. This match wasn’t quite the MOTYC of Kento’s matches with Lee and Nomura, but this wasn’t the time for those matches – this was Aoyagi’s coming out party and with this match as the first building block, I can’t wait to see what Aoyagi delivers down the line

1. Jon Moxley

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Jon Moxley was everywhere this week – he started the week with an incredible brawl with Minoru Suzuki for the IWGP US Championship, where he would retain (against all odds) and then set up a match that should be promo of the year material – Moxley vs. Sabre. (Check out the post match comments where Moxley refers to Sabre as a human udon noodle and Sabre calls him Jonathan, great stuff) He would then fly over to the states to wrestle a shockingly great main event with Santana, before setting up a hot match with Jeff Cobb next week. He’d cap the week off with being announced for OTT’s Scrappermania in March, coming to Europe for the first time since leaving WWE and setting up ANOTHER hot match with David Starr. What an all star list of upcoming opponents for Moxley – and obviously, his AEW Championship match with Chris Jericho is just two weeks away.

Wrestler of the Week – Week 4

January 24-30

5. Bianca Belair
I really enjoyed the woman’s Rumble this year, and I think Belair was a big part of why. She looked like a real star in this match, and she’s someone I’ve never been that high on before. Shayna was impressive too but I think Belair’s stock rose the most from that match.

4. Nick Aldis
In two segments on Powerrr this week, Aldis solidified himself as one of the best talkers in modern wrestling. Plenty has been said about how refreshing he is in the champion in studio role, but the sit down backstage interview with Marty is as much of a money promo as you’ll ever see.

3. Daisuke Harada
One of this week’s biggest stories was NOAH being bought by CyberAgent and one direct consequence of that was NOAH’s Global Junior League Finals popping up for free on DDT Universe. Harada would win the League on this show that should have more than the usual amount of eyes on it, but more importantly he did it in two great matches where his performance really stood out, with his selling especially fantastic in the final with Dick Togo, but it’s the Semi-Final with Hajime Ohara that you should seek out if you only have time for one

2. Brock Lesnar
For the first half hour of the Men’s Royal Rumble, Brock did everything that Brock always does well. Looked like a beast, was wildly entertaining, and then when the time came to sell, he sold as well as anybody in wrestling. Brock had a performance this week that will go down as one of the all time single performances, and then it was used perfectly to get over our obvious winner this week.

1. Drew McIntyre
People who don’t pay attention to WWE were saying this Rumble win came from nowhere – and I don’t completely disagree, but keen readers of this feature will remember me featuring Drew just a few weeks ago, as someone who was clearly coming across as one of the bigger deals on Raw, and the fans had started taking to without a face turn necessarily being executed yet. That all manifested on Sunday when Drew not only won the Royal Rumble, but eliminated Brock Lesnar on the way there to make a direct path to a Wrestlemania main event. Drew is the recipient of a mega badass push the likes we’ve not seen in WWE since Roman’s initial push, and if he can connect with the WWE audience the way he did on the indies and in Impact a few years ago, he could potentially make much better use of that push and be a top babyface WWE fans may accept, for a while at least.

Wrestler of the Week – Week 2

January 10-January 16

5 – The Grizzled Young Veterans (Zack Gibson and James Drake)

Alex Shelley’s debut in NXT was a pretty cool thing, when you read his Twitter posts about what it means to him. But his first match teaming back together with KUSHIDA was a loss to the Grizzled Young Vets, who got to cut a promo afterwards and show a worldwide audience one what we in the UK have known for a while, that Gibson is one of the best heels in wrestling

4 – Drew Mcintyre

This week’s RAW started with a pretty fun segment, where both AJ Styles and Randy Orton felt like fresh and interesting characters. Then out came Drew, who continued to come off well in his babyface role and then won the triple threat with these two other guys who had been positioned as a big deal on the show. The babyface role is where Drew always should have been and it’s a great sign if they’re running with that in 2020

3 – Tyler Bate

Last year, Tyler Bate wrestled 40 matches, and less than 10 singles matches. He’s already one of the best in the world at such a young age, but in 2020 I need to see him in more matches like the one he had this week at NXT UK Takeover against Jordan Devlin. He came out on top there, despite Devlin seemingly being on the rise, so I expect they have big things planned for Tyler. Plus, he set up a match alongside his Moustache Mountain teammate Trent Seven vs. two of NXT’s top stars in DIY for Worlds Collide.

2 – Tessa Blanchard

It’s possible that considering what she achieved this weekend, we could be viewing Tessa as a slam dunk number 1 this week. She’s the first woman to hold the Impact Wrestling Championship, a title that has been a fairly big deal at some points in recent history, and that’s a big achievement for her and a big step for Impact. Unfortunately her week hasn’t been all good, and a cloud hangs over her title win due to her past behaviour – the same cloud that in many ways has hung over her career to this point.

1 – Marty Scurll

Marty might once again have proven to be the smartest man in wrestling. While his friends went off to live their dream, his name became one of the hottest in wrestling over the past year, with no end to the speculation about his next move. Marty managed to turn that, along with ROH’s desperation to hold on to at least one star, into a lucrative deal for himself – with what is being reported as WWE main roster money for something like 40 dates a year – as well as taking over the head booking position in ROH, which seems to have had the knock on effect of helping to repair the ROH – NJPW relationship, as ROH went on to announce NJPW talent for Wrestlemania Weekend after not seeing any in months. This seems like a great move for both Marty and Ring of Honor