The Observer Awards!

sixth Eastern. Well, it is Friday here on this show. It's been a long week, friends, but it is Friday here in the show, and we got a lot to talk about here today. Thankfully, you know, we don't got to talk a lot about the raw show elimination Chamber Montreal, because in fact, we got another thing everybody can get angry about today, and that is the Observer Awards are out.

We got the full listing of the Observer Awards. What was the Promotion of the Year, the Wrestler of the Year, the promoter of the year, the worst show of the year. We can talk about the top categories here today. New issue of The Observer is out on the front page Wrestling Observer dot com. If you want to read the entire issue and not only see who won all of the awards, but you can go back in history and see the winners of every award in every category dating

back to the inception of the awards. That is up on the front page right now, so head up there and check that out. We've also got, of course, the SmackDown Show tonight. This is the SmackDown follow up to the Elimination Chamber Show. We got the ratings for Dynamite on Wednesday, with no NBA competition, the show broke a million viewers, had magical million viewer mark. Then everybody always freaks out about, well, it went over a million this week.

And we'll tell you about the show and the quarter hours. Got some quarter hour knows from Raw as well. We've got the NXT numbers Mercedes Monet and her future in New Japan stardom. We've also got announcing well, I guess they've ben't really announced it yet, but it looks like they're gonna be running two pay per views coming up in May. One of them is a King and Queen of the ring. We'll tell you about that at the update on Jeff Hardy and his DUI case. He has

been prohibited his license suspended for the next decade. So a lot to get into here today. If you want Texas four two five seven eight zero seven five six six, that is four two five seven eight zero seven five six six back in a moment with more observer live. So this is gonna be the new gimmick. Every day, people demanding people demanding I take calls. God, everyone complains about calls for months and months, and all of a sudden, the gimmick is, oh, you must take calls here today.

What's the emergency? What's the emergency? Post it right there. I want to see what the emergency is that you must call about here today. I can't take calls in Hawaii. How many times do I have to explain this to everybody? We've got important things to talk about anyway, including the follow up to Elimination Chamber, the SmackDown version. We have got Charlotte Flair going face to face with her WrestleMania thirty nine challenger Aria Ripley. We've got the return of

Bray Wyatt's Firefly fun House. I guess Bobby Lashley is going into the fun house. Do you remember that John Cena thing at WrestleMania that I thought was so stupid and you liked And it was like one of those things where you either liked it or you hated it. Listen, I hated it. But I demand, I demand Brock Lesner enters this Firefly fundhouse. I need I need to see this as much as I need to see Bobby Lashley and Brock Lesner versus Bray White and Uncle Howdy. I

don't think I'm getting either of them. Look, I don't know what I did to deserve this. What question the Montreal finished? I have to be punished now. I don't know what Bobby Lashley did to deserve this, but he's

getting Bray wyat. But yeah, I'm much like you. I'd like to see Brock Lessner walk through that portal and then all of a sudden there's Shelton Benjamin in the corner and Brock looks down and he's got his Minnesota Stretching Crew outfit on, and all of a sudden, it's like OVW World and it takes him back to their and can you imagine the hilarity that could ensue, and that would be much better than what they're doing with both Brock and Omas and whatever they do with Bobby

Lashly and Bray White, because it doesn't seem like it's a good fit. But who am I? Right? Yeah? Who are you? I heard that? I heard that last week. Actually, Ray Mysterio will be facing Carrie and Cross. I feel like I've seen that one before. And then we've got Imperium against Bronze Roman, Ricochet and Madcab Moss. So a couple of notes, Dominic is valid to be at SmackDown. So I think we can all figure out what's gonna be happening in this Ray Mysterio versus Carrie and Cross match.

And also, you know if you guys, and normally I ignore this stuff, but I actually saw it for once. I don't even know how, but they did a gimmick on social media which you're gonna find hard to believe. Everybody, but Madcab Moss and Emma are teasing a heel turn. Why well, because Madcap was unable to beat Gunther because of the fans. The fans were too noisy during that match or something, and so because of the fans, it appears that Madcap Moss and Emma are turning. Heel you,

this is stupid. Wow, this is stupid in every way. You just look. All you have to do is give Moss his first name back and stop being madcap. And all of a sudden you have a guy who's legitimate.

You know, he can talk, he's got a good body, he's been there forever, Like, can we give this guy a chance to actually break out and do something without saddling him with more nonsense unless this is going to dovetail with braun Breaker, since apparently they don't want the fans to like him either, So we have Wednesdays at dynamite number, which I will admit caught me off guard. The show did one point zero three million viewers, which

was up twenty five percent from a week ago. It is the largest total audience for the show since October five. The eighteen to forty nine demo was a point three five, which was up thirty percent from last week, and it was the best rating in that demos in September fourteen of last year. Ratings were up in every single demo except women eighteen to forty nine, where they were even.

Males twelve to thirty four, up fifty two point four percent, and as compared to last week, they were up one percent in overall viewers down twelve percent and eighteen to forty and they've lost a lot of eighteen to forty nine viewers a year over year. But if you're wondering why, and when this number first came out, I was wondering why. Well, it was not Evil Uno, I'm sorry to say. And it was not Tony Kahn's big announcement, I am sorry to say, And it was not the Battle Royal, I'm

sorry to say. What it was was the lack of NBA competition for the first time in a long time. And if you look at the quarters, the show just opened, well, it opened over a million, and it largely stayed over a million until coincidentally that Battle Royal, and they started losing viewers. During the Battle Royal, they bottomed out in the typical death spot. They went up a little bit for the Mosley Evil Uno match, and that's the story.

I mean, people just tuned in in larger numbers at the beginning, and they watched seventy five minutes of the show and then they had largely I guess had enough and they started losing viewers at that point. And it's actually kind of when you look at the raw number for Monday raw average two million. And what happened was they had a very strong first hour and the viewers stayed strong through the second hour, and then they fell off a cliff in that third hour. And you know,

we've mentioned a million times shows too long. I mean, people tuned in, they wanted to see what happened after the elimination chamber, and they liked what they saw. But after about two hours, it's like we've seen two hours. Main event was Edge versus Austin Theory. I know, if you don't like Edge, you're gonna place to blame all on Edge. And I don't think that you can blame Edge for this, and I really don't even think you

can blame Austin Theory. What you can say is people saw that the main event was Austin Theory versus Edge for the US title. They did not believe that Edge was going to win the title, and he didn't, and they decided, I've seen my two hours. I'm going to I'm gonna go do something else. But for those of you tracking, and it's way too early, the opening half hour where they had Sammy Zane all over the show.

That was the highest rated thing on the show. The show went down a little bit afterwards, and then it did go up for Cody, and then it dipped again. So you know, Sammy and Cody are the two biggest movers. And if you have to, you know, break it down. Sammy did do better than Cody on this show. Barely it was. It was largely even, but Sammy did do better in the but of course it was the opening of the show. People too, it in after the pay per view. They want to find out what happened. So

that's the Raw story. And the only other number quickly is NXT five nine thousand, second highest audience since January twenty four. I guess that's the last four weeks, sixteenth on the cable charts, point one four at eighteen to forty nine. And it was just it was a fine show. But Raw was number one, two and three on cable

and Dynamite was number one on cable. So wrestling is doing very well right now if you are one of the two big shows on cable, Raw and Dynamite, and I'm sure SmackDown tonight is probably gonna do another two point three million viewers, So those are your numbers. You're not impressed by the twenty three thousand people who came back for the overrun of NXT to see Gender obviously the big boost to that show at the end, I was not that impressed. I mean, there's probably twenty three

thousand people that were waiting for the next show. Listen to everybody, don't pull this gender god hindered thing. Okay, like God, bless the guy. I have nothing against him. But like I said last night on the Brian of Any show, if you took somebody who has never watched pro wrestling and you showed them braun Breaker versus Gender, and you said, one of these men has been wrestling for a long time and he is a former world champion, and the other guy has been wrestling for a year

and a half and he's in developmental. Okay, ninety nine percent of the people are going to guess that braun Breaker is the guy guy who has been wrestling long time, it is a former champion, and the other guy is the guy who's been in developmental for a year and a half. It was not an impressive showing. It was the worst Broun Breaker title match we've seen. I mean,

there's one thing here and it ain't Broun Breaker. Friends, but you know what, bron Breaker's got to get used to that when he does become a star on the main roster, and then he's got a face off against a lot more guys like gender than guys like Kevin Owens. God, I hope not if he's in the title picture. I'd like to hope not either, But you know what, big guys they like him back in a moment it is ever live. Yeah, well, I haven't heard what was so

important in terms of calls. I tried. Sorry everybody, all right. Mercedes Money only committed to two more dates with New Japan and Stardom, this coming off her just winning the IWGP Women's title. She's only committed to two more dates. April eighth at Sumo Hall for New Japan on the Sakura Genesis Show, where she'll defend against Zumi, who was an excellent worker. Dave ads at a rematch with Kyrie

at one point was planned, but they changed that. And then the other one is April twenty third, Yokohama Arena Mayu Iwatani, probably a title match that says here, I guess unless she loses to a Zumi part of a double main event, which will likely be a World of Stardom Championship match with Julie against tam Nakano. So I guess we'll see what happens after that. I mean, she either signs or she's got to drop that title. Right, we're not gonna do this again, are we? Are you

do this again? I would hope we won't do this again. Would make too much sense to lose it to my Yui Watai too. You know, you can build easily build a storyline around that. So you know, we know the matches are going to be good. We just had one with Kyrie. When you look at a Zoomi and when you look at Mau, you figure, okay, unless the bottom falls out, she's going to have two really good matches with them too. And then if she drops the belt

and goes away and just goes on a barn storming tour. Cool. Now. I'm not sure if that has helped New Japan and Startom overall, but we're gonna have to see. But when it comes to the match quality, you know, I'm hey, I'm getting my money's worth because you know, I only paid a pay per view costs to watch her. So whether New Japan and Startom do or not, that's to be determined. We've got WWE running two pay per views

in May. According to Brandon Thurston, they have Backlash scheduled for May sixth, and King of the Ring and Queen the Ring on May twenty seventh, which sounds to me like we would do the tournaments on television and then the finals or maybe the semifinals and finals for both of those would be on the pay per view, because I don't think you can run two tournaments on one pay per view unless you want to have a bunch of short nothing to happen in matches. So the schedule

at this point looks to me. WrestleMania Night one April first, Rustlemania Night two April second, Backlash May sixth, King and Queen of the Ring May twenty seven, Money the Bank July first, and SummerSlam is August fifth. That is the lineup we have. Yeah, well, you know I'm going to two of those at least WrestleMania Night one and two, But that's it at the moment. Oh, at the moment, we have the Florida d Y case in involving Jeff Hardy, dating back to June at twenty twenty two, closed on

at a Thursday. He submitted a written plea of nolo contend there to all charges. It is where a defendant agrees that's my latin. So where a defendant agrees to accept punishment but does not accept or deny responsibility, does not accept or to nigh responsibility. Yes, for that in which they were charged. Seems like there's only two options there. No, No,

that's not how this works in the legal system. You have a couple of ways, a couple of times where it's it's not an admission of guilt, it's not anything, it's no low content rae. Well, according to the Valusia County Court records, here is the full sentence in abeyance.

There you go. There's another one there. He has a thirty day county jail sentence with thirty days credit for time served, two years probation, four thousand, five hundred eighty six dollars in fines and court fees, ten year suspension of his license, a ten year suspension of his license. You know this point, you may as well just suspended that license for the rest of his life. I mean it, let's be honest here, two years with an interlock device

and ninety day vehicle impoundment. I mean if year with an interlock device never should be no vehicle. Yes, is that for the lawnmower, because that counts. If you've ever seen any of those cops shows, you'd know if you saw a guy with a John Deer driving down the road, you can be picked up for a dui if he's drunk, got a bike anything. So, I mean, I don't know, that's just completely ridiculous. I don't even know if it does.

It does make no sense here that he would have to have an interlock for two years but can't drive for ten years, and his vehicle is only impounded for ninety days. So so he just has the vehicle that he can just look at every day. Oh man, there's my vehicle. I can look at. I can't get in it. I can't go anywhere. Well. To be fair, though, to be fair, that's his property and it actually has a value where y if you think about it, he can't drive for ten years, he should be able to go

ahead and sell it. So maybe you can go ahead. Well, I mean, if that's the case, just give him the damn car back and let him sell it. I mean, what his punishment is, you can't sell the car for ninety days. I know, I don't know. The whole thing's weird, core mandated DUI school or drug rehab program, community service. So uh, he blew eighth Florida the legal limited Florida's point zero eight. He blew a point two nine four.

And this wasn't the first time. So I just think, you know, not only that you get rid of the whole car thing, what time of morning? Remember, because like I know, and it doesn't matter what time of day it was, because at any point it's completely ridiculous, stupid, dangerous, all of that stuff. But it was also rush hour

in the morning with school buses on the road. That he was like that he had no idea where he was none, you know, on a on a look at camp counselor position like you're gonna like I'm on vacation. I went to the QFC by my house a few days ago, and I'm really lounging for this story, and they have a they have a Starbucks in there, so I was gonna get a cake pop for my child, and listen, Bothel is a small town, but it ain't

that small, okay. So I go to this QFC and I'm trying to order my food and you know, I don't know what it is about Starbucks, but it's like they got one person working there, and that person also has to make everyone's coffee, which is always like a really complicated order, and so you're just sitting there waiting and waiting, and I'm like God, And then they have two people working there. These two girls are working there,

and like they're both making a coffee together. I'm like, why can't want do you take an order and the other one make the coffee? Like what's going on here? So I'm just waiting forever and finally they get done with a coffee and I'm ready to order this cake pop for my child. But now they're talking. They're ignoring me. They're talking and they're looking out because it's it's in the KFC, so you can like look out the window and you can see the parking lot and everything, and

they're they're whispering about this guy. They're like, oh man, he's leaving. And I'm like, what's going on here? Is this like some in mind in the middle of some you know, romance show. There's a camera behind me here, Who are these swooning over in the parking lot? So I look out and see who they're talking about, and they're actually not swooning what they're what they're what they're in awe of. And at this point I forgave them for not paying attention to me and taking my order.

There's a guy who decided that he was going to go get his groceries in a John Dear tractor. He has taken his tractor to the grocery store. Now, maybe some of you that live in a rural area, this is not like anything that we would find out of the ordinary. But let me tell you something. In Bothel, I don't even know where he would have had a John Dear tractor. He has taken his John Deer tractor to the store. He is he has literally found a

way to park in a stall. He has gone in to get his groceries, and then he's gone out and he's driving his John Deer tractor away. I was like, what is going on here? What is happening? Dude thinks he's trying to skirt. Do you need a license? For that. He was even, well, that's what he's probably trying to get around, going, well, I just got it taken away, but I still need to get up here, So that's

what he's doing. But yeah, yeah, I bet you it's either that or listen on mushrooms or dust or something like that and just figure, all right, I'm ding to the store. You know, some of you some of you don't get it. I understand that in some places it is not unusual to drive your John Deer tractor to the grocery store. The difference is this doesn't happen in Bothel. There isn't even any you were for him to use

his John Deer tractor. There is no farmland, there is no like, what was he even doing with this thing? What was he doing with a John Deer tractor in Bothel? God late. I think the craziest part of the whole story, though, was when like everybody just finally stopped looking slack drawn out the window with that guy and turned around and there was the boss of the entire place, Keana James, telling everyone to get back to work and stopped gawking. Dude.

I wish Keana James would be there telling people to get back to work. Give me my cake pop. Dude, don't what no goofy drink anyway. You do a couple of text text messages here, I don't get anything. I don't get anything. I got a cake pop for my child. I don't drink anything. Now listen, are you only going to rant about Starbucks and how every time they have something that's good to eat, it's only there for like six months and they discontinue it. I don't even want

to get into that the Michigan cherry coffeecake. I know what you're talking about. I know, Bryan, since here in Hawaii, maybe you could meet up with that guy with the grades who had banned. Yeah, well, I don't think he's on this island, and if he is, change islands. One important part of the King of the Ring Queen of the Ring is that it's taking place on double or Nothing weekend. I take it Tony Khan isn't too happy

about that one. Well, I'm sure you know he'll be upset about that, but not the first time that we've had a doubling up on pay per views and that sort of thing. Yeah, this person here says, if wwe had been so steadfast. With not changing storylines in nineteen ninety six, Hunter would have won the King of the Ring. And we may not have ever gotten the Austin three

sixteen Pro Bowl. That's true, but I rewatched all of Monday Night Raw through ninety six and ninety seven, and that Austin three sixteen promo, like you know it was. It was a member Bowl thing and everything like that. But he was not stone cold Steve Auston the next day. It was months before he started getting over. It was the feud with Bret Hart that started getting him over. He would have been in the same place with or without Austin three sixteen. Said, I just whipped your ass

back in a moment. I was there alive. I got the show. Brian Elberez here Wrestling Observer Live. Mike zimberbeb also Wrestling Observative Round. This technology got I can't get anything working here. You know what, you realize I'm doing everything by myself here, you though, I'm in Hawaii. I gotta start this recording and then I gotta get back to this screen. Then I gottah. You guys, you know

it was hilarious during the break. Everybody back. He sat back and he said right on him, and he jumped up. You know, hopefully that's in the outtake somewhere. It was hilarious. Too bad you couldn't see it though. No, I'm I'm a professional. Observer Awards. Let's look at the top award

winners point getters. Wrestler of the Year John Moxley. He won with three thousand, one hundred and one of votes four hundred and ninety eight first place VOTs, beating out Roman Reigns a two hundred and thirty two and twenty two sixteen. I did not vote in the Observer Awards this year, but I would have voted for John Moxley. I agree with this pick. I realized that Roman Reigns was the champion of the biggest wrestling organization in the world.

And I realized that this Roman Reigns deal with Sammy's Ain and Cody is hot right now, but for the vast majority of the year it wasn't. And you know, Roman Reigns, the Roman Reigns Sammy thing and the blood line and everything that really starts to pick up in the latter half of the year, the last few months, and then it really picked up in the first few months of twenty twenty three. These are not the twenty twenty three awards. He did the twenty twenty two awards.

And for most of the year, I mean, Roman was there and he was beating this guy, and he was beating that guy, and we were wondering, who's gonna beat Roman reigns it's time. So John Moxley on the other and he had a great reign for the first half of the year. Then he dropped the title of Punk

and then everything went to hell. Punk got injured, we had the brawl, everything like that, and so they needed they needed somebody, and they chose him, And instead of getting the Summer of Punk, we got the Summer of Moxley, which was awesome. And you know, this guy was the heart of a EW for the majority of twenty twenty two.

Dude never got his vacation that he was promised. He had to come back and and saved the show, and you know, I don't know, I think most people would argue that the show has never quite returned to the level that it was when he was the champion. So Moxley gets my vote as the Wrestler of the Year. Yeah, he does to me. As well too, And it's not Roman Reigns as fault. I mean Roman Reigns. The thing he's got working for him is the fact that he

works for the largest professional wrestling company out there. For Moxley, to me, it's because he went out for GCW and had good matches with Homicide. He had him with Effie and aj Gray defended that title the ultimately ended up losing it to Nick Gage. He was out there, he had the matches with New Japan when they were tied up. So you take that into also to me, into play with what he did with his aw stuff, and yeah,

I actually think that it fits. He's far more valuable in some ways to a w right now than in Roman Reigns in some ways again, or is the WWE. You can change those metrics to move them however you want. But I have no problem at all but John Moxley winning this award your Mike Mike sounds horrible according to the chat, So disconnect and reconnect and I'll move on here to the most outstanding wrestler who ran away with it.

Will Osprey nine hundred and fifty one first place votes, four thousand, eight hundred and seven total votes and Brian Danielson was number two with ninety two votes, So Osprey one with ten times the number of first place votes and and basically five times the number of total votes. So I don't think anyone's really gonna argue Will Osprey is most outstanding. Perhaps you will, but you will certainly be in the minority here. Mike is not back yet. I wouldn't argue at Brian and the mics. Okay, that

sounds a lot better. Well in another one. I don't think it was gonna argue Tag Team of the Year FTR seven hundred and eighty two first place votes, which was not quite twenty times. He has second place first place votes which were the Briscos, but three eight hundred and fifty nine first place vote or I'm sorry, total votes seven eighty two first place, beating out the Briscos, Young Bucks, Usos, the acclaimed Ossie Open and others. I couldnot argue FTR as the obvious choice for Tag Team

of the Year, no argument. Let's see best on interviews. We have got in first place two thousand, nine hundred and eighty four total votes, four hundred and eighty six first place m JF beating out second place, John Moxley one hundred and fifty two first place in fifteen hundred second place total votes. So it was close, sir, than the other ones. I mean, MGF did not beat second place by fifteen times like we had in the tag team voting, but clear winner MJF over Moxley, CM Punk,

Sammy Zane and Eddie Kingston. Yeah, tough to argue that even if I, you know, said didn't wasn't not a big fan of his promo on Wednesday night, it doesn't matter. I mean, he is consistently going out there and always he's fantastic. Now if he doesn't suit you and Eddie Kingston does or something like that, I guess you know, everything is subjective here. But MJF by far is the most consistent and gets the most out of his promos usually.

And then we had the Promotion of the year. Now, Promotion of the Year was one by AEW with four hundred and eighty first plays votes three thousand, two hundred and seventy second plays votes. That does not surprise me. However, a very close number two. Stardom was number two with two hundred and seventy three total votes, so AW did not even double second place two thousand, two hundred and thirty two total votes, which was within one thousand and

then WWE with eighteen hundred votes. New Japan was seventeen ninety nine, and UFC in fifth place, So an excellent, excellent showing for stardom, coming in second only to a e W and beating WWE. Although one of the things I got to say about these these uh this voting is that you know, in the old days, the cutoff was like December and the Observer Awards would come out

in early January. Now the Observer Awards are coming out at the end of February, which is like sac dab in the middle of you know, WrestleMania season, and you know WWE. If you look through these and a lot of people are really upset about the placeman of w w E in these votes, Like you know, w w E was third for Promotion of the Year, and you know, they and a lot of the worst worst like show and stuff like that they got they got a lot of votes. Here's the thing, everybody, we're looking at WWE

right now when it is really hot. That's twenty twenty three, Okay, WWE was not super hot for most of twenty twenty two. For most of twenty twenty two through like August, it was still being booked by events. The shows were still horrible, much worse than they are now. There was no bloodline, Sammy's and the return of Cody. All of that is going to go into the voting for the year twenty

twenty three Star. I'm listening. I didn't watch every Stardom show, but I watched, you know, a lot of the top matches. Me and Tom watched it fairly regularly for the Monday show, and it was miles better in twenty twenty two than WWE was. You know, a lot of people are really down on AW right now. That right now is twenty twenty three. For most of twenty twenty two, aw still felt like a really hot promotion with hot storylines and big matches, So keep that in mind when you get

angry about some of these awards here. Plus, also remember that these are the hardest of the hardcore fans that are voting on this. They are the ones that are subscribing to the Wrestling Observer newsletter or at least know enough about it to send in stuff. And if you look at the first place, votes for like promotion of the year. It's like, if you total them up, it's eight hundred and eight, you know what I'm saying. So

it's like these are the hardest of the hardcorees. You know, Stardom finishing that high is gonna piss people off because they finish that high. But it's also going to piss people off because people think it finished too low. Because it is easy to argue if you're a consistent watcher of the product, that Stardom was the promotion of the year. But people also have to remember this is also not

reflective upon everybody. It's just about I don't know, eight hundred to one thousand people who have their opinions on what they like from last year. Well, I mean it's way more than that. I mean first first place, a vote for best weekly TV shows, four thousand. You're looking at it, probably about six thousand people who voted in there, you go, whatever it is. Again, however many people are here, it's still a small when you look at it, it's

a small percentage. And for people to bend themselves into pretzels and being upset over this is just crazy to me. But that's sometimes what people do. Well, you know, what can you do? Boss? You know this? Uh? You know what upsets me if I got to complaint about an award is best weekly television show. N XT was was below Raw. I mean, come on, get out of here. NXT certainly should not have won. I mean it absolutely should not have won or even been close to. NXT

was better than Raw. Raw Raw under Vince was an atrocious, atrocious show. I hated watching it. I dreaded watching it. It was the worst thing that I watched every single week. And NXT was undoubtedly a better show than Raw in twenty twenty two three hours, so it always has that golden for it. And by the way, a Next got

fifteen first place votes for best show. Uh huh, but the best show was Dynamite four thousand total vote, seven hundred and fifty three first places vote SmackDown second place and four first place of votes in eighteen hundred total votes. So you know, Dynamite won by a very very sizable margin. And I do believe that in twenty twenty two overall, the best show of the year was a EW Dynamite. I think that a lot of people would not say that right now, but certainly throughout the majority of twenty

twenty two. I think that's a that's a fair winner. We had best match of the year Okada and Osprey in the G one two thousand votes FTR and the Briscos. This was the Arlington, Texas match eighteen hundred. They also got the fourth place for the Garland Texas match and that's it. They did not place for the other match, but yeah, those were the and the third match Okada and Osprey at the Tokyo Dome show. So a lot

of great matches over the year. I tell you a couple more first place votes for one of those Bristos matches as opposed to the other, and then may have put him over the top when he came to total votes and everything, you know, total points and all that. They were twelve first place votes away from beating Ocada and Osprey. Yeah, they had two hundred and forty four

for the match in Arlington. In December, the match Russellmania Weekend in Garland, Texas had ninety eight first place votes, so two of the four finished in the top four, and we had all of the local MVPs US and Canada. John Moxley ran away with it. Japan Okada, who beat Osprey by eighty votes round eighty votes, four ninety five

to four twenty two. Mexico MVP Eliodel. The kingo Europe MVP was will Osprey, which I guess I would think people, and I guess, you know, I guess people when you're voting, and then well, a couple of more after the breakups were lived. Nothing gives me that I won't I give her the ventyl segment of the show. Brian Albarez here Wrestling Observer Live, Mike semperviv Els of Wrestling Observer dot Com.

A couple of final categories here Best Box Office Draw, which to this day, I still don't know why this is a category you vote on Roman rains one, Well, was he or not? What are we voting for? I don't get it. A few to the year, FTR versus the Briscoes edged out seem Punk and MJF by less than twenty votes, so very very close there. Nothing else came close Most Improved, which honestly I had not thought about.

But if you look at what people thought when they got the tag team title match at all out, and then like how people viewed them the rest of the year, the acclaimed, I mean, night and day from what people thought about them before and after they won those titles, so I don't have to look at those stardom people out there. Yeah, she got close, she was within five votes, and she improved dramatically. She did indeed, m JF Most Charismatic, beating out Sammy Zane by almost double maybe double? Do

I look like a mathematician? Bryan Danielson, he somehow won his own award what even Stokely Hathaway called shenanigans on that one. Maybe Stokely thought he should have won that award, I don't know. And then the Best Brawler Award. John

Moxley won that award ran away with it. Yeah, even though he'd probably be upset he didn't get any votes for Best Technical Wrestler, Best Flying Wrestler, Helio del Vi, Kingo, Most Overrated, Rhonda Rousey, Most Underrated, Takeshta, and your Rookie of the Year, Your Future Wrestle Media made a Ventor is braun breaker. Everybody and anyway, we're out of time

here today. But tonight, tonight, Dave and Garrett, I believe we're gonna be talking a lot about the awards We'll be talking about them more over the next week or so on Wrestling Observer Radio. And subscribe to Wrestling Observer dot com. You can read the entire awards issue with tons of commentary on the winners and the history of the awards as well. It's a really fun read. Wrestling Observer dot com and we are out of here from Lovely Malli, Hawaii. We'll talk to you after a while.

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