The rec.sport.pro-wrestling Awards are the oldest public-vote wrestling awards on the internet. Dating back to 1990 (when Curt Hennig won Best Wrestler, Scott Steiner’s Frankensteiner won Best Move, and Hulk Hogan versus Earthquake won Worst Feud), the RSPW Awards now span over two decades and are far and away the most comprehensive wrestling awards in wrestling fandom. Unfortunately, as Usenet has become more and more of an old-school backwater, the RSPW Awards have gradually become less and less prominent (to the point where, in 2010, they were not even held at all).
But they are the oldest awards and the best awards, and hence we have taken the initiative to re-introduce them to the greater internet wrestling community. You can see the results of the 2011 Awards (which also contain the entire history of winners in all categories) here. (Mirror link here.)
This is the Call to Nominations for the RSPW Awards. The Nominations phase is not a strict rule of eventual award nominees – if nobody nominates CM Punk for Best Wrestler, for example (let’s say that an apocalypse happens and we’re all too busy for the next month, because that is the only way that will happen on the internet), come time for voting, people can still vote for CM Punk as Best Wrestler. The Nominations are intended, instead, to present voters with a list of suggested candidates to consider when assigning their votes (as voters will vote for a 1st, 2nd and 3rd place in each category).
Maybe when voting for Best Tag Team, you will forget about how great Christopher Daniels and Kazarian have been this year (or maybe you don’t watch TNA often enough to know). Maybe you weren’t aware of how much fun Chikara is as a promotion, and seeing them nominated causes you to check them out. That’s the point of the nominations: to expose wrestling fans to the wider wrestling universe. Just like the Awards themselves, when you think about it.
Nominees are due by December 28, 2012; we will update this post with a list of all current nominations on December 15 and 21. Awards voting proper will begin on January 1, 2013.
DECEMBER 8 UPDATE: Due to overwhelming response, we are publishing the first iteration of the current nominations list ahead of schedule! You can see it here. (Now please, stop nominating CM Punk for Best Wrestler. We’ve got it covered. Believe us.)
DECEMBER 16 UPDATE: The nominations list has been updated. (Quite a few came in right after WWE Tables, Ladders and Chairs.)
