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. They are the oldest awards and the best awards. You can see the results of the 2013 Awards (which also contain the entire history of winners in all categories) for the “best of year” awards here and the “worst of year” awards here.
This is the Call to Nominations for the 2014 RSPW Awards. The Nominations phase is not a strict rule of eventual award nominees – if nobody nominates Dean Ambrose 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 Dean Ambrose 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 the Young Bucks have been this year (or maybe you don’t watch PWG/RoH/New Japan 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. You can nominate candidates for awards here.
Please note that this year we have added a new category: Best Wrestling Media, for podcasts, websites, magazines, and all other forms of independent pro wrestling-focused journalism.
Nominees are due by December 28, 2014. Awards voting proper will begin on January 1, 2014. A list of current nominees can be found here.
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4 users responded in this post
Pretty please, this year for the best/worst matches and PPVs, can we get short summaries of just what happened to make them good or bad? Not for nominations, for the actual ballot, I mean. For example, let’s say it’s 2013 and I intend to nominate the HiaC main event for Worst Match, and let’s say it makes it on the ballot. For me, there’s a word of difference between these two things:
“10/27: Randy Orton v. Daniel Bryan (WWE Title)”
“Hell in a Cell main event, Orton/Bryan (WWE Title): Orton wins after special referee HBK screws over Bryan, match is inexplicably treated as a clean win and Bryan gets kicked down to the midcard and the Wyatt feud that sparked the fan revolt”
I think this would really help, especially since in some cases you’re asking us to remember matches from back in April or something. Jog our memories.
Remember: You gotta make Roman Reigns look strong here.
Ok, I added fields for summaries for best and worst match. We’ll figure out how they fit later.
The fact that this goes up right after NXT Takeover is going to have an impact