It all seemed to go wrong from the get-go, with Batista stumbling into the ring during his entrance. The Hollywood star emerged as part of Ric Flair’s birthday celebrations, and made his intentions very clear for a match with Hunter at WrestleMania. Where it was pretty cool seeing the former World Champion make an in-ring comeback, the match seemed to fall apart at the seams and leave the pumped crowd in a daze for 25 minutes. Triple H stepped into the ring for his token WrestleMania snore-fest with former Evolution pal, Batista. I’m trying not to be too harsh on this particular match, as arguably there were far worse performances on the WrestleMania card this year. It seems that WWE are trying to make it up to Kingston by giving him and Big E another run with the SmackDown Tag Titles, but quite frankly, all that hard work seems to be for nothing as, once again, WWE look for any excuse for a Bork smash. Kingston’s meteoric rise seemed to be all for nothing Kofi managed to get zero offence in on Lesnar and was made to look like a complete chump in the process. Yeah, that didn’t happen.īrock obliterated Kofi in a matter of seconds, scoring his latest WWE Championship reign that is seeing us out of 2019. Naturally, Lesnar is one of WWE’s biggest attractions, so having his first actual match on a show that wasn’t a pay-per-view was actually a pretty big deal, so you’d think Fox would have fleshed out that match as much as they could to get their money’s worth. In an attempt to draw as much as they possibly could, ‘The Beast Incarnate’ was given a title opportunity as part of SmackDown’s debut on Fox. All in all, things were looking great - until WWE chose to put the champ in the ring with Brock Lesnar. Kingston held onto the WWE title for the best part of the year, feuding with the likes of Kevin Owens, Randy Orton and Dolph Ziggler to keep things fresh. Brock Lesnar vs Kofi Kingston – SmackDown Live (4/10/19)Ģ019 was a fantastic year for Kofi Kingston and The New Day, ‘KofiMania’ took Kingston all the way to a championship match with Daniel Bryan, which of course he went on to win. Make sure you leave your own personal lowlights in the comments section below, and let’s get it all out of our systems before 2020.ġ0. We’ve compiled a list of our worst 10 WWE matches of the year, trying our best to give equal treatment to both NXT and the main roster, but honestly there was too much Baron Corbin for us to even think about where things were going wrong on the black and gold brand. Where we look to shed light on the many things that WWE are consistently nailing, we will throw our hands up and admit that there have been some absolute stinkers in 2019. It starts to become routine for wrestling journalists and fans alike to pick holes in each pay-per-view and episode of weekly programming to find another reason to add to the long list of things they’re doing wrong. The match got a 5.5 from Meltzer, meaning that it was the first from WWE to have broken his five-star rating system.Sometimes it seems like WWE are going out of their way to annoy their fanbase. Tied at 1-1, Gargano managed to trap Cole in the Garga-No-Escape to win the belt. In the match, Cole notched up the first pinfall with a Last Shot while Gargano followed it up with a submission pinfall. Gargano has developed quite a reputation for delivering 5-star performances in the eyes of Meltzer, and history repeated itself as he managed another spectacular performance opposite arch-nemesis Cole. In the main event, Johnny Gargano took on Adam Cole in a two-out-of-three falls match for the vacant NXT Championship and what transpired was a beautiful display of art. NXT TakeOver: New York received universal acclaim for its high-class wrestling and for beautifully delivering the narrative.
Adam Cole (NXT TakeOver: New York) NXT TakeOver: NewYorkĭuring the lead up to WrestleMania 35, NXT blessed the wrestling world with one of the finest WWE PPVs in a long time.
This year, though, the company raised the bar and put together not one, not two, but three matches that broke his five-star rating system.Īs 2019 comes to an end, let us revisit the WWE matches Dave Meltzer awarded more than a full five stars this year: #3 Johnny Gargano vs. Owen Hart at Summerslam 1994 received the top honors, while the journalist also awarded a full five stars to C.M Punk vs. There have been multiple Meltzer-rated 5-star matches in WWE in the past.
His success as a wrestling writer has helped strengthen the media's role in covering professional wrestling.
Dave Meltzer's pro wrestling evaluation process, wherein he uses a five-point rating system to critically analyze matches and rank them in order of these ratings, is one of the most interesting talking points in the wrestling world.