411s Wrestler of the Week 9.10.07: Week 23
Posted by Larry Csonka on 09.10.2007
Kurt Angle wrestles a Triathlon, CM Punk won ECW Gold, Naomichi Marufuji becomes the #1 Contender, Jeff Hardy won the IC Gold while Black Machismo won the X-Gold! But who impressed enough to capture this weeks WOTW title? Come on into see, its a close one!
Welcome to Week 23 Year-Three, of 411's Wrestler of the Week. A quick overview to kick things off as we have some new rules for year three
Each writer chooses FIVE wrestlers from any promotion and each wrestler gets a point total attached to that ranking. It looks a little like this
1st - 5
2nd - 4
3rd - 3
4th - 2
5th - 1
Then we tally up the votes and the official 411 Wrestler of the Week is crowned. But wait, there's more! Each week the top SIX vote getters get a points value for their ranking which looks something like this
1st - 15
2nd - 12
3rd - 9
4th - 6
5th - 3
6th - 1
...and they go towards the 411 Wrestler of the Year award to be announced each year at WrestleMania. This will be posted every Monday. Let's see who wins this week
The Voting!
Ryan Byers
1) Jay Lethal
I don't often have good things to say about TNA, but by god did they manage to make the right booking call as it relates to the X Division Title match at Sunday night's pay per view. I assumed that Lethal was going to get the victory, but I figured that it would be the result of chicanery involving Team Pac-Man and/or Sting. If Lethal had gotten that sort of fluke win, he certainly wouldn't have gotten my top spot, because such a win would have been meaningless for his career. However, a clean pinfall victory over Kurt Angle is the single biggest thing to happen to this man in his short life, and it has the potential to make him in to a major star over the next several months in TNA. Granted, the company can still flush this all down the toilet by not properly capitalizing on Lethal's win, but, if only for tonight, this youngster is on top of the world.
2.) Naomichi Marufuji: The former GHC Heavyweight Champion won a big tournament in NOAH this week to earn a rematch for the belt that he once held. In doing so, he beat Takeshi Morishima and Akitoshi Saito in the same night. That's nothing to sneeze at.
3.) Samoa Joe: He dropped the ball and didn't win at the pay per view, but it was announced that he'll make his NOAH debut next month and immediately receive a GHC Title match! Huzzah!
4.) Chuck Taylor
5.) Brian Kendrick & Paul London
ARI
1) CM Punk
The new ECW Heavyweight Champion, CM Punk. Ah, that sounds real good. Sure, it may not have happened had Johnny Morrison not been discovered as part of the Signature Pharmacy scandal, and sure it may all come to an end in a month when estrogenlad returns, but it has happened and that can't be taken away from him. Plus, it was a pretty impressive match and title win to boot and it really did feel like a legitimate "big moment". Now and forevermore, Punk has etched a place in WWE history. Choke on that you haters.
2) Naomichi Marufuji: Naomichi may have had the most impressive weekend of all as he won the NOAH tournament to declare a number one contender. Wins over Saito and Takeshi Morishima are hard to come by, and Marufuji defeated both men IN ONE NIGHT. He now earns a shot at the champ, old man Boss Misawa. and looks to regain the GHC Heavyweight title. Add onto that a more featured role upcoming in ROH (booked as a part of the huge NOAH tag main event in 11/2) and Marufuji has been having himself a very few weeks.
3) Jay Lethal: Hey, Lethal won the X-Division title...again...hmm...well, maybe this time he won't lose it in two days. At least Kurt Angle did the job for him and this ended up being a very big moment on last night's No Surrender PPV.
4) Kurt Angle
5) Triple H
Scott Slimmer
1) CM Punk
CM Punk gets my first place vote this week for FINALLY defeating John Morrison to win the ECW World Heavyweight Championship in what was arguably the best match of their rather lengthy series. You can argue about the circumstances surrounding Punk's title victory all you want, but you have to admit that this is yet another big step forward for Punk's career. However, what is most impressive about Punk's victory is that he truly had to earn it. There are wrestlers who seem to always find success in spite of themselves (coughrandyortoncough), and then there are wrestlers who have to work their asses off every step of the way just because they don't fit somebody's preconceived notion of what a champion should be. Sure, maybe Punk won a second tier title. And sure, maybe he's only keeping the belt warm until Morrison returns. But it's still nice to see one of the good guys actually get what he deserves. And as an added bonus, he actually is the last guy that WWE ever has to worry about violating their Wellness Policy.
2) Paul London & Brian Kendrick Paul London & Brian Kendrick get my second place vote this week for defeating The World's Greatest Tag Team on Raw to become the Number One Contenders for the World Tag Team Championships and then heading to South Africa and defeating Lance Cade & Trevor Murdoch to win the World Tag Team Championships TWICE! London & Kendrick have since lost the titles back to Cade & Murdoch, but their "out-of-continuity" title wins this week may very well foreshadow a big win for them next week at Unforgiven.
3) Jeff Hardy Jeff Hardy gets my third place vote this week for defeating Umaga to win the Intercontinental Championship on Raw. Jeff had a great Intercontinental Championship feud with Johnny Nitro last year, and under the right circumstances his upcoming feud with Shelton Benjamin could be even better.
4) "Black Machismo" Jay Lethal
5) Team Pacman
Andy Clark
1) CM Punk- Sure, his win was mostly due to Wellness, but I'm willing to believe that we would have won the title at Unforgiven anyhow. As it stands he got more time to have a better match than he would have at the PPV and even in crunch time they managed to make it feel like a special moment. Many of us have been waiting for CM Punk to win a World Title, and while it may just be the ECW gold it's still a huge accomplishment.
2) Jay Lethal- Black Machismo got a clean victory over TNA World Champion Kurt Angle in a match that was said to be very good. This is a huge victory for Lethal and hopefully a step in the right direction for the X-Division.
3) Team Pacman- TNA's big money investment pays off...kind of. Pacman may not have actually wrested in the match but he did manage to walk away with the TNA World Tag Team Titles and a major match for the biggest TNA show of the year.
4) Naomichi Marifuji
5) Triple H
MEEHAN
1) CM Punk
Though the ECW title has (un)officially been demoted from actual "World" championship status, taking hold of this prize is still a major accomplishment... especially when you've been chasing after it for the better part of a quarter of a year. Not only did he win a major title, but CM Punk also earned the single biggest crowd reaction I've heard since ECW was "reborn" last summer. That makes him a no-brainer choice for Wrestler of the Week.
2) Jay Lethal -- a clean win over the TNA X Division (and "World") Champion is easily the biggest win of Lethal's career, and this week's developments could easily transform the guy away from mere comedy sideshow and *back* into a credible threat.
3) Kurt Angle - Jay Lethal looked impressive, no doubt -- but Angle busted his ass for two-and-a-half matches on Sunday night. That's gotta' count for something.
4) Naomichi Marufuji
5) Chuck Taylor
Mike Minotti
1) CM Punk
Finally, CM Punk wins the ECW Championship. The moment might have been a bit better if it was done at Unforgiven, but the WWE made the most out of a bizzare situation. Punk and Morrison had their best match to date, and Punk's celebration and the crowd reaction helped to make this seem like a big deal.
2) Jay Lethal: Beat Kurt Angle, which is quite an accomplishment any way you look at it, especially when Kurt is the company's current golden child. Let's hope this X Division title run lasts longer than his last one.
3) Naomichi Marufuji: I always have to give it up for tournament wins, especially when it's for something as important as a number one contendership.
4) Jeff Hardy
5) Danny Havoc
Jeff Small
1) CM Punk
I think there were many of us who watched ECW this past week just to see Punk's title win. While I cannot say that I'm one of the people who have watched him rise from ROH to a WWE Champion, it's still impressive to see him move up the ranks in the WWE so quickly. Especially given all of those "behavioral problems" we so like to read about. Kudos to Punk and here's hoping that he doesn't outright job the title back to John Morrison when he returns.
2) Jay Lethal - The most shocking part of the TNA PPV was not the announcement of a two-hour block. Rather, it was Lethal cleanly pinning Kurt Angle in a damn good match. WIth Lethal getting a serious shaft earlier this year (when he lost the title a day after winning it), it's nice to see TNA trying to rebuild his image (this goes a long way).
3) Kurt Angle - The PPV revolved around Angle and lived or died deepening on his performance. Thankfully, he put in two good matches. Best of all, he didn't outright job to Team Pacman.
4) Naomichi Marufuji
5) Triple H
Matt Short
1) Jay Lethal
Normally I'd give it to Punk for his title win, but Black Machismo pinned Kurt Angle. Clean. That's really something when a guy like Lethal pins Kurt Angle. I just hope TNA capitalizes on it, because they can use this to really give the X Division the shot in the arm it needs.
2) Naomichi Marufuji: Marufuji bounced back from an earlier loss in the week to Akitoshi Saito to get the win back in a tie breaker and then dominated ROH Champion Takeshi Morishima in the finals of a number one contender tournament in NOAH. He now gets a rematch against Misawa for the GHC Heavyweight title on 9/29. And that's awesome.
3) CM Punk: Finally wins the ECW Title. So maybe it was because of Wellness, but it's still in the record books. Punk deserves a run with it and will be a good test for him.
4) Chuck Taylor
5) Jeff Hardy
Bayani Domingo
1) "Black Machismo" Jay Lethal
The man was one of the most over wrestlers in TNA before he finally won the X-Title and lost it the next week to Samoa Joe, but now Lethal has done something Joe wasn't able to do recently and beat Kurt Angle CLEAN for the X-title. A big win and pinning a wrestling icon is worthy of the top spot this week.
2) CM Punk - Straight Edge not only made a good gimmick but also made sure Punk the last man standing in ECW. A fairly disappointing win, but a win nonetheless. Let's just hope this is the beginning of a big things and not an Edge-like title reign.
3) Naomichi Marafuji - Big win in a big tournament and now he gets to take aim at Misawa, let's just see what this "Junior" stand out can do with this big opportunity.
4) Ron Killings and Pacman Jones (Aka Chocolate Rain)
5) Kurt Angle
JT~!
1) Jay Lethal
The X-Division has seemed like a joke for quite some time now, as TNA focuses on so many other things. But then they put the title on Kurt Angle, meaning that it actually means something if he loses it, and even more so if he is beaten clean for it. I hate to make it seem like it is a quick fix but the fact is that Kurt Angle held it, and Kurt Angle lost it cleanly; that means whoever beat him for it is instantly a more credible X-Division champ who is now wearing a more credible X-Division title.
2) CM Punk - I would normally yell about this being too soon for Punk, but I understand under the circumstances why they had to do it. While some of us may scoff at how soon he got the title, there are a ton of CM Punk fans out there who don't give a shit about booking and have been clamoring for this for quite some time now. Regardless of any of that, he is the new ECW Champion and that gets him some props.
3) Kurt Angle - 30% of the TNA PPV revolved around him, and he made sure that both the tag titles and X-Division titles seemed just as important as the world title, thereby helping both of those divisions out a bit. He was involved in three matches, and ended the night by making Abyss tap clean.
4) Jeff Hardy
5) Naomichi Marufuji
Rob Brooksbank
1) Naomichi Marafuji
Defeated ROH Heavyweight Champion Takeshi Morishima this week and will now get a rematch for the GHC title against Mitsuhara Misawa.
2) Jay Lethal - Won the X-Division title clean from Kurt Angle in what was a surprisingly great little match.
3) Andy Sumner and Drew Gulak: Not that winning anything in CZW means ANYTHING these days, but these two won the CZW tag titles. This is the most-deserved title change in CZW for a long, long time. Since they debuted just over two years ago, these two CZW students have slowly climbed their way up the CZW ladder. The fans have been calling for them to win the straps for a long time now, and now it's finally happened. It would've meant more if they won them at CZW's Cage of Death - CZW's biggest show of the year - in December, but it's CZW, let's just give them credit that they got SOMETHING a bit right.
4) CM Punk
5) Chuck Taylor
Randy Harrison
1) CM Punk
Finally after all this time he gets his big win over John Morrison and picks up the ECW Title. It's a shame that they had to do it in such a scatter-shot fashion and that there are already rumblings that he will be dropping the title as soon as Morison's suspension is up, but I guess it's better than nothing. Winning the World Championship on any show makes an easy choice for Number One.
2) Kurt Angle - Three title matches on one pay-per-view and he worked his ass off for the entire night. He did the best he could given the situation in the tag title match, put on a really good X Division match with Lethal, and then held onto the TNA Heavyweight Championship over Abyss in a match that was great considering the effort he'd already put in previously on the night.
3) "Black Machismo" Jay Lethal - Hopefully this is the beginning of the X Division title reign he deserves to have, instead of another criminally short reign. The gimmick is still over despite it probably being one that most people thought would be way past its shelf life at this point and he just beat a credible main eventer in Angle for the title.
4) Naomichi Marufuji
5) Jeff Hardy
TG Corke
1) Jay Lethal
My first duty as a 411 writer is to name Jay Lethal this week's Wrestler of the Week. The reason for this, as opposed to CM Punk's winning of the ECW Championship, is two-fold. First, CM Punk won the belt LAST week. I know it was televised this week, but I can't in good conscience put him over Lethal's win just last night. The second is more significant, but I shall leave that until my first column (PLUG~! It's on Saturday). Needless to say, however, that Lethal's win was huge for the lad and we now have three separate champions in TNA once more. For that, he gets the win this week.
2) CM Punk: He won the ECW title from John Morrison in a great television match that sees Morrison round out the list for simply participating.
3) Jeff Hardy: Won the Intercontinental championship in the most bizarre circumstances ever. Cuckoo.
4) Ron Killings
5) John Morrison
Samuel Berman
1) CM Punk
Ok, so I know I said it would be at Summerslam in a Cage Match against Elijah Burke, but that was reasonable based on my delusional mental state and the best information available at the time. As it is, Punk's ECW Title win is somewhat anticlimactic, coming against John Morrison on his way out of the company for a month via suspension, but the decision to finally put Punk over as the face of the new ECW is a good one for WWE to have made regardless of the circumstances. Though the rumor is that Punk will just drop the strap back to Morrison upon his return, I think the smarter move would be to pull a double switch with Punk turning heel in the interim and Morrison returning a changed man. Punk's at his best as a heel and I think a role reversal would give this particular feud legs for a few more months.
2) Naomichi Marufuji: Though some might view Marufuji's win over Morishima as an upset, those are the same people who probably don't remember that Marufuji was the one who dropped the GHC Heavyweight Title to Misawa in the first place.
3) Chuck Taylor: Retained the IWA Mid-South World Heavyweight Title against Delirious, making it all that much more likely that Taylor (one of the best young acts on the Independent scene) will make it to one full year as champion.
4) Jay Lethal
5) Samoa Joe
Mike Bauer
1) CM Punk
The guy is the ECW World Champion FINALLY! Now, I know how crazy it will sound, but the moment it happened I got a message telling me that drugs have indeed enhanced CM Punk's career. Granted, it was Morrison taking them, but just think of the irony. Anyway, the match was amazing to watch and CM Punk will hopefully not just Johnny back the strap upon his return. That would be a huge slap in the face of Punk, who didn't break the rules.
2) Black Machismo - I hate giving TNA Credit, but he is the new X-Division Champ.
3) Naomichi Marufuji - The new #1 contender for GHC Heavyweight Title.
4) Samoa Joe
5) Jeff Hardy/Chuck Taylor
Brad Garoon
1) Naomichi Marufuji
NOAH highlighted the number one contender round robin tournament this month and the former GHC Heavyweight Champion pinned the current ROH World Champion and heavyweight powerhouse Takeshi Morishima to win it all. That's no easy task, and now if he does win the title from Misawa he'll be staring down Samoa Joe soon enough.
2) CM Punk: The title may be worthless and he may have won it by default but CM Punk can now definitely say he's held gold in WWE.
3) Samoa Joe: Out of nowhere Joe is announced as a challenger for the GHC Heavyweight title. Should be a great match regardless of who the champion is when he gets to him.
4) Jay Lethal
5) Abyss
Stuart Carapola
1) CM Punk
Even though it's far from the "top" title in the company, Punk won his first World Title this week, and that pretty much guarantees a top spot for me any week.
2)Jay Lethal: He didn't win a World Title, but he did cleanly pin the TNA World Champion and won the X-Division Title in the process.
3)Naomichi Marufuji: Became the #1 contender to the GHC Heavyweight Title and did it by beating the ROH World Champion in a tournament final.
4)Jeff Hardy
5)Abyss
Larry Csonka
1) Jay Lethal
Young Jay Lethal had a hell of an old school, young buck vs. veteran match against Kurt Angle at No Surrender. Not only was this a damn fine match, but young Jay WON CLEAN. That means a lot kids, an easy pick for this week's WOTW.
2) Kurt Angle: I give Angle credit for not only working two great matches, but working two great matches in a different style. A great night for him.
3) Naomichi Marufuji: Wins the big tournament to become the #1 contender to the GHC Heavyweight Title, and he beat Morishima. Good enough for me!
4) AJ Styles and Tomko
5) Jeff Hardy/CM Punk
THE WINNERS!
Special Mention Samoa Joe and Chuck Taylor - 10 Votes
Fifth Place Jeff Hardy -15 Votes
Fourth Place Kurt Angle - 20 Votes
Third Place Naomichi Marufuji - 50 Votes
Marufuji won the tournament this past weekend to become the #1 contender for the GHC title. He also beat ROH Champion Morishima along the way to do so..
Second Place "Black Machismo" Jay Lethal - 70 Votes
Jay Lethal had the biggest night of his young career, defeating Kurt Angle for the TNA X-Division Title.
Wrestler of the Week CM Punk - 72 Votes
It was a close battle, but in the end CM Punk's ECW Title won was big enough to win him the coveted 411 WOTW award. Punk defeated John Morrison is a great match on ECW TV for the title, and the Straight Edge Era is now underway.
Year-End Standings~!
Kurt Angle, Samoa Joe and CM Punk all make moves in the top 10 as the voting gets closer. Chuck Taylor, Jeff Hardy and Black Machismo also make big moves and are knocking on the door of the top 10. Naomichi Marufuji debuts and adds some more International flavor to the list. Things are getting more interesting as the weeks go on, we are closing in on the half-way point; there is still plenty of time remaining, who will be the star of the year? Keep reading to find out!
-The top 10 spots are marked
1. John Cena 78 (Raw)
2. Matt Hardy 63 (Smackdown)
2. Kurt Angle 63 (TNA)
4. CM Punk 61 (ECW)
5. Samoa Joe 43 (TNA)
6. MVP 40 (Smackdown)
7. Edge 38 (Smackdown) {INJURED}
8. Bobby Lashley 35 (Raw) {INJURED}
9. Mark Briscoe 34 (ROH)
9. Jay Briscoe 34 (ROH)
Randy Orton 27 (Raw)
The Great Khali 24 (Raw)
Chuck Taylor 23 (US Independent)
El Generico 22 (US Independent)
Takeshi Morishima 21 (ROH/NOAH) Black Machismo 21 (TNA)
Jeff Hardy 20 (Raw)
Brother Ray 18 (TNA) Brother Devon 18 (TNA) Sara Del Ray 18 (US Independent) Vince McMahon 18 (WWE)
