Scorpion Death Talk’s 2024 Pro Wrestling Awards
This site has been around for like a day which makes these awards very prestigious, so let’s celebrate the best in professional wrestling from 2024!
2024 was one of the most eventful years in wrestling history. From a news perspective, there was something new every week. It started out with the resignation of Vince McMahon early in the year. Both WWE and AEW linked lucrative media rights deals. WWE opened its “prohibited portal” to regularly work with TNA and Pro Wrestling NOAH. AEW threw the Forbidden Door wide open and began regularly working with both Stardom and CMLL. Rossy Ogawa poaching allegations, CM Punk backstage fight footage, plenty of free agent movement…I could go on and on. It’s shocking how much happened in a calendar year.
The events inside the ring were just as exciting. I haven’t been watching wrestling as long as many of you, but 2024 was easily my favorite year of wrestling ever. Here is what I enjoyed the most this year!
Promotion of the Year: Tokyo Joshi Pro Wrestling
In such a good wrestling year where I found positives almost everywhere, this promotion from Japan really captured what I love the most about the medium. Those who don’t watch the promotion may be familiar with them through the viral tweets (TJPW seems to have more of those than any other promotion!) including, most memorably, Mizuki hitting Andreza Giant Panda with a giant hammer in one of the greatest pro wrestling photos I have ever seen.
TJPW might have a reputation for silliness, but where it really shined in 2024 was the elevation of its young talent to the main event scene. Grand Princess 2024 was amongst the best shows of the year in that regard. Longtime fan favorite Miu Watanabe, after years of finding the most creative ways to swing her opponent, finally won the promotion’s top title in one of my favorite matches of the year against Miyu Yamashita. In the semi-main, tag team Daisy Monkey won TJPW’s tag titles.
Wrestling is unique in that it runs year round, and we often get to see wrestlers grow and improve significantly as performers and characters year to year in a way that we don’t see in other creative mediums. No promotion has defined the joy of that like TJPW did last year. While TJPW does bring in established talent, they most often find wrestlers with no experience. The fans watch wrestlers go from simple multi-person matches to 20+ minute main events. Seeing these wrestlers finally reach the top after years of effort ends up makes their accomplishments feel even more meaningful.
TJPW in 2024 was also extremely underrated as an in-ring promotion. They may not have the serious reputation that Stardom has, but their upper card talent put on memorable, serious, and hard-hitting matches all year long.
Booker of the Year: Taro Okada
Stardom President Taro Okada was given an impossible task when he took over for Rossy Ogawa after a very public poaching controversy early in the year. Wrestling bookers aren’t exactly easy to come by, and Taro Okada had no experience in booking when he took the reigns (although he was, according to Dave Meltzer, part of a pro wrestling club that put on matches while in college!)
Okada started out by restoring faith in the company amongst the locker room, convincing several big name talents to stay rather than join Ogawa’s new Marigold promotion. There were some initial growing pains in the storylines: Stardom’s main title jumped around a bit more than necessary. Saya Kamitani had a heel turn that felt confusingly abrupt at the time. But what Okada was doing was setting the stage for one of the most memorable turn arounds in wrestling.
Okada simply put his trust in the fan-favorite wrestlers, some of whom had been waiting for a push. The first step was getting the World of Stardom title back on Tam Nakano, arguably the most popular wrestler in the promotion and one of its reliable big match wrestlers.
This title change, and Kamitani’s heel turn, ended up being the catalyst for success for the promotion. It all led to Stardom Dream Queendom 2024, the company’s biggest show of the year, a sell out, and one of the best events of the year.
Tam Nakano ended up being the perfect target for Kamitani, who after her abrupt turn took on the role of the company’s top heel with great success. Nakano and Kamitani have a long and storied history, making this feud the perfect way to elevate a new star in Saya. Starlight Kid, who fans worldwide have long appreciated but never quite seemed to be a priority for Rossy, won the white belt, the promotion’s number two belt and her first singles title in two years.
It’s very easy to see how 2024 could have been much worse for Stardom. Okada and the wrestlers deserve a ton of credit for what they accomplished last year. I’d recommend checking out Chris Whitehead’s article on Okada on Voices of Wrestling for an even more in-depth look at his success.
Debut of the Year: Jacob Fatu debuts on Smackdown
It was not a super memorable year for wrestling free agency jumps with some notable exceptions, but Jacob Fatu made the most immediate impact. Rather than showing up backstage, or being introduced in an in-ring promo, Fatu popped up seemingly out of nowhere on an episode of Smackdown. Fatu has this energy about him where he feels like an out of control force of nature rather than a human being, and that was on full display in his debut. It put some energy into a story that needed it, and had fans thinking about the possibilities for future matches (I too, want to see Jacob Fatu vs Roman Reigns).
Feud of the Year: Mariah May vs. Toni Storm
AEW is a company who is often rightfully criticized for stop/start booking and stories playing out too quickly or not quickly enough. May vs. Storm was just right, taking place over nearly a year (and recently restarted!) through late 2023 and most of 2024. But what set this apart from other memorable feuds of 2024 is the manner in which the story was told.
AEW’s womens division often only has one match, and one or two other segments, per show. Storm and May made the most of their time, telling their story through silent films and unique backstage vignettes. The entire thing was anchored by Storm’s excellent Timeless character, who seemingly had a memorable moment or line in a promo every single show, and May cosplaying as characters from Toni Storm’s AEW past. It’s no secret that the feud was heavily influenced by classic film All About Eve, which made it even more shocking when May turned on Storm and turned the black and white feud into full technicolor on the way to winning the title at All In 2024.
Match of the Year: Will Ospreay vs. Bryan Danielson, AEW Dynasty
This may not be the most controversial or unique pick out there, but Ospreay and Danielson put on one of the most thrilling performances I’ve seen in a wrestling ring at Dynasty last year.
The best wrestling matches for me are the ones where I, at least for a few minutes, forget that wrestling outcomes are predetermined and I am able to fully invest myself in what is going on. There were a few matches like that this year, but Ospreay/Danielson was the best.
AEW is a company that does a lot of “dream matches” and I appreciate that they don’t shy away from that descriptor. This is the best example of it: two wrestlers who came from different places to finally lock up in AEW. It’s no surprise that the crowd was out of their minds immediately, and the two wrestlers matched and perhaps exceeded the hype.
This match was always going to have great spots. It was going to have superb technical wrestling. The beauty was in the way it was all tied together from a psychology perspective. Danielson thoroughly had Will scouted for most of the match, meaning the younger wrestler had to start thinking outside the box to win.
The two styles meshed in a way that you only see in these matches between two of the best wrestlers of their era. This one won’t be forgotten.
Rounding out the top 10, in no order:
Bryan Danielson vs. Zack Sabre Jr (NJPW New Beginning)
CM Punk vs. Drew McIntyre (WWE Bad Blood)
Miyu Yamashita vs. Miu Watanabe (TJPW Grand Princess)
Mercedes Mone vs. Hazuki (NJPW Strong Style Evolved)
Esfinge vs. Euforia vs. Hechicero vs. Valiente (CMLL Aniversario)
Will Ospreay vs. Konosuke Takeshita (AEW Revolution)
Hechicero vs. Zack Sabre Jr (RevPro)
Kris Statlander vs. Willow Nightingale (AEW All Out)
Team CMLL vs. Team AEW (CMLL Homenaje a dos Leyendas 2024)
Wrestler of the Year: Bryan Danielson
Just a few months removed from his last match (as a full time wrestler), AEW is already missing Bryan Danielson. No one was able to resonate with the crowds on a whim quite like Danielson was in 2024. It didn’t matter what he was doing, or who he was wrestling. Everything he did was compelling, everything he did made his opponent look great, and everything he did made the fans happy.
Danielson started his year off wrestling Kazuchika Okada at Wrestle Kingdom 18 in what was a great match. In February he put on a match of the year candidate with Zack Sabre Jr in NJPW, introduced Hechicero to the US TV audience, and wrestled the legendary Jun Akiyama.
In a week in late March/early April, he wrestled four times in both the US and Mexico, where he finally wrestled his idol Blue Panther.
I know it sounds like I’m just firing off a list of the stuff he’s done this year from Cagematch - and I am! I could keep going for the entire year, but it just shows the breadth of opponents he wrestled, how often he stepped up for multiple promotions, and how fantastic his matches were.
It all, of course, was capped off with his match against Swerve Strickland in the main event of All In. Danielson putting people over and not winning titles had been a meme for a few years already, so seeing him in his last year finally win the big one again with their family in the crowd was my favorite feel-good wrestling moment of the year.
Danielson, to me, is a near perfect wrestler. Someone who can adapt his style to have a great match with anyone, someone who has full control of the crowd and knows exactly how they’ll react to his matches. 2024 may be one of the best years of his career.
Rounding out the top 10:
Will Ospreay
Swerve Strickland
Miu Watanabe
Mercedes Mone
Zack Sabre Jr
Toni Storm
Hechicero
Sareee
Cody Rhodes
Other Awards
Tag Team of the Year: Daisy Monkey (TJPW)
Faction of the Year: NeoGenesis (Stardom)
Most Improved: Harley Cameron (AEW)
Moment of the Year: Hangman burns down Swerve’s house, Cody Rhodes finishes the story (tie)
Personality of the Year: RJ City