2023 end of year pro wrestling awards | Best wrestlers, tag teams and promotions in 2023 | Analysis and insight
2023 end of year pro wrestling awards | Best wrestlers, tag teams and promotions in 2023 | Analysis and insight
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I’ve spent January (and some of February) catching up on the wrestling I missed in 2023 (and I’m still not all the way caught up!), but now it's time to close the book on the year that was 2023 in pro wrestling.
I might still watch more matches from 2023, just as I watch older matches from other years, but today draws a line under the wrestling year that was.
I will be producing my match of the year list shortly, but first I wanted to look at the year as a whole and see what insights we can find from the wrestling I watched this past year as well as hand out my awards for the year.
If you are just here to see my 2023 awards here they are:
Male wrestler of the year:
Will Ospreay
Female wrestler of the year:
Becky Lynch
Tag team of the year:
The Young Bucks
Promotion of the year:
NJPW
Show of the year:
AEW/NJPW Forbidden Door
My match of the year will be in a whole other article, so you will have to keep wondering about that for a little while longer yet!
Promotions
In 2023 I watched 1,280 matches from 21 different promotions and 9 different nations. This averaged out to 3.5 matches a day. This is an increase of 202 matches from the prior year.
I counted NXT as a separate promotion as well as the DDT/GCW show as a separate promotion too, maybe this is right, maybe this is wrong, but that's what I did.
AEW leads the way with 707 matches, far and away the highest of any promotion, making up 55.23% of all matches I watched in 2023. Which makes sense given AEW is the home of the only weekly TV show I watched with any consistency.
It’s surprising to me that I watched more GCW matches than NXT. But I think most of GCW is from Wrestlemania weekend so it feels like I haven't watched them that much because I did all my watching at once, whereas I would only really drop in to NXT for the big shows and highly rated matches, so while for frequent there was less of them.
I watched 56 matches live in 2023, a rise from the just 16 matches I watched live in 2022. The promotions were:
AEW
Lucha Britannia
PROGRESS
Riot Cabaret
WXW
The average star rating for these shows was 3.34 stars, slightly higher than my overall average this year of 3.06.
The best promotions based on average rating were of course the promotions I only watched one or two highly rated matches from (1PW, TNA). My highest rated “proper” promotion was New Japan Pro Wrestling with 3.57 stars, and PROGRESS (woo, UK represent) with 3.4 stars.
WWE finishing above AEW is interesting, but does make sense as I was only dropping in to WWE for the big shows or the highly rated matches whereas I was watching every AEW match, including squash matches which I would generally just rate 1 star, for most of the year which I'm sure brought down the overall average.
The full length show with the highest average rating, was AEW/NJPW Forbidden Door with an average of 4.01 across 9 matches. This makes it my show of the year.
The rest of my top 5 “full” shows are below.
Overall ratings
The distribution of my ratings largely follow the bell curve with my most common rating being 3.5 stars, so that's nice, that feels about right.
I tended to give 1 star ratings to average squashes so that's why that one in particular is high, anything lower than that was either a super short squash or one that I really didn't enjoy.
My ratings also tend to skew slightly high as well which is good to know, at least I spent most of the year watching matches that were good.
The average rating for women’s matches I watched in 2022 was 2.58 compared to an average of 3.18 for men.
Wrestlers
I watched the most matches this year from Jon Moxley. He featured in 53 matches I watched this year. Orange Cassidy was in second place in 51 matches. The rest of the top 5 was also rounded out by other AEW/ROH/Tony Khan-verse wrestlers Claudio Castagnoli and Darby Allin and Kyle Fletcher.
My most watched non-AEW wrestler was Will Ospreay with 30 matches, and my most watched tag team was the various combinations of the Blackpool Combat Club with 36 matches.
Nick Riley, Smokin' Aces, and Death Triangle had my highest average star rating in 2023 with both having 4.5 stars from one match.
Dan Moloney was the next highest with more than 1 match with an average of 4.29 across two matches. But we can't really consider these people for wrestler of the year with so few matches. So we discard all of these until we get to the great Will Ospreay.
Will Ospreay stands out as my wrestler of the year. Over his 30 matches I saw, 21 of them were rated 4 stars or higher. And he peaked high too, with three 5 star matches and two 4.75 star matches and five 4.5 star matches.
My most watched woman was Skye Blue with 31 matches, followed by Toni Storm on 30, Willow Nightingale on 26, Kris Statlander on 24, and Ruby Soho on 23. Becky Lynch was my most watched non-AEW/ROH/Tony Khan-verse woman with 8 matches.
Dani Luna and Hazuki were my highest average rated women with 4.25 stars each, but these were only over one match. Mercedes Mone was next with 4.125 stars average over 4 matches.
Mercedes Mone vs Kairi Sane from NJPW Battle In The Valley , which I gave 4.5 stars to, was my highest rated women’s match in 2023, followed by Emi Sakura vs Jamie Hayter from Rampage, Becky Lynch vs Tiffany Stratton from NXT No Mercy and Athena vs Billie Starkz from ROH Final Battle which all got 4.33 stars.
Below are my other 4 star or higher rated women’s matches in 2023.
Conclusions
I've really enjoyed tracking my wrestling watching over the past year and will definitely continue it in 2024.
It's encouraged me to look at wrestling in a different way and really try and make sure that I am watching as much wrestling as I can.
If you are not already tracking your own wrestling watching, I would really recommend it, but maybe it just works really well with my personality type. I am also the kind of person who gets a lot of enjoyment from ticking boxes and completing lists like collecting all the Pokemon in Pokemon games.
To recap my 2023 year end award winners are:
Male wrestler of the year:
Will Ospreay
Female wrestler of the year:
Becky Lynch
Tag team of the year:
The Young Bucks
Promotion of the year:
NJPW
Show of the year:
AEW/NJPW Forbidden Door
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