The 2025 Enuffa.com Year-End Pro Wrestling Awards

Welcome to the 12th Annual Pro Wrestling Year-End Awards, here at Enuffa.com!  It is insane to me that I've been doin' this thing for TWELVE YEARS now.

2025 was a pretty crazy, tumultuous year for the wrestling biz.  WWE RAW found a new home on Netflix, Smackdown is back on USA, WWE PPVs are now on ESPN's streaming service which costs $30 a month instead of Peacock's $5, WWE began a parasitic symbiotic relationship with TNA and annexed purchased AAA, and AEW started their new TV deal worth $185 million a year ($100 more than their old deal), making them the second-most profitable wrestling company of all time and ensuring their solvency until at least the end of 2027 (Though grifters and fraudcasters are still pretending otherwise).  Their programming was also added to a whole new platform, HBO Max, vastly increasing their availability in the US and globally.

Both WWE and NJPW propped up ticket sales on the backs of retiring legends.  The latter treated their Ace with reverence and appreciation, while the former tried to shake things up with an ill-conceived heel turn no one really wanted, the catalyst for said heel turn disappeared from TV immediately afterward, and the whole storyline was so poorly received they reversed course less than six months later.

WWE attempted to cockblock multiple AEW PPVs, first by counterprogramming them with NXT specials that died a death in the ratings, and then with actual main roster shows like Saturday Night's Main Event which also did the worst number since the show's revival, and their ESPN Unlimited debut Wrestlepalooza, which garnered mixed reviews at best.  WWE dropped this strategy after that.

WWE also continued to jack up ticket prices to make up for the fact that overall sales have begun to slump, claiming record profits despite numerous sharp attendance drops in various markets.  AEW continued to struggle with weekly ticket sales, making slight improvements over 2024 but booking mostly smaller venues for Dynamite and Collision.  However their PPV attendance and buyrates remained strong, mostly up from last year.  TNA saw some of their best-ever attendance figures, mostly due to the PPV appearances of WWE and ex-WWE legends, and signed a new TV deal with AMC for 2026.  CMLL had a great year in terms of business, racking up numerous sellouts with Mistico continuing to prove himself the company MVP.  NJPW drew some of the weakest crowds in decades as they struggled to connect their audience to the latest crop of stars, but there is still hope after a sold-out WrestleKingdom 20 attendance.

WWE began openly aligning itself with the MAGA administration (inviting racist "comedian" Tony Hinchcliffe to a WrestleMania weekend event that went so poorly all recordings of it were pulled down) and brought accused sex trafficking accessory Brock Lesnar back into the company, alienating much of its fanbase and pissing away a lot of the goodwill they'd built up after Triple H took over Creative.  Even WWE Legend Mick Foley cut ties with the company.  AEW restored much of the goodwill they'd lost in the aftermath of the CM Punk fiasco by focusing on stars like Hangman Adam Page and Will Ospreay, and not trying to sign every free agent WWE let go.  Instead AEW additions included former independent talents like Megan Bayne, Kevin Knight, Thekla, and former TNA talents Speedball Mike Bailey and Josh Alexander.  WWE on the other hand snapped up every ex-AEW talent they could, signing Penta, Rey Fenix, Ricky Starks, Mariah May, Rusev and Aleister Black, none of which have been pushed very hard (Starks and May are still in NXT under new names). 

In-ring quality was night and day between the Big Two.  WWE personalities and podcasters now openly poo-poo the idea of good wrestling being important (though they still complain about the existence of star ratings when someone else gets high marks), while AEW delivered some of the best matches and PPV events in company history.

I'll get into more detail as we go through the awards, so let's get to it....

 

Oscar Film Journal: The Front Page (1931)

Welcome to another Oscar Film Journal entry, here at Enuffa.com!  Just getting back into the swing of things and chipping away at the list, and we're still in the early talkies era, with an adaptation of the hit Broadway comedy The Front Page.  

Directed by Lewis Milestone and produced by Howard Hughes, The Front Page takes place almost entirely in a Chicago press room, where reporters from different newspapers await the impending hanging of a convicted murderer whose death sentence may or may not be valid.  The city's sheriff and mayor are up for re-election in a few days and have clearly used this public execution as political capital.  When the convict escapes thanks to the sheriff's incompetence, one of the reporters hides him in the press room in the hopes of scoring an exclusive interview.  Meanwhile that same reporter is on his way out of the business, having gotten engaged to his sweetheart, with plans to move to New York to become an advertising rep.  His unscrupulous boss however will go to great lengths to convince/force him to stay, not wanting to lose his ace reporter.

Oscar Film Journal: The Love Parade (1929)

Welcome to the first Oscar Film Journal entry of 2026!  I did forty of these things in 2025 and hope to beat that record this year.  Let's get started....

Today's subject is one of the earliest Best Picture nominees, from the third annual Oscars (1929/1930).  Premiering in November 1929 and directed by Ernst Lubitsch in his first attempt at a talkie, the film is The Love Parade, a pre-Code musical starring Maurice Chevalier and a debuting Jeanette McDonald.  

The Love Parade is about a military attaché to a foreign embassy stationed in Paris, who gets sent back to his own country of Sylvania (Wait, you mean the same fictional country later featured in Duck Soup??) as punishment for a slew of scandalous affairs, ordered to report to Queen Louise, herself a confirmed bachelorette.  The pair of course hit it off right away; she is intrigued by his serial philandering and he in turn is fascinated by her disinterest in marriage.  They have a torrid affair and agree to wed, with the understanding that he will become a Prince Consort, a figurehead with no real power or responsibilities.  But almost immediately he's unable to come to grips with his newfound lack of purpose, and the relationship quickly falls apart.

NJPW WrestleKingdom 20 Review: Hiroshi Tanahashi's Final Match

The 20th annual NJPW WrestleKingdom show is in the books, and it ran the gamut, going from dismal to fantastic over the course of four hours.  It will be most remembered for the retirement of Hiroshi Tanahashi, but also for the long-awaited crowning of Yota Tsuji as the company's new face.  It was your textbook two-match show, like so many old WWE PPVs where the undercard was mostly skippable but the big matches delivered.  Let's examine the Tokyo Dome show that was....

So yeah, thinking about this show frustrates me in a way because if Gedo had just booked a few noteworthy undercard bouts we'd be talking about WK20 as a slam dunk.  As I said in my preview, if any card should've been assembled to hook new and lapsed fans alike who tuned in for Tanahashi's final match, this was the card.  But instead Gedo shoved everyone outside the top three matches into clusterfuck bouts and as a result no one really got time to shine.  If I'm a former NJPW viewer who bought a ticket to see Tanahashi retire, no one on this undercard is catching my attention other than Tsuji and Takeshita.  I will go to my grave not understanding the thought process behind this lineup.