Gaffney's 2025 Pro Wrestling Awards Part 1

In the world of professional wrestling, 2025 was a year of definite triumphs, but on the same foot, it also managed to leave a lot to be desired on the creative front across the board. While the Mexican scene entered a new age of triumph primarily on the back of CMLL, but not to discount a strong year out of AAA as well, Japan is in a clear transition period on the men's side, while the women had an excellent year. WWE had its worst creative year post-Vince McMahon; TNA was... well...TNA, and AEW, despite being scorching hot creatively in the middle of the year, didn't exactly enter or exit 2025 on fire.

Despite all of that, there was no shortage of great moments, matches, and performers throughout the last calendar year, and today, we begin honoring the best and worst in the world of Pro Wrestling from 2025. We’re splitting these awards into two sections, and headlining Part 1 will be five separate Match of the Year options (Men's, Women's, Tag Team, Multi-Person, and TV), as well as Moment(s) of the Year.

B Class Awards

Best New Theme Song

Nominees: Bandido (Los Más Buscados by Mikey Rukus), Blake Monroe (Glamour is Forever by Def Rebel), Kyle Fletcher (Prototheme by Hot Mulligan), Kazuchika Okada (C.U.R.I.O.S.I.T.Y by One OK Rock ft. Paledusk and CHICO CARLITO), Becky Lynch (New Lows by The Wonder Years)

Winner: Kazuchika Okada

Talent Acquisition of the Year (Men's)

Nominees: KENTA (NJPW to NOAH), Kevin Knight (NJPW to AEW), "Speedball" Mike Bailey (TNA to AEW), Penta (AEW to WWE), Ricky Saints (AEW to WWE)

Winner: Kevin Knight

Talent Acquisition of the Year (Women's)

Nominees: Blake Monroe (AEW to WWE), Jordynne Grace (TNA to WWE), Mayu Iwatani (Stardom to Marigold), Megan Bayne (Stardom to AEW), Thekla (Stardom to AEW)

Winner: Jordynne Grace

Booker of the Year

Nominees: James Darnell/Tony Douglas/John Blud (Deadlock Pro), Julio Cesar Rivera and Juan Manuel Mar (CMLL), Paul Heyman/Ryan Ward (WWE RAW), Taro Okada (Stardom), Tony Khan (AEW)

Winner: Julio Cesar Rivera and Juan Manuel Mar

Worst TV Taping

Nominees: WWE Raw (1/6, Los Angeles, CA), WWE SmackDown (2/21, New Orleans, LA), AEW Dynamite (4/9, Baltimore, MD), WWE SmackDown (11/7, Huntsville, SC), TNA Impact (11/13, Orlando, FL)

Winner: TNA Impact (11/13, Orlando, FL)

Worst Weekly TV Show

Nominees: WWE SmackDown, TNA Impact

Winner: WWE SmackDown

Best Weekly TV Taping

Nominees: AEW Dynamite: Spring BreakThru (4/16, Boston, MA), AEW Dynamite: Ep. 300 (7/2, Ontario, CA), AEW Collision (7/31, Chicago, IL), AEW Dynamite: Blood and Guts (11/12, Greensboro, NC), AEW Dynamite: Winter is Coming (12/10, Atlanta, GA)

Winner: AEW Dynamite: Spring BreakThru (4/16, Boston, MA)

Non-Wrestler of the Year

Nominees: Adam Pearce, Bobby Cruise, Bryan Danielson, Don Callis, Renee Paquette

Winner: Bryan Danielson

*- MVP, Nigel McGuinness, and Stokely Hathaway were all ineligible for 2025 for breaking the lone rule of this award: They wrestled.

Killing the Territory Moment(s) of the Year (Worst Creative/Booking Related Calls or Happenings)

*- One winner from the following four companies

AEW - The ending of Jon Moxley vs. Swerve Strickland at Dynasty being "Lol EVP Young Bucks": When I think of the singular worst moments in AEW history, this is absolutely up there near or at the top. A third horrifically bad Jon Moxley PPV Main Event in a row, ending via a Young Bucks return, who had the worst year of their career in 2024, now helping the Death Riders, somehow managed to enrage everyone!!! Lest we forget, the follow-up on the ensuing Dynamite was somehow even worse!!! Luckily, it was just about all uphill after this, but Jesus Christ, man.

NJPW - Zack Sabre Jr. vs. Shota Umino going 44 minutes in the main event of Wrestle Kingdom: As much as I'm personally not a fan of Gabe Kidd in general, and as much as the House of Torture stuff doesn't click with non-Japanese fans of New Japan Pro Wrestling, I would simply love to know: who's the intended audience for a 44-minute Shota Umino match, much less one that's main eventing a Tokyo Dome show?

TNA - Mike Santana's road to the TNA title and the fashion in which he dropped it: Not even a full year after TNA waited too long to crown Joe Hendry, Delerious, and Tommy Dreamer managed to wait too long again to crown another hot babyface. The call to not make Mike Santana, one of the great stories in wrestling over the last 18 months, TNA Champion in the shadow of his hometown of NYC in front of a hot crowd there to see him do just that, rather wait two months, pull the trigger in Lowell, MA in front of a crowd that had largely dispereced after "One Last Table" was a massive failure.

Having Santana then drop the belt to set up a TV main event on a new network is one thing; that's objectively sound logic, but doing so after Impact effectively went dark for two months after Bound for Glory, and having him get geeked out by the WWE: Evolve roster before dropping it on his first real night as Champion is another.

WWE - FEIN: The lasting memory of John Cena's record-breaking 17th World Title isn't that it happened, or even that the match went from slightly promising in the first half to slop in the second, but for the fact that Travis Scott had a five-minute mid-match entrance that set up an all time, unforgiveably bad finish to a real-life WrestleMania Main Event—a masterful gambit.

2025 Moment of the Year (Two Winners)

- Kenny Omega's return in the Tokyo Dome

- Penta's WWE Debut

- Hirooki Goto wins the IWGP Heavyweight Championship on his ninth try

- Saya Kamitani ending Tam Nakano's career at All Star Grand Queendom

- "Let the bodies hit the floor" at Double or Nothing

- Hangman upsets Will Ospreay to win the 2025 Men's Owen

- Mistico's AEW: Grand Slam Mexico entrance

- Hangman "brings it home" at All In

- Naomi cashes in Money in the Bank

- Gunther ends John Cena's career and becomes the first man to make him tap since Kurt Angle in 2004

Winners: Mistico's AEW: Grand Slam Mexico entrance, and Gunther ends John Cena's career and becomes the first man to make him tap since Kurt Angle in 2004

Worst (Major) Match of the Year

Nominees: Adam Copeland vs. Jon Moxley (AEW Revolution), Solo Sikoa vs. Jacob Fatu (Steel Cage Match, WWF SummerSlam), Hiroshi Tanahashi vs. EVIL (2025 G1 Climax Night 15), Brock Lesnar vs. John Cena (WWF WrestlePalooza), Gia Miller vs. Tessa Blanchard (Bound for Glory)

Winner: Brock Lesnar vs. John Cena

For all the legitimate real-life reasons this match was lamented for going into WrestlePalooza (spoiler: we will dip into that in Part 2), WWE, for whatever reason, set out to recapture the magic of the Lesnar-Cena SummerSlam 2014 squash match as a layout for this match 11 years later. Welp, Brock Lesnar was in horrible ring shape, got visibly gassed less than three minutes, and then after Cena gets all of his offense in in one go, hits six F5s for the finish at the eight-minute and 46-second mark, and that's how WWE's partnership with ESPN began...woof. Irredeemably bad way to use one of John Cena's final three PPV dates for about 1000 different reasons.

Worst Major Show of the Year

Nominees: The People vs. GCW, WWE Saturday Night Main Event 39 (Tampa, FL), TNA Slammiversary, WWE WrestlePalooza, WWE Survivor Series: War Games

Winner: WWE Survivor Series: War Games

Beyond the fact that this was simply a bad wrestling show, WWE's reduction of War Games to just another match was on full display here. Not that Four Horsemen vs. Dusty, Volkoff, and the Road Warriors, or the Dangerous Alliance vs. Sting's Squadron, should be considered the norm, but these latest two War Games matches couldn't even get to the level of the 2023 matches. No real stakes, consequences, or even high-end violence, even for WWE standards, and with that, plus the buildups where they largely turned the team formation process into schoolyard kickball, they've lost the essence of War Games entirely. If Elimination Chamber was the best possible outcome of a four-match stadium show, Survivor Series might as well be the worst.

TV Match of the Year

Nominees: Mercedes Mone vs. Athena (AEW Dynamite: Spring BreakThru, Boston, MA, 4/16), Will Ospreay vs. Konosuke Takeshita (AEW Dynamite: Spring BreakThru, Boston, MA, 4/16), MCMG vs. DIY vs. The Street Profits (TLC, WWE SmackDown, Dallas, TX, 4/25), Dustin Rhodes vs. "The Protostar" Kyle Fletcher (Street Fight, AEW Collison, Chicago, 7/31), Mike Bailey vs. Kyle Fletcher (AEW Dynamite: Winter is Coming, 12/10/25)

Winner: Will Ospreay vs. Konosuke Takeshita

Not super far off from the formula and layout of their phenomenal Revolution 2024 class, Konosuke Takeshita and Will Ospreay definitely mixed things up just enough in what was almost certainly not just the best TV match of 2025, but argueably the single greatest TV bout in AEW's existence, on a night where there was another one of said matches that happened all of 70-ish minutes prior...Happy to say I was in the building for this one, and this was everything I was hoping for and then some.

Tag Team Match of the Year (Maximum of Three Teams)

Nominees: MCMG vs. DIY vs. The Street Profits (TLC, WWE SmackDown, Dallas, TX, 4/25), Meiko Satomura and Manami vs. Chihiro Hashimoto and Aja Kong (Sendai Girls: Meiko Satomura THE FINAL), Okada&Takeshita vs. Brodido (AEW WrestleDream), FTR vs. Brodido (AEW Full Gear), Bishimon (Hirooki Goto and YOSHI-HASHI) vs. TMDK (Zack Sabre Jr. and Ryohei Oiwa) (NJPW World Tag League Night 15)

Winner: Meiko Satomura and Manami vs. Chihiro Hashimoto and Aja Kong

About 23 years and exactly three weeks after she teamed with Akira Hokuto in what was her (advertised) retirement bout, Meiko Satomura's illustrious career came to a close in Korakuen Hall in what can be described as a fitting conclusion. A very stiff match that bridges generations with Satomura and Aja Kong, to 33-year-old multi-time Sendai Girls Champion Chihiro Hashimoto, all the way to now 21-year-old prodigy Manami, who did not look out of place here whatsoever.

This was my first real exposure to either Manami or Hashimoto (TLDR: the "Big Hash" love online is absolutely justified. Big fan.), and they get a great amount of run here, as legitmately fantastic as this match is, the real novelty is the minutes with Satomura and Kong, and the final segment of this match between the two of them is worth the price of admission and then some. Beyond the fact that it's just two legends throwing bombs at each other one last time, Kong putting in the boss call to Hashimoto to get into the match after she couldn't pick up the pin was phenomenal, as was her screaming at the ref and successfully getting him to back off when she wanted to use an aluminum trash bin as a weapon. On the grand scale, I could imagine most haven't seen this match, but it's as good as advertised and a worthy sendoff for one of the Joshi scene's all-time greats, who was phenomenal in the final months of her retirement run this year.

Multi-Person Match of the Year (Matches with Five or More Participants, Excluding Three-Way Tags)

Nominees: Men's Elimination Chamber Match, Anarchy in the Arena, Women's Casino Guantlet (AEW All-In Texas), Forbidden Door 10-Man Lights Out Steel Cage Match, Women's Blood and Guts

Winner: Anarchy in the Arena

If this isn't better than the original Anarchy in the Arena back in 2022, it isn't by much. Hard to really get into the highlights, since there were about 575 in a match that lasted nearly 35.5 minutes, but this match truly has to be seen to be believed.

Women's Match of the Year

Nominees: "Timeless" Toni Storm vs. Mariah May (Hollywood Ending, AEW Revolution), Athena vs. Mercedes Mone (AEW Dynamite Spring BreakThru, 4/16), Iyo Sky vs. Rhea Ripley vs. Bianca Belair (WWE WrestleMania 41 Night 2), Saya Kamitani vs. Tam Nakano (Stardom All-Star Grand Queendom), Iyo Sky vs. Rhea Ripley (WWE Evolution II)

Winner: "Timeless" Toni Storm vs. Mariah May

In an era where "the best" matches cross the 20-minute mark with regularity, there's a charm and something unique to the fact that Toni Storm and Mariah May, now Blake Monroe, accomplished everything they did in the Hollywood Ending match in all of 12 minutes and 56 seconds. A blowoff tilt befitting for one of the best storylines in AEW's history, and in the vein of some of AEW's Texas Death Matches and John Cena vs. JBL (Judgement Day '05) as examples: modern plunder match wrestling at its peak.

Men's Match of the Year

Nominees: Kenny Omega vs. Gabe Kidd (WrestleDynasty), Adam Page vs. Will Ospreay (AEW Double or Nothing), Bandido vs. Konosuke Takeshita (ROH Supercard of Honor), Adam Page vs. Jon Moxley (Texas Death Match, AEW All In), MJF vs. Mistico (CMLL 92nd Anniversary Show)

Winner: Adam Page vs. Jon Moxley

The Texas Death Match had become the most revered match in AEW's back pocket largely off the efforts of Jon Moxley and "Hangman" Adam Page, both on their own and against each other in the case of Revolution 2023. It was only fitting that to conclude the main arc of the Death Riders story, these two would run it back in a stadium setting. Don't know what else I could add that I didn't after this match happened back in July, quite frankly. This is simply an unforgettable encounter, and the best performance of either guy's career. Especially so in the case of Mox.

Main Image via AEW