411’s Wrestler of the Week 7.16.13: Year Nine, Week 14

Welcome to YEAR NINE, WEEK 14 of 411’s Wrestler of the Week. A quick overview of the rules to kick things off for us as a reminder…

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 around WrestleMania. This will be posted every Tuesday (the voting week runs Monday through Sunday). Let’s see who wins this week…

Larry Csonka
1) Damien Sandow
Damien Sandow easily scored the biggest victory in his career when he won the world title version of the MITB match on Sunday. The man has worked so hard on the Sandow character, and to erase the memory of Idol Stevens, that he really should be commended. How it will go from here is anyone’s guess, but this was a huge victory for Sandow and he deserves all of the praise he is receiving.

2) The Wyatt Family (Bray Wyatt, Luke Harper, Erick Rowan): The Wyatt Family made their big debut on Raw last week in a highly debated segment as far as quality goes. The build was fantastic, and it was going to one hard to live up too, but the bottom line is that it was one of the most talked about things all week. Why? Because people want to know what’s next for them.
3) Randy Orton: Scored the victory in the “All Star” version of the MITB match. His first MITB win, but this week I feel it is only good enough for third place.
4) Magnus
5) Rain

Craig Stevens
1) Damien Sandow
The blue briefcase isn’t as important as the red one, sure. But it’s still a golden ticket to a World Title, and it’s the biggest win of Damien Sandow’s career by miles and miles and miles.

2) Randy Orton: Won the Money in the Bank All-Stars ladder match, making it nearly inevitable that the Viper will be WWE Champion again. I’m sure a lot of my colleagues will argue he deserves top billing this week, and I’d hardly argue. But at this point in their respective careers, I feel like a World Title is much bigger to Sandow than another WWE Title is to Orton.
3) John Cena: How many weeks a year will a hard-fought WWE Title defense against Mark Henry only get you third place? I dunno, but this is definitely one of ’em.
4) Rob Van Dam
5) The Wyatt Family

Justin Watry
1) Damien Sandow
Ever since his debut last year, he has been pegged as a Triple H “project” in WWE. That was made evident at the Raw 1000 show in July, when he got a MAJOR spotlight during the DX segment. That has slowed down in recent months probably due to the annual Road to WrestleMania part-timers coming in. Now that the dust has settled and we are in the summer months, Sandow is back on track heading for a World title match.

2) Randy Orton: It is hard for him to really “advance” his career in 2013. However, the man needed a change of scenery. Many have been calling for a heel turn. I’m not opposed to that, but it does not HAVE to be a switch to the dark side…just something! A Money in the Bank briefcase will keep him interesting until that certain ‘something’ happens.
3) John Cena: He retained his WWE Championship over Mark Henry clean in the middle of the ring. The big man ‘faked’ a retirement speech a few weeks ago. With such a decisive finish, it makes you wonder if he is actually hanging up the boots and wanted one final big main event payday?
4) Rob Van Dam
5) The Wyatt Family

Ryan Byers
1) Damien Sandow
Since the time of his debut, Sandow has essentially been a preliminary or tag team wrestler and, tonight, he almost out of nowhere became the de facto number one contender to the World Heavyweight Title. Granted, the WHT has been portrayed as a distant second place in the grand scheme of championships lately, but, given that I didn’t even think of Sandow as being booked as a U.S. Title-level talent before this week, that’s still a pretty significant jump in value for his stock. He’s earned it, too, as he performed incredibly well in his recent feud with Sheamus and for the first time looked like a guy who could hang with the company’s main eventers.

2) The Wyatt Family: Yes, there was a pay per view this weekend, but, frankly, the debut of the Wyatts strikes me as a bigger news story than just about anything that happened at Money in the Bank. After months of critically acclaimed build, the NXT threesome finally showed up on the big show, complete with bad-freaking-ass entrance, solid heat, and an injury of the nigh invincible Kane. I probably would’ve picked somebody else to be their first rival but, otherwise, everything is looking good for Bray and company.
3) Go Shiozaki: Sunday marked the beginning of a new era for All Japan Pro Wrestling, which has effectively been split into two companies, AJPW proper and Keiji Muto’s new WRESTLE-1 promotion. The first show of the new All Japan era was this week, and the main event was Go Shiozaki defeating the Triple Crown Champion Suwama in a non-title, two-out-of-three falls bout. This establishes Shiozaki as one of the focal points of the rebooted company.
4) Rob Van Dam
5) Rain

Michael Ornelas
1) Damien Sandow
Has a guaranteed title shot over the next year which is a huge step up for our savior.

2) Randy Orton: I expect “Weak Link” Danny B to take the briefcase from Orton given their recent feud and the fact that he was the spiritual winner of the All Star Money in the Bank match, but Orton stood tall at the end of the show, so he gets my vote.
3) The Wyatt Family: Last Monday was all about them in terms of hype and I thought their super creepy vignettes and introductory segment lived up to it.
4) John Cena
5) Rob Van Dam

Michael Benjamin
1) Damien Sandow
Easily had the largest career advancement of the week. He won a **** Money in the Bank match to earn himself a guaranteed World Heavyweight Championship shot within the next year. Add in that he has a ready made feud with his (former?) best friend Cody Rhodes on the horizon and things are looking good for the intellectual savior of the unwashed masses.

2) The Wyatt Family: They’re here. Their debut was brilliantly executed. It was easily the most unique debut that I can remember. The beat down may not have been as brutal as we all would have hoped for but it everything before it was chill inducing.
3) Daniel Bryan: He book ended Raw and Smackdown in dominant crowd pleasing fashion. Here’s to hoping he doesn’t get straddled in a feud with Curtis Axel.
4) Cody Rhodes
5) Randy Orton

Jesse Nguyen
1) Damien Sandow
Sandow managed to score the biggest win of his career, taking home the World Heavyweight Money in the Bank. Not only that, he showed he was willing to forget about his friendships to guarantee himself a shot at the championship. I’m sure Cody Rhodes will have a few things to say in the coming weeks, and I’m looking forward to see how it all plays out for the Intellectual Savoir of the WWE Universe.

2) Randy Orton: With a lot of determination, and a little bit of luck, Orton took the other Money in the Bank briefcase down. While I’m not too big a fan of his, I think the MitB contract will hopefully make his actions more interesting in the coming weeks.
3) Wyatt Family: The Wyatt Family debuted on RAW last week, only shroud themselves in more mystery. Hopefully the execution of their booking is done well in the future, as it has been currently.
4) Cody Rhodes
5) John Cena

Jeremy Thomas
1) Damien Sandow
He’s a pretty easy choice if you’re voting based on career advancement. Sandow won Money in the Bank and is headed to a guaranteed World Title shot, which at the very least says a lot about what the company sees in him.

2) The Wyatt Family: Had a really good debut on Raw and put the monster known as Kane out of action.
3) John Cena: Successfully defended the World Title against Mark Henry in a match that (finish aside) was a bit better than I expected.
4) Rob Van Dam
5) Randy Orton

James Wright
1) Damien Sandow
Now I see the method in the WWE’s madness, the reason they gave so much airtime to Sandow in segments before his match with Sheamus at Payback Kick-off was not to give the Celtic Warrior something to do, but to test how Sandow would be as a main focus, and apparently they were pleased with the results. I see Sandow having a nice feud with Cody before moving on to cash in, possibly on Ziggler, an interesting conundrum.

2) Randy Orton: Inexplicably won the ‘All-Star’ contract despite having done nothing worthwhile for the past two years (besides possibly losing to Daniel Bryan a couple of weeks ago). Maybe the WWE are planning a Bryan-Orton feud for the title? Or maybe this is going to be a slow build to Orton actually being the first person to cash in at Wrestlemania.
3) John Cena: Successfully defended his title against Mark Henry, which seemed inevitable, however what wasn’t inevitable was how it was actually a decent contest.
4) Chris Sabin
5) AJ Lee

THE WINNERS~!

And 411’s Wrestler of the Week is…

Damien Sandow – 45 Votes

You’re welcome…

Year-End Standings~!
And here are the standings after week 14…

Dean Ambrose – 64pts.

Seth Rollins – 60pts
Roman Reigns – 60pts

Daniel Bryan – 54pts.

Prince Devitt – 33pts
Curtis Axel – 33pts.

Mark Henry – 27pts.

Brock Lesnar – 24pts

Chris Sabin – 21pts.
Bray Wyatt – 21pts.

Ryback – 20pts

Kurt Angle – 15pts.
Bully Ray – 15pts.
Dolph Ziggler – 15pts.
Kofi Kingston – 15pts.
Kenta Kobashi – 15pts.
Ricochet – 15pts
CM Punk – 15pts.
Damien Sandow – 15pts.

Randy Orton – 13pts

Austin Aries – 12pts.
Luke Harper – 12pts.
Erick Rowan – 12pts.

Alberto Del Rio – 10pts.

Jimmy Uso – 9pts.
Jey Uso – 9pts.
Kazuchika Okada – 9pts.
Rampage Jackson – 9pts.
Big E. Langston – 9pts.
Abyss – 9pts.
Wade Barrett – 9pts.
The Undertaker – 9pts
Jun Akiyama – 9pts.

Mikey Nicholls- 7pt
Shane Haste – 7pt

AJ Styles – 6pts.
John Cena – 6pts.
Christian – 6pts.
AJ Lee – 6pts.
Fandango – 6pts.
KENTA – 6pts.
Yoshihiro Takayama – 6pts.
Jigsaw – 6pts.
The Shard – 6pts.

Mickie James – 4pts.

Rob Van Dam – 3pts.
Hiroshi Tanahashi- 3pts.
Jushin Liger – 3pts.
Suwama – 3pts.
John Morrison – 3pts.
Jack Swagger – 3pts.
Sting – 3pts.
Hernandez – 3pts.
Chavo Guerrero – 3pts.
Seita Sanada – 3pts.

Magnus – 2pts

Cody Rhodes – 1pt
Samoa Joe – 1pt
CIMA – 1pt
Alex Shelley – 1pt
Ethan Page – 1pt
Eddie Kingston – 1pt
La Sombra – 1 pt
El Hijo del Perro Aguayo – 1 pt

Year-End Rankings Key:

WWE Contracted Wrestlers are represented in BLUE.

TNA Contracted Wrestlers are represented in GREEN.

ROH Contracted Wrestlers are represented in RED.

US Independent Wrestlers are represented in MAROON.

Japanese Contracted Wrestlers are represented in BLACK.

Mexican Contracted Wrestlers are represented in MAGENTA.

Other International Wrestlers are represented in INDIGO.

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**PREVIOUS WINNERS** Year One Winner: Ric Flair Year Two Winner: Samoa Joe Year Three Winner: John Cena Year Four Winner: Chris Jericho Year Five Winner: CM Punk Year Six Winner: The Miz Year Seven Winner: CM Punk Year Eight Winner: CM Punk