Steve Cook looks back at 2017, filled with fond memories such as Dr Wagner Jr unmasking, Roman Reigns getting a big WrestleMania win over The Undertaker, and the rise of Jinder Mahal!

2017 marked the beginning of my full-time return to rasslin writing. I was doing things for 411 & things for the site that would later become The Chairshot. I was even multi-tasking, still doing some football predicting and expanding my hockey writing portfolio. The Nashville Predators were pretty good at this point.

There was a ton of stuff going on all over the place. Here are the five most memorable moments from where I was sitting, which isn’t too far from where I sit now.

5. Undertaker’s pass of the torch is incomplete

It was a good idea on paper.

Even if Undertaker’s WrestleMania streak had ended back in 2014, the Deadman still had plenty of juice. People still wanted to see him against WWE’s best & brightest on the biggest wrestling night of the year. A victory over the Phenom still meant a ton for a younger competitor. It was the sort of thing that could have finally crowned Roman Reigns as The Guy, Brother.

Roman got the win, and he did the best he could in the match and the weeks after to further his upward movement, but the match itself was a debacle. Undertaker shouldn’t have been in there. He wasn’t ready to put on a main event level match on a major show. It happens to every wrestler at some point. Everybody has a bad night at the office.

Most people are lucky enough for it not to happen in a WrestleMania main event.

4. Wagner Unmasked

Those of you that have read me for awhile know that Dr. Wagner Jr. is my favorite luchador of all time. Something about Wagner always clicked with me. He was a solid hand in the ring, and even if I don’t speak Spanish, his promos always conmnected with me via his pure charisma. He’s been one of the most popular wrestlers in Mexico for a number of decades, being one of the top guys in AAA, CMLL and any other promotion he would appear for. I would read reports from thecubsfan about how Wagner was difficult to deal with, but that just made me like him more.

The time finally came for Wagner to lose his mask. Some of the lucha greats have hung onto theirs forever, largely because they never got a big enough payday to justify it. Wagner got his. TripleMania XXV wound up being one of AAA’s biggest shows ever, largely due to the Lucha De La Decada pitting Wagner’s mask against Psycho Clown’s mask. It was a pretty eventful show, too! Sexy Star injured Rosemary on purpose during their match, which pretty much led to Sexy Star being blackballed from the business, and for good reason. Jeff Jarrett showed up in no condition to work, which led to Anthem backing away from that whole Global Force Wrestling/Impact merger thing they were in the middle of. Lots of crazy stuff going on, including the legendary Dr. Wagner Jr. losing his mask.

Of course, it’s not like the man’s career would end after that. It helped that when he unmasked, he looked like the Most Interesting Man in the World from the Dos Equis commercials. Yeah, Wagner was going to be ok without the mask, and he’d even don it occasionally because who would stop him? The main gripe I have is that Wagner never had that true blowoff mask vs. mask match with his greatest rival, L.A. Park, and I think a lot of Mexican fans have that same complaint, but I get why AAA would try to build a young star off of the situation. We can only hope that Psycho Clown’s physical condition doesn’t break down like his father (SUPER PORKY)’s did.

3. The First Mae Young Classic

WWE’s women had a ton of firsts during this time period. The first women’s Money in the Bank Ladder Match. The first women’s Hell in a Cell match. Any type of match women could do for the first time in WWE happened from 2016-17. Long overdue.

My personal favorite: the first Mae Young Classic. This tournament introduced me to so many folks that are still doing big things today. It had the first WWE appearance of the likes of Toni Storm, Rhea Ripley, Shayna Baszler, Mercedes Martinez, Piper Niven & Kairi Sane. Kay Lee Ray made an early appearance, along with Dakota Kai, Bianca Belair, Mia Yim, Lacey Evans, Santan Garrett, Sarah Logan, Candice LeRae, Tay Conti & many others. Tessa Blanchard was even involved!

As a fan of women’s wrestling that didn’t have easy access to SHIMMER and other indy feds during the time period, the MYC was a very informative time period for me.

2. Jinder Unhindered!

This is my champion. #JinderUnhindered. pic.twitter.com/lncrNW33cK

— Greg DeMarco On Demand (@ChairshotGreg) August 21, 2017

The Jinder Mahal push was strange. WWE basically took a dude that had done nothing of note in the company in the many years he’d worked for the company & made him WWE Champion without much of a demand prior. It’s not like it was a Daniel Bryan kind of case, where the guy built up such a fan following in spite of constantly losing matches that WWE had to give him some time. Nah, ol’ Jinder was just a jobber to the stars that got the random rocket push to the moon without any build or request whatsoever. Apparently it was to get WWE Network subscriptions in India, which always sounded a little fishy to me because even if Jinder was of Indian descent, the man was Canadian.

As we found out later when WWE finally toured India, folks from India were more interested in seeing the old stars than an Indian-Canadian anyway. I remember hearing “oh, they’re gonna keep the belt on him until they hit India, then it’ll be justified, you’ll see!”. So, what actually happened was that AJ Styles won the WWE Championship right before Survivor Series because Brock Lesnar wanted to face him in the Champion vs. Champion match. Thought AJ would be a better match for him, because, well, Brock has an IQ over 50. Once WWE hit India, Jinder was out there putting Triple H over. Funny how that worked out.

Gotta give my mans Greg DeMarco credit for this though: dude jumped on that bandwagon hard. While most of us were zigging to the mainstream belief that this Jinder push was complete nonsense, Greg zagged and bought into it. I’m sure he really did believe that Jinder was an underutilized talent, and to Jinder’s credit, the man got into super-great shape prior to the push. But Greg also knew he could bite off of that hardcore WWE base that buys whatever Vinnie Mac sells them. Greg made a lot of waves during this time period, and I was happy to be along for the ride.

1. Okada & Omega Break the Star System

Kenny Omega was a young man making waves in New Japan as leader of the Bullet Club. He won the G1 Climax, which entitled him to an IWGP Championship match at Wrestle Kingdom. People expected Omega’s meeting with Kazuchika Okada to be a pretty darn good piece of business. I don’t think anybody expected what ended up happening.

I remember Okada’s matches with Hiroshi Tanahashi getting a ton of hype. Okada’s matches with Omega blew all that out of the water. They also blew up Dave Meltzer’s star system. Their Wrestle Kingdom match got six out of five stars. Their later matches got even more. Okada & Omega changed the game & increased what people expected out of pro wrestling. One could argue that a large part of Omega’s alleged disappointing run in AEW so far is that he hasn’t broken the star rating system in a match with the company just yet.

Which is kind of amazing, since everybody tells me that Dave is on the AEW payroll. Seems that would be easy enough to make happen.