Hi!
This week, we’ll begin voting for the sixth annual Tapatia awards. The votes will based on the 2009 calendar year. The voting has NOT started yet. This post is only for discussion of the setup of the awards.
I’m looking at opening the voting between 02/17 and 03/02, though I may have problems totaling them up that week. (By the same token, I’m open to suggestions about easier way to do the voting.)
Awards on the ballot in past years
1) Best Wrestler – top wrestler over the last year.
2) Best Match – please include dates, location where possible
3) Best Tecnico – greatest good guy
4) Best Rudo – for the entertaining evil-doers
5) Best Female – women only. Sorry, no exoticos.
6) Best Unit – tags, trios, atomicos, other groups – must’ve been a team in 2009
7) Best Promotion/Territory – CMLL, AAA, Perros del Mal, IWRG, DTU, – specific enough so we can identify a group
8) Best Rivalry – most interesting/exciting/entertaining feud. Can be person vs person, or people vs people.
9) Most Improved – wrestler who stepped up their game the highest from 2009
10) Most Underutilized – wrestler who’s deserving of more attention from both the promotion and the fans
Best Mini will be added to the ballot; it must be someone who regularly competes as a mini. Anything else?
Best Wrestler and Best Match will be top 6, everything else will be top 3. Is that too much?
Do you want some candidates to choose thru, or would that bias things too much? Either way, you’d be able to vote for whoever you wanted.
I think posting some candidates mainly for match of the year would help. I know everyone has different preferences and it might be easier for those of us with short-term memories to look back at what was good in 2009.
I thought the Valiente vs Virus lightning match was good.
Considering the usually small voter turnout I’m not opposed to doing this CMLL.com style where there are 5/6 guys listed for each category except best match and the final two categories. The only problem would be narrowing it down to 5/6 choices per category although we could spend this week and use the comments here to toss out suggestions with you having the final say as to who gets put on the list. I mean – Daniel nominating Latin Lover for wrestler of the year is an easy no whereas Phil nominating Negro Navarro would be a yes. Lover would get 1 vote while Navarro would get strong consideration from many folks. This makes the results look better instead of 20 wrestlers getting 1 vote and the winner getting 3 votes. Does that make any sense? (That question is for everyone except Daniel)
Best promotion/territory/building should probably be limited to those that have regular exposure.
CMLL (Arena Mex/Coliseo)
CMLL (Puebla)
IWRG
AAA
PdM (might want to remind people they only had like 3/4 shows in 2009. The 2010 ones don’t count)
DTU
Arena Coliseo Monterrey
I’m not in favor of people getting to vote for AULL b/c they saw 1 good match that happened to go up on youtube. Once again – it just dilutes the votes and makes it look silly if the winner gets only 3 votes.
It doesn’t even have to be just limited to 5/6 choices per category – it can be as many valid nominees as you want. The idea is just to get rid of… for example… Space Cadets getting a vote for 2008 Unit of the Year. For teaming four times in IWRG? With only two of those matches making DVD at the time of voting? It doesn’t matter how good the matches may have been, it’s like giving the batting title to a pinch hitter who only had 32 at-bats but happened to have a .400 batting average.
Here’s a preliminary list of the better matches of 2009: http://www.luchawiki.com/index.php?title=2009_Match_of_the_Year_Candidates
It’s missing a lot of stuff from the latter half of the year since the DVD’s haven’t turned up yet.
@Rob
Latin Lover does deserve to be nominated for wrestler of the year, and technico of the year. Don’t start acting like you own this pole, and don’t be a hater. If you watched his montage yesterday you’ll notice the clip of him kissing good looking women in the audience. You’re just jelous because you can’t kiss good looking women.
I would also like to nominate Elegido and Gronda II for tag team of the year. Those guys were not only cool, but the were a strong duo. The beat the tag team champions a hundred times in non-title matches.
@Daniel: “Pole”?
YIKES.
Creepy.
Actually found a program I wrote and forgot about which will let me handle tabulating votes a lot easier. So polling isn’t really a problem. I think I could build in a front end to let everyone vote in, but that’d take time testing and I’d rather just watching lucha or do something else.
I’d like something that’ll give me write in entries and the ability to pick/rank top 3 choices, but I’ll stick with email otherwise.
Nominations are probably a good idea (though not in comments for this post.) I may open that up this week and push the voting back.
@Daniel:
Elegido and Gronda vs. Nicho and Joe Lider was my favorite match out of the very small amount of AAA I bothered to watch last year.
@Daniel: so you can now determine tecnico of the year after the guy made like six appearences?
@CM93, you know, you really have to stop being Rob’s little sidekick, it’s really annoying.
@Daniel: wait so im now a side kick for thinking my own opinion?!?!?!?! how could you call latin lover the tecnico of the year? explain it
@CM93: Actually Daniel’s next reply should be quite hilarious. By his own statement… Latin Lover should be wrestler/tecnico of the year. But by his own logic… Elegido/Gronda should be tag team of the year b/c they beat the champs “a hundred times” in non-title matches. Yet Latin Lover has zero wins over the champ in AAA. He actually only won one important match this year at Guerra De Titanes. He lost the Rey De Reyes finals and at Triplemania for the tag titles. In fact if we just go by winning percentage guys like Marco Corleone, Alex Koslov, Rocky Romero and Electro Shock are more deserving for wrestler of the year since they won lots of matches against other champions.
I just can’t wait till the day someone finally reveals they were messing around and posting as Daniel. I refuse to believe someone like him actually exists. There is no way that is a real dude.
@New Talking Wall: I really liked the Gronda/Elegido vs 187 feud as well. It was interesting since the feud was obviously designed to make the tecnicos look awful, make them take stupid dangerous bumps and have a match the guys in the back could laugh at. Instead it was probably the best feud of the year in the company and the tecnicos more than held their own when it came time to deliver.
Lider/Nicho will also get one of my votes for best unit.
@Rob: i predict he’s latin lover in disguise.
im new to this can someone explain it please?
I kinda like Rob’s idea of doing some kind of nominating processes or something. It makes the awards look pointless when you have around 20 people voting, and you have like 15 different matches up for match of the year or whatever.
I nominate Mascara Dorada for Most Improved of the Year.
@Calabcd44: ooo i agree.
@Calabcd44: @Calabcd44: I see your nomination of Dorada, and raise you one Trauma 2!
@Rob
I never said it was based on winning percentages. Try reading instead of assuming, because when you ASSume you make an ASS out of yourself Rob.
@CM93 I can call Latin Lover the technico of the year becaue he’s the best good guy there is. If you don’t want to agree that’s fine, but if you want to argue then you tell me what WRESTLER is a bigger star in Mexico.
@Daniel: LA PARKA!
MISTICO!
HIJO DEL SANTO! (if he counts here)
I think the current system is fine. I don’t want to choose from a bunch of nominations that don’t reflect how I feel about lucha libre.
I can see the advantages of both a nominating system and the system of last year. I seem to remember cubs pointing out that he felt it was a good thing to get a diversity of opinion as it showed that the blog wasn’t just reaching those that enjoy one specific kind of lucha and that clearly goes away if options start being limited to nominees. Its probably way too much work, but what about a two tiered system where nominations look like previous year’s voting and then top 6 results get posted to polls (top 12 for match and wrestler?) where everyone can get one vote? This would also give cubs a chance to post people’s arguments for their nominations.
I’m fine with Cubs leaving it the way it is. I think listing nominees would be a good thing for some of the folks with short-term memories or maybe not sure about something. I assume there are folks who send in ballots who don’t really watch as much lucha as some of us.
This gives me plenty of time to start my STRONGMAN SWEEPS LA TAPATIA AWARDS campaign! ;)