by Mark Coale
Odessa Steps Magazine/OnlineOnslaught.com

Hey kids, it’s that time of year awards. It’s time for self-appointed experts to give their two cents about what they think is “good” and “bad” – Awards Time. Here are some of my votes for the upcoming Observer Awards, as well as some freebies from the rest of the popular culture award.

Wrestler of the Year – Bob Sapp. Who you ask? The biggest name in Japan, whether it’s in shoots or worked matches. Oh yeah, and he’s also Warren Sapp’s brother. The best candidate in an extremely weak year.

Runners Up: Shocker and Keiji Mutoh

Tag Team of the Year – Rey Bucanero and Ultimo Guerrero. The Lucha Libre Midnight Express, one of the few great teams to stay together all year.

Runner Up: Los Guerreros and Chris Benoit/Kurt Angle.

Best on Interviews – Kurt Angle. He’s finally getting to cut serious interviews. Now, if only the idiots in the crowd would stop chanting “What” and “You Suck” at him.

Runners Up: Paul Heyman and Chris Jericho.

Most Overrated – HHH. I really don’t need to elaborate here, do I?

Runners Up: Rick Steiner and Hulk Hogan.

Most Underrated – Chavo Guerrero Jr. I voted for him last year and I’ll vote for him again. Yes, one-half of the tag team champions, but he still appears WAY too often on Velocity for someone allegedly getting a push.

Runners Up: Tajiri and Shannon Moore.

Match of the Year – Shocker vs. Dr. Wagner (03/06/2002). You can have all of your flashy WWE matches. I’ll take this great Mexican match featuring, admittedly, my two favorite luchadors.

Runner Up: Dragon Kid vs. Darkness Dragon (09/06/2002). The light and the dark finally clash in the longest-running feud in my favorite promotion. This mask vs. mask contest was just great.

Best TV Show – CMLL on Galavision. So what if I can’t speak Spanish. You can follow the action and guess what, there’s actual wrestling on the show. Go figure.

Runner Up: Smackdown. It’s amazing what happens when you give the book to someone who cares about wrestling and pushes wrestlers of quality.

Favorite Wrestler – Eddy Guerrero. Even without the mullet, I love his workrate and personality. As someone once wrote, “Eddy is Eddy.” Nuff said.

Runners Up: Shocker and Milano Collection AT.

Least Favorite Wrestler – Bubba Ray Dudley. I hate the gimmick, I hate his ability in the ring and I hate seeing him on my TV.

Runners Up: HHH and Kevin Nash.

Best Gimmick: Milano Collection AT. For those who don’t watch Toryumon, imagine a Japanese version of Rick Martel’s model gimmick, only with leggy supermodels as valets and an invisible dog. Oh yeah, he can work too.

Runners Up: Shocker and Matt Hardy Version 1.0.

In the non-wrestling category

Best Film – Gangs of New York. Martin Scorsese returns to greatness by return to his New York roots. Only, this time, it’s the New York of the 1860s, with an Oscar-caliber performance by Daniel Day-Lewis as Bill the Butcher.

Best DVD (film) – LOTR – Four discs, four commentaries and hours of behind-the-scenes footage. Let your inner geek out.

Best DVD (TV) – The Simpsons: Season Two. What a TV DVD set should be: commentaries on every episode. And the animation is beginning to settle down and the writing was beginning to peak.

Best Superhero Comic – Green Arrow (DC Comics). People were worried when novelist Brad Meltzer took the series over from Kevin Smith. Little did they know the book would get better by leaps and bounds.

Best Indy Comic – Blue Monday (Oni Press). A hilarious slice-of-life book featuring wacky teenagers stressing about life, love and new wave music.

Best Comics Reprint – Lone Wolf and Cub (Dark Horse). The samauri epic is to all other manga comics as Kurosawa was to other Japanese period pictures.

Best Video Game – Madden 2003. Yes, I spent hours and hours playing Vice City, but I just can’t vote for it. Honorable mention for the year’s quirkiest game, Mr. Mosquito.

Best Radio Show – Tony Kornheiser Show on ESPN Radio. Duh. Of course, I get my emails read frequently on there and I’ve been in the studio twice.

Best TV Show – Pardon the Interruption (ESPN). Mr. Tony + Wilbon + producer Erik Rydholm = gold. The only 2 ½ hours of ESPN I now watch all week.

Best Book (Fiction) – Lost in a Good Book. The second novel by Jasper Fforde featuring “literary detective” Thursday Next.doesn’t show any drop-off from the first in the series. Not yet available in the US.

Best Book (Non Fiction) – New Bill James Historical Abstract—The master of sabermetrics updates his classic book and by the end of the year, is hired as an advisor by the Boston Red Sox.

Best Sports Moment – The Tuck Rule game. Yes, I was rooting for the Patriots, but even so, it was an amazing game, with snow, great comebacks and a game-winning kick in overtime.

That was the year that was 2002. That’s it; that’s the list.

E-MAIL MARK 
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Mark Coale is the publisher of Odessa Steps Magazine, a quarterly magazine devoted to all facets of popular culture.

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