The Good Guys Do Win

I don't know what 2006 is wholly going to be remembered for. It's been a crazy year. Feds have died (ACW, AWC). Feds have been born (SbW, RevPro). Feds have come back from the dead (MBE). Wrestlers have pretended to be imitations of other wrestlers (Anti-Cross/Beast, "Slambo"/Steven Shane). There've been a multitude of face and heel turns, and a plentitude of big title wins.

However, to me, there haven't been two bigger title wins this year than two that happened at the tail end of the year, one in A1E and the other in PRIME. If you haven't guessed by now what two guys I'm talking about, well, allow me to illuminate. James Irish captured the A1E World Championship from Richard Farnswirth at Cyber Brutality, and Nova captured PRIME's Universal Championship from Tchu at King of Kings (a pretty good read, by the way... you should peep it just for the Face-Eater stuff). These two title wins are the most satisfying I've read all year... well, aside from my own A1E Title win with JA and LVW Title win with Cowboy Jimmy Donovan, but you knew that :p.

Why are they so gratifying though? Because both guys are guys who worked and worked and finally got over the hump after years of toiling to get to the spotlight. They're both the kinds of guys that everyone feels good about winning the big time, mainly because they've come so close so many times.

Take James, who's been in the main event scene in A1E for about three years now. He's consistently one of the most entertaining guys on the roster, a well-done face in a sea of heels (although A1E seems face-heavy at times...), but he never got over the hump until last month. He'd come so close; sometimes, it felt like reading my own match to see how he was going to do.

Nova, from my understanding, has had a lot of real life stuff intervene with his march. Always a PRIME fan-favorite, he was *thisclose* to getting there when he went to France to study for a semester, thus killing his involvement in the hobby for that time. While it was a wonderful opportunity for him in the real world (which is what counts), it still left people feeling bad for him that he couldn't capitalize what he had worked for. Then, he came back and came close again with the Great American Nightmare match. I haven't been following PRIME as long as some other people who read this blog, but I still felt an immense sense of pride for Nova getting over the hump.

Now, don't mistake this for displeasure at the former Champions. Richard Farnswirth and Tchu made phenomenal Champions, and I felt good for them when they won their respective titles. However, for both of them it was their second run with the title in question, and both of those guys have an air of dominance around them, like they don't even need to try. That's not a bad thing, but it certainly evokes different feelings.

So while 2006 on the whole may not be represented by the hard worker finally getting his due, the end of this year certainly will be punctuated by it. It just goes to prove... the good guys do win after all.