Hey look, IT'S BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACK!

For those of you just tuning in, these are the rec.sport.pro-wrestling.*
Year-End Achievement Awards.  They celebrate the excellence, as well as
the....opposite thereof, of the past year in professional wrestling.

The Awards are decided by the readers of r.s.p-w, voting for a 1st, 2nd,
and 3rd place in nearly fifty categories.  This is the unfathomable
TWELFTH year for the Awards.  The first six years were run by Herb Kunze
(hkunze@uoguelph.ca) - and this marks MY sixth year at the helm.

Just over 300 ballots were submitted to this year's set of awards - down
by about 50% from last year.  From this, can we presume that wrestling's
popularity is on a downtrend?  MAYBE.  ;-)

Thanks to BT, Banco de Gaia, and Jimmy Hart, Jim Johnston and the many 
people who have written music heard on wrestling programs for providing 
background music while I worked!  Thanks also to Dr Pepper, Gatorade, and 
the makers of many brands of jerky for keeping me alive.

Thanks to XO Communications for staying in business despite the stock
going under, and for continuing to provide me with a steady paycheque
despite the fact that I seem to spend an awful lot of time dealing with
writing about professional wrestling, which I've heard isn't actually in
my official job description.  ;-)

These awards are dedicated to Kim, who doesn't mind TOO much that I 
disappear for several weeks around awards time.  

Finally, thanks to the readers of rec.sport.pro-wrestling.* - it's their
contributions year after year that make the awards so enjoyable to read
and debate after the fact.  Awards can't represent a community unless the
community represents, and once again, you've come through.  Thanks.

The following pages provided invaluable assistance with research.
Bookmark them ALL right now:

<http://slashwrestling.com/>
  [slash] wrestling - my own repository of the past year's events

<http://hometown.aol.com/wsandt/cards/index.html>
  The Wrestling Supercards & Tournaments Web Page

<http://www.puroresu.com/>
  The Great Hisa's Puroresu Dojo

<http://deathvalleydriver.com/bbbowm/>
  Rev. Ray's Page of 1,000 Holds

If you are interested in the whole shebang as opposed to the bits and
pieces I'm posting today, I recommend the following FTP link for your Web
browser:

<ftp://ftp.slashwrestling.com/slash/01awards.txt>

The textfile is about 418K in size.

I can be reached by emailing chris@kzim.com.

Without further ado, HEEEEEEEEEEEERE WE GO!!!!