Various: John Cena on Winning Muhammad Ali Legacy Award, Tokyo Sports Awards, Indies

John Cena Comments on Being Named This Year’s Winner of the Muhammad Ali Legacy Award

Sports Illustrated held their annual Sportsperson of the Year Awards event last night and one of the winners was John Cena, who took the 2018 Muhammad Ali Legacy Award. Cena reflected on Twitter about the achievement and what it means to him as a wrestler.

Tonight was for “us.” The privilege we have to entertain fans young and old has opened to the possibilities of what can be accomplished in and out of the ring. Thank you @SINow for this amazing honor and @TheRealLailaAli @ikebarinholtz for presenting tonight. Now…back to work! https://t.co/JvCa5DMOOa

— John Cena (@JohnCena) December 12, 2018

Tokyo Sports Announces the Winners of Their 2018 Wrestling Awards

Tokyo Sports announced the list of winners for their 2018 Japanese wrestling awards. New Japan Pro Wrestling’s Hiroshi Tanahashi took the magazine’s top honor by being named their Most Valuable Person, the fourth time in his career and the first since 2014.

Other notable winners included Kenny Omega vs. Kazuchika Okada at Dominion 2018 winning Best Bout of the Year, Kaito Kiyomiya winning this year’s Fighting Spirit award, and Naomichi Marufuji winning this year’s special award.

• MVP: Hiroshi Tanahashi
• Best Tag Team: Shuji Ishikawa and Suwama
• Best Bout: Kenny Omega vs. Kazuchika Okada at Dominion 2018
• Technique: Tetsuya Naito
• Fighting Sprit: Kaito Kiyomiya
• Special Award: Naomichi Marufuji
• Women’s GP: Tsukasa Fujimoto
• Rookie of the year: Utami Hayashishita

Misc. Wrestling News & Notes

DEFY Wrestling announced that the card of their December 14th event in Seattle, Washington features a DEFY 8xGP Championship match between Artemis Spencer and Shane Strickland (c).

The National Wrestling Alliance recently released a new video on their YouTube channel featuring the NWA World Heavyweight Championship match between Jake Hager (Jack Swagger in WWE) and Nick Aldis (c) from last month’s WrestleCade 2018 event in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.