AEW, NJPW Stars Dominate WWE At Top Of PWI 500

WWE may be the world’s No. 1 pro wrestling promotion, but it doesn’t have the world’s No. 1 wrestler.

Pro Wrestling Illustrated revealed its rankings of the top 500 wrestlers in the world, and current AEW World Champion Jon Moxley topped the famed PWI 500 for 2020. PWI revealed the list after the cover depicting Moxley as the world’s top pro wrestler began circulating online:

Two of the top three wrestlers on this year’s PWI 500 (h/t HeelByNature) are from AEW, which didn’t have a national TV show until AEW Dynamite began airing on TNT last October. With AEW in its first full-year with a nationally televised program, it’s not surprising that the upstart promotion—which signed a massive TV deal in early 2020—featured Moxley and inaugural AEW World Champion Chris Jericho in the No. 1 and No. 3 spots, respectively. What is a little more shocking, however, is that this year’s rankings had a noticeable shortage of main roster WWE stars at the top:

1. Jon Moxley
2. Adam Cole
3. Chris Jericho
4. Drew McIntyre
5. Tetsuya Naito
6. Kazuchika Okada
7. Cody Rhodes
8. Seth Rollins
9. Kofi Kingston
10. AJ Styles

According to PWI, “The evaluation period for this year’s PWI 500 is July 1, 2019 – June 30, 2020. The criteria for ranking are as follows: Win-loss record, technical ability, influence on the sport, success against the highest grade of competition, success against the most diverse competition…[and] activity.” PWI’s ranking system has been the target of widespread criticism over the years for being subjective and not having a true means to measure greatness inside the squared circle, but that’s the beauty of it.

Much like MVP awards in professional sports, the PWI 500 is a means of honoring and recognizing the best that pro wrestling has to offer. Of course, the ranking system isn’t perfect, though. Some wrestlers seem to benefit each year simply from their name. Other stars are ranked higher than the average fan believes they should be because those stars are so charismatic. Some jump up the list because of their incredible in-ring performances. Whether fans agree or disagree with the specifics of these rankings, they serve as a great launching pad for debate and another accolade for the world’s greatest pro wrestling superstars to add to their resume.

This year, the highest WWE-affiliated wrestler was Adam Cole, who recently dropped the NXT Championship after holding it for nearly 400 days but has primarily worked the yellow brand throughout his WWE career. Cole—who has often drawn comparisons to Shawn Michaels, arguably the greatest in-ring performer of all-time—has been perhaps the company’s best all-around performer during that period, but because he’s doing so on an NXT show that typically has the smallest audience of the four major shows (Raw, SmackDown, NXT and Dynamite), some have held that against him.

The fact that Cole is, quite easily, the highest ranked WWE superstar really says quite a bit about how WWE’s main roster programming has fared over the past year. In 2019, the PWI 500 was topped by four main roster WWE stars in Seth Rollins, Daniel Bryan, AJ Styles and Kofi Kingston, and in 2018, WWE had three of the top five and five of the top seven superstars on the list. Over the course of the past year, however, WWE’s TV viewership has descended to record lows, as has the overall quality of both Raw and SmackDown, which likely played a role in why WWE stars fared so poorly on these rankings in comparison to previous years.

Drew McIntyre was WWE’s highest-ranked main roster performer at No. 4, but even that ranking could be questioned given that the Scottish superstar didn’t really receive a significant push until early 2020, about halfway through the period covered by the PWI 500 for 2020. Other top stars and world class in-ring performers like Styles, Rollins and Kingston dropped down the list, likely due to a wide variety of circumstances, including the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, the lack of classic matches (in comparison to other years) and their involvement in lackluster storylines. The continued greatness of arguably the two best in-ring performers in the world—NJPW’s Tetsuya Naito and Kazuchika Okada—sent those WWE stars even further down the list than expected.

Again, PWI’s rankings don’t really paint the whole picture. Some stars, like Moxley, benefit from the impact they have across the pro wrestling world while elite in-ring performers—like No. 24 Aleister Black—are sometimes ranked lower than you might expect because the way they are booked limits their opportunities to shine. As fans return to AEW shows while WWE has moved Raw and SmackDown out of the mundane Performance Center, the better atmospheres created by these adjustments should result in significant changes to these rankings when they are released next year.

As more rising AEW stars, like MJF, and returning WWE stars, such as Roman Reigns, figure to find themselves in a more high-profile spot on the card in their respective promotions in the coming months, expect some noteworthy shifts on this list in 2021.

And perhaps, more main roster WWE stars closer to the top of it.