Who Topped This Year’s PWI 500 List?

The end at the beginning. Every year, Pro Wrestling Illustrated puts out its annual list of Top 500 wrestlers in the world. This year’s list is from June 2017 to June 2018 with anything that has happened since then not counting. The full list is available in the magazine but since it’s rather difficult to compare say #485 to #484, let’s take a look at the Top Ten instead.

Before you get to this year’s list, check out last year’s results.

Pro Wrestling Illustrated has released its annual Top 500 list for 2018. The list is taken from a more kayfabe perspective and considers things like titles won, win and loss records, standing in the wrestler’s primary organization and overall wrestling ability. Here are this year’s top ten entries, with their standing from last year’s list also included, courtesy of NoDQ.com:

1. Kenny Omega (#5)
2. AJ Styles (#2)
3. Kazuchika Okada (#1)
4. Brock Lesnar (#25)
5. Seth Rollins (#16)
6. Braun Strowman (#34)
7. Roman Reigns (#4)
8. Cody (#33)
9. Tetsuya Naito (#12)
10. The Miz (#10)

Before #1 was as big of a star.

Kenny Omega makes his first appearance on WWE Network in rare WWE Hidden Gem: Deep South Wrestling..

Opinion: This is the kind of list that is going to draw all kinds of discussion, but the top three names are really hard to argue. They’re all some of the best in the world at the moment and that’s really not up for debate. I would however argue about Lesnar being that high up as in the span of time considered, Lesnar has only wrestled against five different people in televised matches. That’s worthy of the top four spots and moving up twenty one places? Really?

Which of these do you like best? Did they get the top spot correct? Let us know in the comments below.

Thomas Hall has been a wrestling fan for over thirty years and has seen over 50,000 wrestling matches. He has also been a wrestling reviewer since 2009 with over 5,000 full shows covered. You can find his work at kbwrestlingreviews.com, or check out his Amazon author page with 28 wrestling books. His latest book is the the Complete 2003 Monday Night Raw Reviews.

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