DMJ

- The New Day are a very good tag team and took a terrible gimmick and got it mega-over with the live audiences and sold a ton of merch through chemistry and personality. They'd be a good signing, even if only for a year or two. You bring back the trombone, you give them a "chant-able" name, you let them be them, and the live crowds are going to be engaged and loud (just like they always were in WWE) and that looks good on TV. Also, the fact that so many of their colleagues are tweeting support is only helping. The bullets that the "anti-WWE smarts" load in their guns against any former WWE talent coming to AEW are getting pulled out by every pro-New Day tweet that the Bucks or MJF or Mercedes or Swerve sends out. While I agree that AEW has established itself as a place for great wrestling/great wrestlers, that doesn't just mean the Ospreays and Swerves of the world. Kofi and Woods are solid in-ring, safe workers, have good signature stuff, etc. This isn't AEW going out and signing The Ascension or The Highlanders or the Prime Time Playas or the Bloodline or Wyatt Sicks rejects, these are guys with experience who can hang with the best tag teams.* - As for the Reigns thing, I'm guessing this is just another example of the right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing. * I know it was across many years and some were singles and not tags, but Kofi and Woods had some good matches against Danielson, Cesaro (& Kidd), Mistico (I think? Not sure who was playing Sin Cara at the time), FTR, Shelton, Samoa Joe, etc. These are not guys who will need to have their hands held to get them through a good match.

As someone who really only watched WWE and WCW with some ECW, some TNA, and then AEW up until a few years ago, my ballot is very "major US promotions centric." I'm likely going to be the high voter on a fair number of WWE guys and gals from the past 20 years and even I only had him at 45.

I posted my list over at my blog. I must admit, I'm not especially proud of it or even agree with all of it, which is weird to say, but this time around, I really tried to stick to some self-imposed rules and a "system" designed to keep it from just being a list of my favorite wrestlers.

Wow. Genuinely surprised to see New Day leaving. They both seem like smart guys so I'd hope they're not hurting for money and got a nice chunk of all that merch they sold over the years. I'm not necessarily interested in them going to AEW long-term, but would kinda love to see them do a few dream matches there and maybe do some international work/indie stuff just for the fun of it. I doubt they'll go to TNA.

I don't think he'd have been a main eventer or anything, but he would've probably been used to get over the emerging heels in 96' - Vader, Austin, probably Foley and Goldust too, maybe Farooq, maybe Sid. I don't think his W/L record would've been great, but throw in matches against the rest of Camp Cornette - Bulldog and Owen - and potentially teaming up with Shawn for the random Raw and I think Steamboat in WWE in 96' produces some quality and gets over. In 96', Vince had Marty Jannetty, Jake Roberts, Barry Windham, and, at Survivor Series, Jimmy Snuka and Terry Gordy on his roster and all of them were embarrassingly past their prime. Hell, he brought back the Warrior that year. Vince was mocking the old-timers in WCW with the Billionaire Ted sketches with one hand and putting Jake Roberts in PPV matches with the other. Based on Steamboat's brief comeback in 09', he probably would've come into the WWE in 96' as one of the top 5 best in-ring performers and, at the end of the day, Vince isn't going to throw that away when he's also in the process of trying to make stars out of guys like The Sultan or Mark Henry or Rocky Miavia or Tiger Ali Singh in early 97'.

Aside from the Rumble, I haven't watched a whole WWE show in about 9 months but the WWE product is a hamster wheel so my take is probably as good as anyone's... The women's roster is actually super stacked. IYO SKY is there. Rhea Ripley is there, still very over, still very capable of delivering good matches. Charlotte and Alexa have become a fun tag team and, because they've reeled back on Charlotte being a "main event only" talent, the kneejerk hate for her has faded away. Tiffany Stratton plateau'd as a character and worker, but she's 26 and it's not like she's fallen off a cliff - just maybe wasn't ready for the main event. Kairi Sane and Asuka are still around and very dependable. Sol Ruca in NXT has a sick finisher. Stephanie Vaquer, Lyra Valkyria, Blake Monroe, and Giulia are all works-in-progress, adjusting to the WWE, and its still too early to call any of them "flops," especially Vaquer, who has made the most strides of the three. Roxanne Perez and Raquel Rodriguez have both had moments when they've shown they're worthy of being on the main roster. Liv Morgan isn't a great wrestler, but, for a time there, she was probably among the top 2-3 most over women on the roster not named Rhea Ripley. Becky Lynch was never a super worker and her on-screen work pales in comparison to her Twitter game (where she's been doing a pretty funny Trump impersonation for the past year) but she's still a big name for the company and a valuable piece of the division. Chelsea Green was (is?) super over for a bit there. So...no, the roster isn't poor. In terms of depth, it is much, much deeper than AEW or TNA. Star-power, rising prospects, raw talent, in-ring workers, charismatic characters, it's all there. But, see, the WWE are stupid so, based on just a cursory look at the card, they've taken this all-time great assemblage of talent and stars and booked them so poorly and with such a lack of understanding chemistry or character that you wouldn't be wrong to think the division sucked. IYO SKY: arguably the best women's wrestler on the planet, isn't on either night of a 2-night show. Ditto for Kairi Sane, Asuka, and Stratton (deserved or not, they made a huge deal of her last year and this year she's a non-factor). Liv Morgan: ready-made "comeback from injury" babyface storyline squandered so she could come back, rejoin a stable that was getting stale before her injury last June, and become a singer/dancer reminiscent of the best-forgotten Jillian Hall character. And then she beats Vaquer in under 8 minutes, a wrestler who really shines best when the WWE gets out of their own way and lets her wrestle. The feud will likely continue but who even cares? Becky Lynch: Based on my limited viewing of a clip here or there popping up in my social media feeds, Lynch has been mired in a months-long feud with AJ Lee that feels like a side-plot of the years-long Punk/Rollins feud and never really took off on its own. It's actually kinda sad and embarrassing for both of them. I'm guessing they've tried to elevate it but, to a casual viewer, it gives "My Husband Hates Your Husband So I Hate You Too, Let's Fight!" rather than an actual rivalry over a real personal issue. The opposite of creative, the opposite of interesting, just putridly staid, paint-by-number stuff. Charlotte and Alexa: Over with live crowds, have established good chemistry with interesting hints at a potential split over the past year that could've been the basis of an emotional story...all of it pushed aside so we can spotlight The Bellas and Paige, stars from a decade ago. Bayley wrote a thoughtful piece on social media about the importance of the Women's Tag Team Championships and, even without watching the shows in months, I can assure you nobody in the writer's room gives even 1/100th of the shit she does. Chelsea Green: Injured, but also, instead of making her the host or giving her some sort of backstage segment or doing really anything to keep her momentum, let's just air parts of the Hulk Hogan documentary. Rhea Ripley: Put in the unenviable position of having to carry Jade Cargill tonight. They'll likely have a decent match (maybe even a very good match) because Ripley is a pro and they've probably spent the last 6 weeks rehearsing every spot so that Cargill doesn't look terrible. There's also a non-zero chance that it will be a car crash if Cargill gets lost or there's a hiccup that means she has to improvise a single sequence. Crazy as it sounds but if I hear the match is good-to-great, I probably won't watch it, but if it's an awful trainwreck, I'd be more likely to??

The fact that there is somehow a "$70 service fee" (included or not) for a "photo" on your cell phone is just *chef's kiss* of greed. These bloodsuckers would charge you extra if Roman happens to fart and you smell it.

Its all a bizarre comment because it seems fairly obvious to me that this year's Mania *did* require a pivot and the use of a 2nd stringer in the form of Randy Orton. The truth is, Randy Orton hasn't main evented a WrestleMania since 2014. I'm not saying he's not a huge star, but last year, coming out of WrestleMania, the big storylines were Cena's Heel Retirement Tour and the partnership between Rollins and Heyman. Rollins was headed to a Mania main event this year, but I think its worth shitting on The Vision for a second... Rollins and Heyman had no chemistry and the reasoning behind their alliance was hazy at best. The addition of Bron Breakker and Bronson Reed didn't help things gel either. It was a stable of disparate parts. Put Heyman with Punk, Lesnar, or Roman, and it just feels right. Heyman didn't get there with any member of the Vision.

I don't watch the week-to-week so I could be totally off-base here, but aside from Rhea/Jade, which does feel like a Mania match, the rest of the women's division stuff seems really weak and thrown together. (I also have less than zero interest in AJ vs. Becky despite loving the Becky-as-Trump tweets.) I wouldn't consider myself a Liv stan, but the decision to bring her back and re-align her with Dominik Mysterio when you could've had her comeback as a babyface (when she left, she was already halfway there with the audience), feuding with her former stablemates, Raquel and Roxanne, in February/March after winning the Rumble and then going on to challenge a strong Women's World Champion like IYO...I just don't get it. I know Liv isn't a world-beater in the ring, but give her and IYO a few weeks to plan and rehearse a 15-minute match and I think you've got a show-stealer on your hands. Hammy as it sounds, a "boyhood dream" story with Liv in the role of Shawn Michaels is really easy to sell. Sure, she's been champion before, but never "on her own" or in non-fluke fashion. Meanwhile, she's also suffered some serious injuries that make her sympathetic and the story was RIGHT THERE for Dom, Raquel, and Roxanne to betray her when she was out. Again, I don't watch anymore and haven't for about 9 months or so and I could be wrong on all this, but if casual fans is what the WWE is catering to and I now count as a casual fan - someone who barely watches but checks in for the Rumble and Mania - I'm definitely puzzled as to why Liv Morgan has been put back on a character hamster wheel with a stable that I didn't even know were still a thing when it seemed like, before she got injured, the trajectory was a big babyface run. And, also, no casual fan has any idea who Stephanie Vaquer is (while IYO at least had a relatively high profile run in 2025-26).

To the WWE audience and many current wrestling fans in general, Pat McAfee isn't just a non-celebrity, he's actually less than that - he's a wrestling commentator, full stop. He's an ex-NFL player and he hosts a TV show and he's a media personality, blah blah, but many wrestling fans tend to be wrestling fans and not necessarily fans of other sports or fans of sports-based talk shows or college football pre-shows. I had no idea who Pat McAfee was before he popped up in NXT. I still have never seen him do anything that wasn't directly related to the WWE. Pat McAfee appearing on WWE TV for months and months depleted any "star power" he had. He became just another commentator, not really any different from Wade Barrett or Corey Graves or whoever else. Sure, he sometimes gets a special entrance, but that's always felt, to me, more like something they were doing for him and that the crowd response is Pavlovian (s it is for almost everybody on the show). Fans like entrances and "Seven Nation Army" is a banger. Him being used in this storyline is worse than Disco Inferno being "the third man" (a reference to an angle from 30 years ago, an inadvertent and cringe-inducing admission that, yes, the WWE's Creative has been bad for decades now). It is more like if the third man had ended up being Nitro commentator-era/non-Horseman Steve McMichael. But, hey, when Travis Scott was at Mania, I thought it was terrible but heard many younger fans thought it was pretty cool, the same way I thought Dennis Rodman being in the nWo was cool when I was 13. I will readily admit my ignorance if Pat McAfee is a bigger star than I'm giving him credit for, but even if that is the case, to the wrestling audience, especially younger fans*, he's mostly known as commentator. As far as I know, there's no evidence that him being on commentary caused any sort of rating bump or helped sell a single ticket. * Again, maybe I'm wrong, but I work at a middle school and have never once heard a child mention watching College GameDay or The Pat McAfee Show but have seen kids come in wearing a Yeet shirt.

^ Agreed. I don't buy that WWE wasn't interested. I think they were...but whether it was money or dates or creative, it didn't work out. My assumption is that it was the first two. To pile on to what sek69 said, if the WWE had their way, they'd have every major "name" in wrestling under contract, past, present, and future. Moxley, MJF, Ospreay, Swerve, Kenny, Toni, Mercedes, Darby...it doesn't matter if they're in the middle of a massive cost-cutting, if they can make a buck off you, they want you. We may all be tired of Chris Jericho, but the guy still sells merch and would get that big nostalgia pop in WWE (and even got one last night). When the nostalgia pop fades (and it will fade quickly in AEW), he'll turn it into part of his "gimmick" to get heat and they'll use it to try to get someone else over (a pattern they've now done so many times that its become a trope that has go-away heat of its own). The Jericho Return in WWE would've been profitable. Also, if the WBD execs care about Jericho as a name, so do the Saudi princes.

I'm super psyched and deep in the weeds on finalizing my list. I'm glad I've still got time for more research, though I do think I've got it down to 110-120 wrestlers. While he wouldn't make my list this year I am thinking Brody King is quietly making a case for 2036. By my own requirements - I have to have reviewed a minimum of 20 matches - he wouldn't quite get there (I've reviewed 15 and I'm not going to go out of my way to watch more of him as he's not a nominee), but as I've gone back and watched the old AEW PPVs on Max, it's become abundantly clear that he is quite often the best part of the multi-mans he's in and is working circles around his House of Black teammates (and I say this as someone who isn't a Buddy Murphy or Malakai Black hater). He had an excellent 2025/2026 with Brodido and now as a singles. I just watched the 8-man from World's End and him getting in Matt Menard's face and essentially daring him to get involved is such good work. I think Menard might've actually had a tear in his eye from the emasculation he suffered in that moment. Also, extra points for the work on I Think You Should Leave.

I've reviewed close to 100 Seth Rollins matches on my blog and his average match rating is very high, which is almost silly because its a subjective rating scale and I'm definitely not a Seth Rollins fan. Like Triple H, though, its kind of undeniable that he's very good at delivering WWE-style "big match" matches. I can hate Seth Rollins and think he's total dogshit as a worker but then I look at the resume - the Shield six-mans, the 2015 3-way with Cena and Lesnar, the WrestleMania 3-way with Punk and Roman, the Mania tag match with Cody against Roman and Rock, Hell in a Cell against Cody in 2023, Money in the Bank 2016 against Roman, any number of multi-mans like Chambers and Survivor Series matches that he was in - and I think leaving him off my list is a bit like leaving Hogan or Undertaker off my list. While the GWE is ultimately a glorified list of everyone's favorites, if the spirit is to at least attempt to be objective and take into account more than just "Do I like him?", Seth Rollins is pretty undeniable if you're a voter like me whose wheelhouse is mainstream US wrestling of the past 35 years. Rollins is going to be someone I begrudgingly have on my list because, as much as I theoretically enjoy watching, say, Mikey Whipwreck more than Rollins (or Triple H for that matter), Rollins' resume is just too good for me to leave him off my list.

I think the "charisma vacuum" criticism is a little silly. The only "fun" Dean Malenko match/moment I can recall is when he dressed like Ciclope during the feud with Chris Jericho (IIRC?). Comparing Claudio to Malenko is doing a huge disservice to a guy that has had some really fun moments in AEW that show how much the WWE missed the boat on him. Is he a top level promo? No, but he's been very good at playing the "straight man" against guys like Orange Cassidy and the Young Bucks who often inject some levity into their matches and, recently, I really enjoyed him and Toni Storm's handful of minutes in the ring together. I'd also point to the Kings of Wrestling vs. Akira Taue and Jun Izumida match that's on YouTube for a really fun wrestling match with lots of comedy spots. I'm not arguing that Claudio would rate highly in terms of charisma, but if Malenko would be a 0 or a 1, Claudio is probably a 5 or 6.

They're waiting on Cena to headline SaudiAMania next year. That event is going to need lots and lots of good PR and Cena is the most marketable, highest "Q Score" star they have on the roster. I'd argue that his likeability/goodwill even surpasses that of The Rock, even if The Rock is the bigger star.