Roderick Strong

[WingedEagle]

He doesn't have main events for national promotions with the accompanying stakes, drama and promotional machines behind him. But he does have nearly 20 years of absolutely crushing it in big and small match settings up and down the card in a variety of roles and styles. Why isn't he among the top few dozen to ever do it?

[Tetsujin]

On 1/2/2022 at 8:37 AM, Tetsujin said:

Gotta say he was the last wrestler that made me enjoy ROH back in 2015 against Jay Lethal. His NXT stuff has obviously been a total blast. Excellent tag and midcard worker, and he improved a lot as a heel compared to his pre-WWE career. The Danielson match is amazing, but I need to watch much more of his indy stuff to see if it holds up, I'm specially interested in his PWG and ROH work, but any hidden gem like some of the matches Clayton spoke about will be well received as well.

After this last year or so in AEW, he's definitely been adding more to his case. Great performances all the time, and playing different roles: he can be a wounded underdog against a monster (vs Joe), or the other way around being himself that very monster (vs Orange), he can match Ospreay's pace or chain wrestle with KOR. He can be pathetic in a comedy angle (the Devil stuff, where he put over his neck collar), but he can also goe toe to toe with the world champion (vs Swerve). Even outside the ring, he added some of his best character and mic work ever.

I've also been loving his PWG stuff, he worked as a heel much better than I remembered there. On the other hand, some of his early ROH stuff has been a little bit dissapointing, as I don't think he found his thing until the early to mid 10s, and his work was a bit generic and too "by the book" until then.

A pretty great wrestler overall, that's for sure. Incredible offense, one of the only current guys that make combos of moves look cool and feel meaningful. Underrated bumper and seller, too. He's definitely more of an input guy, but even without a lot of MOTYCs he still has plenty of very good and great matches in three different decades now.  At the moment, he's in the back half of my list, and closer to top 75 than "just" top 100.

[Boss Rock]

One of the greatest utilitarian wrestlers ever.

[highflyflow]

Roddy is one of the first guys I think of when I think of the process of comparing wrestlers across eraS for this exercise. For example: Ted DiBiase finished at 42 in 2016, no doubt a beneficiary of so the 80s Mid-South set and some heavy pimping in his and other nominee forums. DiBiase retired at the age of 39 after a very respectable 19-year career, and the bulk of his case comes from a 4-5 year window in the mid-80s, primarily his Mid-South work but adding in some of his All Japan stuff and some strong title matches with Savage in the WWF. Not many people are making the case that DiBiase's run as the Million Dollar Man adds much to his GWE case, which is how he spent the last 7 years of his career. Strong, on the other hand, is 42 years old, 25 years into his career, has been, at worst a good but generic/flawed worker and, at best, one of if not the best wrestler on the planet, for 20 of those years, has shown he's still one of the best guys in the world in AEW the last two years, and has shown no signs of slowing down. I know DiBiase is probably a bit of low-hanging fruit, but Strong's resume just looks so much more impressive to me there, and that's against a guy that cracked the top 50 last time! It's that kind of logic that makes it easy for me to put more modern guys above wrestlers that have been hyped for decades, but I wonder how everyone else feels about it.

[HeadCheese]

With Roderick Strong, he's a wrestler who will make my list. Right now he is ranked below Chuck Taylor, above Munenori Sawa. I think Roderick Strong is a wrestler I really like the work/matches of but, rarely loved.

Him being often such a cardio wrestler feels like its a positive and negative especially in singles matches. He's a great tag team wrestler. I think with the cardio wrestling can lead to exciting matches but, it also feels like he is doing plug in formula wrestling with his opponent and sometimes it feels like he doesn't give things time to sink in. Like with some other modern wrestling, Roderick Strong matches sometimes give me the vibe that he leading with great match thinking more than feeling sometimes.

 

On 1/15/2026 at 5:23 PM, highflyflow said:

It's that kind of logic that makes it easy for me to put more modern guys above wrestlers that have been hyped for decades, but I wonder how everyone else feels about it.

It's something I have been thinking about too. Currently my list has over half 2000s wrestlers (wrestlers who the majority of their case is built of post-2000s work). I'm have been checking out more pre-2000s wrestling over the and I'm still following alot of current wrestling so that might change.

Especially with their being alot of high level wrestlers seem to wrestle longer now with more footage too, Having a 15+ year careers big platform feel like the norm now where we can see everything (we basically have 98% of Roderick Strong's whole career on accessible tape in real time vs. other wrestlers where it's more scattered). Wrestlers like Zack Sabre Jr, Jon Moxley, and Orange Cassidy will have been wrestling for 22 years this year too.

I think it's okay to rank modern wrestlers above more hyped older wrestlers but, its an interesting thought experiment. 

[Mantaur Rodeo Clown]

On 1/16/2026 at 12:23 PM, highflyflow said:

Roddy is one of the first guys I think of when I think of the process of comparing wrestlers across eraS for this exercise. For example: Ted DiBiase finished at 42 in 2016, no doubt a beneficiary of so the 80s Mid-South set and some heavy pimping in his and other nominee forums. DiBiase retired at the age of 39 after a very respectable 19-year career, and the bulk of his case comes from a 4-5 year window in the mid-80s, primarily his Mid-South work but adding in some of his All Japan stuff and some strong title matches with Savage in the WWF. Not many people are making the case that DiBiase's run as the Million Dollar Man adds much to his GWE case, which is how he spent the last 7 years of his career. Strong, on the other hand, is 42 years old, 25 years into his career, has been, at worst a good but generic/flawed worker and, at best, one of if not the best wrestler on the planet, for 20 of those years, has shown he's still one of the best guys in the world in AEW the last two years, and has shown no signs of slowing down. I know DiBiase is probably a bit of low-hanging fruit, but Strong's resume just looks so much more impressive to me there, and that's against a guy that cracked the top 50 last time! It's that kind of logic that makes it easy for me to put more modern guys above wrestlers that have been hyped for decades, but I wonder how everyone else feels about it.

I mean I appreciate the argument here and think there's a lot of merit to it. But BEST WRESTLER ON THE PLANET might be a bit strong. Roddy has always been a very proficient wrestler, and I don't think even in the early ROH days his critics would argue any differently. But I do believe he lacked strongly as a character for many, many years. As such, he had a very high floor for his matches, but could also never turn his matches from "entertaining" and "good" into transcendentally great or classic. And if you're the best wrestler in the world, you should be producing classics at a fairly brisk clip. 

I think he was really on top of the world during his PWG heel run as champion, obviously with a very generous crowd who were up for everything. But he regressed in WWE and is just coming back around in AEW now. But I still wouldn't put him ahead of Kyle as a wrestler or as an act.