From July 2009 through June of 2010, I collected some stats on the WWE Monday Night Raw, WWE Smackdown, and TNA wrestling products (and ECW until their shutdown on 2/19/2010). I was measuring the quality of the matches on each program by giving each one a “Thumb” rating. A great match gets one Thumb Up, an outstanding “match-of-the-year” candidate gets two Thumbs Up, and everything else gets zero (I was also giving Thumbs Down– more on that later).
When I recorded the Thumb Rating, I also happened to write down the names of the wrestlers that were involved in the matches. Since I had the data, I decided to total these up for each wrestler involved. All participants in the match got the same number of points.
You can read all the details and a bit of analysis on the Wrestler Match Ratings page, including a link to the spreadsheet so you can see the numbers for yourself.
I’m providing a quick summary below.
Top 15 in WWE and TNA
For the WWE, I used the combined data from the Raw, Smackdown, and ECW programming to calculate the rankings. I assigned one point per Thumb, so the scoring should be obvious.
WWE Top 15
Here are the Top 15 wrestlers under the WWE brands:
Name | Total | 1 Thumb Up | 2 Thumbs Up |
1. John Morrison | 24 | 20 | 2 |
2. Evan Bourne | 18 | 18 | 0 |
2. Chris Jericho | 18 | 16 | 1 |
2. Jack Swagger | 18 | 18 | 0 |
5. Rey Mysterio | 17 | 13 | 2 |
5. Christian | 17 | 15 | 1 |
7. Dolph Ziggler | 15 | 15 | 0 |
8. Kofi Kingston | 14 | 12 | 1 |
8. Zack Ryder | 14 | 14 | 0 |
10. CM Punk | 13 | 11 | 1 |
11. Miz | 8 | 8 | 0 |
12. Shelton Benjamin | 7 | 7 | 0 |
12. John Cena | 7 | 7 | 0 |
12. Jeff Hardy | 7 | 3 | 2 |
12. Yoshi Tatsu | 7 | 7 | 0 |
TNA Top 15
For TNA, there is only one program available that I was tracking (TNA Impact).
Here are the Top 15 wrestlers under the TNA brand:
Name | Total | 1 Thumb Up | 2 Thumbs Up |
1. AJ Styles | 22 | 12 | 5 |
2. Samoa Joe | 13 | 11 | 1 |
3. Kurt Angle | 12 | 6 | 3 |
4. Christopher Daniels | 11 | 7 | 2 |
5. Chris Sabin | 10 | 8 | 1 |
6. D’Angelo Dinero | 9 | 9 | |
6. Amazing Red | 9 | 9 | |
6. Doug Williams | 9 | 9 | |
6. Desmond Wolfe | 9 | 5 | 2 |
10. Suicide/Kaz | 8 | 8 | |
10. Alex Shelley | 8 | 8 | |
10. Hamada | 8 | 8 | |
13. Matt Morgan | 7 | 7 | |
13. Hernandez | 7 | 7 | |
15. Sarita | 6 | 6 |
Take a look at all the details on the Wrestler Match Ratings page.
You can also look at the spreadsheet here: Google Docs: Wrestler Match Ratings Spreadsheet
When I look at your analysis, I see a high posiive correlation between match quality and wrestler quality. Good work.