Back in the beginning of August, I posted rankings of the top 15 wrestlers in the WWE and in TNA based on my own data on the quality of the matches over a one year period (Final Wrestler Stats)

Around the same time, Pro Wrestling Illustrated released their yearly PWI Top 500 wrestlers list. Regardless of what you think of their ranking system (I don’t remember how much effect reader ballots have on the rankings vs. PWI staff voting), I thought it would be interesting to match up my list with theirs to see how they compared.

Below are the same rankings I originally published, with the addition of the PWI top 500 ranking. Coincidently, the PWI rankings span the same months as my data collection (July through June).

WWE Top 15

Here are the Top 15 wrestlers under the WWE brands and their PWI 500 rankings for July 2009 through June 2010:

Name PWI 500 Ranking
1. John Morrison 27
2. Evan Bourne 63
2. Chris Jericho 21
2. Jack Swagger 5
5. Rey Mysterio 13
5. Christian 22
7. Dolph Ziggler 50
8. Kofi Kingston 26
8. Zack Ryder 117
10. CM Punk 3
11. Miz 12
12. Shelton Benjamin 76
12. John Cena 2
12. Jeff Hardy 20
12. Yoshi Tatsu 78

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 and their PWI 500 rankings for July 2009 through June 2010:

Name PWI 500 Ranking
1. AJ Styles 1
2. Samoa Joe 31
3. Kurt Angle 9
4. Christopher Daniels 47
5. Chris Sabin 95
6. D’Angelo Dinero 87
6. Amazing Red 36
6. Doug Williams 45
6. Desmond Wolfe 28
10. Suicide/Kaz 92
10. Alex Shelley 88
10. Hamada not ranked
13. Matt Morgan 38
13. Hernandez 71
15. Sarita not ranked

Conclusion

Just what I expected… absolutely no correlation between my rankings and the PWI 500 (except for A.J. Styles in TNA).

You can see all the details about the rankings on the Wrestler Match Ratings page.

You can also look at the spreadsheet here– Google Docs: Wrestler Match Ratings Spreadsheet

Related posts:

Final Wrestler Stats Another Crack at TV Wrestling Quality Measures Default ThumbnailTV Viewing Stats for July 2008 Default ThumbnailTV Wrestling "Quality" Measurement Default ThumbnailThe Highs and Lows of Monday Night Raw