Here Are The Five Things To Get Irrationally Upset About From This Year’s PWI 500

It’s that time again, folks, where we pretend we care about the rankings in Pro Wrestling Illustrated‘s annual PWI 500.

This year’s No. 1 spot went to current WWE World Heavyweight and United States Champion Seth Rollins, which shouldn’t surprise you.

That said, the point of the PWI 500 is supposed to be a ranking of the 500 top male professional wrestlers in the world, but it’s actually just a yearly excuse for wrestling fans to get irrationally pissed about a list and angrily talk about it for a few days. It’s like PWI’s Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, but instead of naked models in the Caribbean, we get Jeff Jarrett 39 spots ahead of Dalton Castle. It’s insane. It’s a list made by people who don’t watch wrestling, but have to write about it for living, compiling a list to anger people who respectively do and don’t.

You can check out the full list here. Nerd alert, as the guy who typed it up decided to give everybody their full names, even if they don’t go by them anymore. We thumbed through the list and compiled our five top choices for things you should get mad about, with “should” used in the loosest possible way.

ENJOY.

1. Brock Lesnar isn’t on the list.

If we (wrestling) observe that the PWI 500 tracks from September to September, Brock Lesnar was WWE World Heavyweight Champion for half the year. A kayfabe list that contains Space Monkey, “Kay Jutler,” Cheeseburger and The Stro, WWE World Heavyweight Champion Brock Lesnar isn’t ranked. According to PWI, you’ve got to have at least 20 matches during the year or wrestle in seven different months, and Brock didn’t qualify. Keep in mind that this list is not real and not actually based on anything tangible — and that it includes wrestlers like “Steve Stardom,” who haven’t had a documented match since 2013 — so make of that what you will.

Our best guess is, “20 matches/seven months applies to you if you’re famous enough for us to know who you are, but at some point we’ve got to fill 500 spots and are just going to the Online World of Wrestling profiles page and writing in names.” Wait, that can’t be it, because Daniel Bryan was No. 14. Did Daniel Bryan have 20 matches this year?

2. Pentagon, Jr. is ranked lower than R-Truth.

94. R-Truth
95. Pentagon, Jr.

During the past year, Pentagon, Jr. rode the popularity of Lucha Underground to become one of the coolest, most in-demand wrestlers in the world. He’s a pissed-off ninja skeleton that breaks peoples’ arms as sacrifices to his Dark Master. He tore it up all year in LU and AAA, won a brutal “CERO MIEDO” match against Vampiro at ULTIMA LUCHA, and pretty much anyone who knows who he is types about him excitedly in capital letters.

R-Truth has spent the past year cutting promos about matches he isn’t actually in, and carrying a plunger to the ring because he thinks beating the King of the Ring makes him king, and he’s stupid/insane so he thinks a plunger is a scepter. Obviously, one of these guys should be above the other.

There are a few other choice rankings that will infuriate smarks, like Zach Sabre, Jr., Aero Star and Yamato occupying the next three spaces after Jessie Godderz, or Akira Tozawa ranking behind Bull Dempsey, Colin Delaney and Brutal Bob Evans. Oh, and Chuck Taylor is six spots behind THAT. Chuck Taylor is not as good as CODY DEANER, according to Pro Wrestling Illustrated.

3. Tag team rankings still don’t make any sense.

It’s not unreasonable to look at a tag team and say, “One of these guys is better than the other,” but PWI’s ranking of tag teams as singles stars has never made sense. Darren Young is a remarkably high No. 33 on this year’s list, but Titus O’Neil is down at 171. I like Darren Young as much as the next guy, but does PWI even watch these matches? What has Titus done this year to make him almost 140 wrestlers worse than his tag team partner? Then you’ve got stuff like Jimmy Uso at 49, but Jey Uso at 72. Jey’s injured, but how does that differential work, and why isn’t it as big as the one between Darren and Titus? Does doing bad storylines with Naomi bump you up 30 spots? According to PWI, The Young Bucks are better than Jey, but not Jimmy. Got it.

For the record, Simon Gotch is five wrestlers better than Aiden English, Buddy Murphy is five wrestlers better than Wesley Blake, Viktor is three wrestlers better than Konnor and Matador Diego is one matador better than Matador Fernando.

4. King Barrett is the 20th best wrestler in the world.

Not to kick a guy when he’s down, but King Barrett is ranked No. 20 on a list of the top 500 wrestlers in the world. Twenty. Think back over the past year. Aside from winning the King of the Ring tournament — essentially a house show aired on WWE Network, and not even as purposeful or prestigious as when they gave it to Mabel or Billy Gunn — what has he done? He was the Intercontinental Champion, but lost almost every single match he had as champion. That story ended with people just stealing the belt from him because he couldn’t do anything about it, then him becoming the seventh most important person in the chase. After that, he feuded with R-Truth over who got to be king, even though he was king and Truth wasn’t (?). But hey, Truth carried that plunger to the ring like we said, and that made him better than Pentagon, Jr., so I guess the guy who beat him roughly 45 percent of the time should be top 20 in the world?

Look at some of the people Barrett beat. TNA World Heavyweight Champion Ethan Carter III. Kazuchika Okada. Finn Bálor. Cesaro. Hell, Ryback. He’s 22 spots ahead of Sheamus. Even with Sheamus away filming a movie, how does anyone in good kayfabe faith put Barrett over Sheamus on a list of WWE ANYTHING? I’d rank Sheamus ahead of Barrett on a list of the best people named “Wade.”

Also, as a reminder, he’s at least 481 spots ahead of Brock Lesnar.

5. PWI forgot who Zack Ryder is.

This will either make you laugh or cry, but Zack Ryder is the lowest ranked WWE Superstar at No. 474. That’s only 26 spots higher than SPACE MONKEY. The next lowest ranked WWE employees are developmental talents Tye Dillinger (328), Jason Jordan (277) and Bull Dempsey (263). The next lowest main roster WWE star is Heath Slater at No. 189. That makes Zack Ryder 288 wrestlers worse than the rest of the WWE roster.

The explanation for this is even better. PWI’s got a guy named “Adam Ryder” ranked at No. 168. He’s one of Lance Storm’s students and the current ASW Cruiserweight Champion. Now, I’m not gonna say All-Star Wrestling’s secondary titles aren’t prestigious, but they aren’t the kind of thing that get you kayfabe ranked ahead of Titus O’Neil and Dr. Wagner, Jr. So, what happened? Did PWI have two guys named Ryder and accidentally rank them alphabetically instead of by importance? What’s funnier, that they think Zack Ryder’s terrible, or that he’s not important enough for anyone to notice the typo?

So, those are our choices. Be sure to check out the full list of rankings and let us know what makes you the maddest. Comments sections of blogs are great places to have civil conversations about how mad we are about things!