The 2015 TWB 100 Announcement and Call for Ballots

Sami Zayn was last year's number one. Who will this year's be? Photo Credit: WWE.com

Ladies, gentlemen, and all fine people outside the gender binary, the blessed day on the calendar has arrived once again. The 2015 TWB 100 is open for business and ready to accept your ballots. For the folks who haven't participated in any of the prior six iterations of this jolly old event, the TWB 100 is a crowd-sourced, fan-voted, open-participation list that looks to rank wrestlers from the last calendar year (in this case, 2015) in terms of their performances in the ring as wrestlers/workers. Participation is open to anyone who would like to submit a ballot and follow a simple list of rules for submitting a ballot. The following is the list of participation criteria:

1. The TWB 100 is based solely on a wrestler's performance between the bells in any wrestling contest. This includes move variety, execution, workrate, selling, bumping, timing, pacing, protecting the opponent, trash-talking and anything else that happens within the course of a wrestling match. Anything that happens in promos or segments outside the confines of a wrestling match should NOT be considered for ballot entries. It is also advised against using match booking in deciding placement on the ballot (i.e. don't use "well he/she wins too much" as rationale against their placement), but I also understand that it's hard to divorce the concept of wins and losses from match ability sometimes.
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2. Content to be considered for ballots must have taken place between 1/1/15 at 12:00:00 AM to 12/31/15 at 11:59:59 PM inclusive, i.e. within the calendar year of 2015. Consideration should also be limited to matches either held on the soil within the United States and Canada, or by promotions that were based in United States and Canada (i.e. Chikara or WWE in the United Kingdom, The Beast in the East, etc.) only. For the sake of those who watch wrestling from Puerto Rico, yes, that island should be considered as part of the United States for this exercise.
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3. Matches should be considered by the date they were actually worked except in the case of Lucha Underground, where you are to consider the date the match was aired on El Rey Network.
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4. Ballots shall have a minimum of 25 wrestlers named in order and a maximum of 100 wrestlers named in order. Ballots between those two numbers inclusive will be accepted with no questions, as long as they are ranked in order. Ballots with 24 or fewer and unordered ballots will be thrown out. Ballots with 101 or more will be pared down to 100.
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5. No demarcation shall exist between male or female wrestlers. For the purposes of this ballot, anyone who wrestled in an eligible promotion for the time period given shall be considered eligible regardless of race, creed, gender, sexual orientation, size, weight class, or even species (I see you, Inter Species Wrestling).
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6. If you want to list a tag team,you must list the individual members and NOT the unit. So, if you want to include the Dubstep Cowboys, then list Blake and Murphy as separate entries on your list, not "Dubstep Cowboys" as one entry. All entries for a stable or tag team will be ignored on said ballot (or at the very least, I will e-mail you for clarification).
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7. No eligibility requirements for submission of a ballot are in place. As long as the submitter likes and has watched wrestling in 2015, they're allowed to submit.
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8. Ballots can be sent to me, TH, via any means necessary, either through e-mail (tom DOT holzerman AT gmail DOT com), Facebook messages, written letter (for those who know my address), Twitter DM or any other ways of private contact.
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9. The due date for ballots shall be Sunday, March 6 at 11:59:59 PM local time (i.e., if I have it in my inbox by Monday morning, March 7, you should be good).
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10. The final list will be disseminated via slow release on TWB with blurbs written by ballot submitters. If you are interested in writing for the release, please let me know with your ballot. Your blurbs should be at least one paragraph explaining why you voted for that particular wrestler.
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11. All ballots are subject to scrutiny by me, TH.

Simple enough, right? Well, one might be surprised with how many people don't read the criteria. Either way, last year, 76 intrepid people submitted ballots. I hope that number continues to grow, but for that number to grow, I need you all to remember one big thing. It doesn't matter the width or breadth of wrestling you have watched, but just that you watch wrestling, that you think about it, and that you realize your opinion matters. With that in mind, send in your ballots, and let's make this year's run the biggest and best one yet.