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| The countdown begins with Candice LeRae Photo Credit: Scott Finkelstein |
100. Candice LeRae
Points: 759
Number of Ballots: 14
Highest Vote: 12th Place (Hayley Erin)
Last Year’s Ranking: 79th Place
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| Photo Credit: WWE.com |
Points: 778
Number of Ballots: 22
Highest Vote: 24th Place Chris Harrington
Last Year’s Ranking: Not Ranked
TH: She’s still got a lot of room for growth, but for someone with growing to do, she’s logged quite a few nice matches under her belt. She’s gotten high marks in presence and how to use her size to her advantage, and while she hasn’t had a performance as good as the London match with Bayley from 2015 under her belt, Jax has shown she’s not just another Heidenreich-style bust.
Scott Raychel: I could watch Nia Jax throw women across rings and into barricades all day every day. She is getting so close to being the devastating lady hoss she's always been destined to be, and when she gets there, it's going to be beautiful.
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| Photo Credit: Scott Finkelstein |
Points: 783
Number of Ballots: 16
Highest Vote: 17th Place (The Lady J)
Last Year’s Ranking: Not Ranked
TH: Go back to the second episode of Lucha Underground’s third season and watch the Weapons of Mass Destruction match in the main event slot. Do it with the volume turned all the way up. The commentary is wretched, enough to make a sane person quit on the program, but yet I was able to sit there and keep my eyes peeled on the match even as Matt Striker shilled for Donald Trump and Vampiro slept off whatever hangover he had from the night before. A lot of that was due to Killshot, who hit so many big highspots at right times, bringing a sense of violence to the proceedings that they not only craved, but that also were able to compete with the unconscionable distractions by mostly Striker. Killsoht, both under the hood and as Strickland, had a lot of other great performances and showed a ton of other masterful positives, but this match was the exclamation point on his 2016 campaign.
Scott Raychel: The Weapons of Mass Destruction Match that Killshot had with Marty “The Moth” Martinez on Lucha Underground should be loved and appreciated by more people than it currently is.
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| Photo Credit: Scott Finkelstein |
Points: 799
Number of Ballots: 15
Highest Vote:15th Place (CMU Chips)
Last Year’s Ranking: 39th Place
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| Photo Credit: John Moses |
Points: 799 (ranked higher because of a higher highest vote)
Number of Ballots: 16
Highest Vote: 6th Place (Okori Wadsworth)
Last Year’s Ranking: Not Ranked
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| Photo Credit: Scott Finkelstein |
Points: 809
Number of Ballots: 16
Highest Vote: 8th Place (Brock Jahnke)
Last Year’s Ranking: Not Ranked
Brock Jahnke: You know that Mr. Perfect promo where he’s talking about muscle symmetry, all the things in the right places, and behind it all, the perfect mind? That’s Dijak’s reality. He definitely feels like a guy who’s been wrestling less than four years total, but I honestly believe he can do anything. More importantly, he brings a certain gravitas to his matches. When he screams into his trainer’s face about how he’s going to die, I believe it. If it was someone else, I’d roll my eyes at the theatrics. But Dijak makes me believe.
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| Photo Credit: Scott Finkelstein |
Points: 817
Number of Ballots: 15
Highest Vote: 2nd Place (De O’Brien)
Last Year’s Ranking: Not Ranked
De O’Brien: There's a lot to be said about Trent Seven, so I'm going to keep it as brief as I can.
Mr. Seven is a good-lookin', hard-hittin' rogue with facial hair that your average "I make craft beer with my mom's ashes" hipster would envy, but he's also one of the faces most recognized and appreciated from the inaugural WWE UK Championship Tournament. Seeing Seven as part of the listed talent, that interested me enough to not only care about the Tournament itself, but to check out other talent taking part in it; after all, isn't that an oft-overlooked part of wrestler inclusion in events?
2016 was a great year for BritWres in the US; Trent's accessibility to US fans via Chikara may have been a big part of that. Perhaps PWG has need of a Mustache Mountain to take on whatever's left of their Mount Rushmore? (Just book it, I'll let y'all have that one for free.)
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| Photo Credit: Scott Finkelstein |
Points: 823
Number of Ballots: 15
Highest Vote: 6th Place (The Lady J)
Last Year’s Ranking: Not Ranked
TH: Brother Matt gets most of the credit for the Broken universe and the unique matches that went on inside of it, but Brother Nero should get some dap too. The Final Deletion doesn’t work without his harebrained reactions to Matt’s tricks, and his bumping and daring stunts on unconventional terrain deserve plaudits as well. When he finally submitted to Matt’s brokenness, his reckless regard for his own body adapted well to the new, more esoteric trappings. Jeff Hardy is one of the greatest professional wrestlers of all-time, and this year, though unconventional, was another piece of evidence towards his case, even if it didn’t reach dizzying personal highs for himself like in the past.
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| Photo Credit: WWE.com |
Points: 832
Number of Ballots: 23
Highest Vote: 25th Place (Devon Hales)
Last Year’s Ranking: 27th Place
TH: Kalisto had some rough patches in ’16, but he had an inspired beginning of the year dragging a sleeping Alberto del Rio to some fine matches. I’m not sure if he got rusty because of disuse or if he was benched because he was getting sloppy, but either way, his flaws were overblown. He still put time in to make the other guy look good in his matches, and that goes a long way.
Brock Jahnke: When so much of what goes on in WWE feels like it doesn’t matter only weeks later, Kalisto quietly wracked up a number of really good matches over the year. From an above-average United States title reign to a surprisingly great chairs match at the end of the year, Kalisto’s 2016 probably wouldn’t blow anyone away, but it caught my eye in a year in which I largely stopped watching WWE.
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| Photo Credit: WWE.com |
Points: 834
Number of Ballots: 22
Highest Vote: 21st Place (Cewsh)
Last Year’s Ranking: 9th Place
Butch Rosser: Sure, it would've been great if Mr. Heyman's main client had given a damn at WrestleMania. But in an above-average Fast Lane match, and in busting Randy Orton down to the white meat at SummerSlam, Lesnar proved his level is unique: when he's out there tossing fools and mauling victims with express tickets to Suplex City, no one is more compelling and no one feels more like an ornery bear who's just snapped the shackles that have been on them for years. Let's just call it what it is: when he's at his best, no one is more real than the Beast.
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| Photo Credit: WWE.com |
Points: 852
Number of Ballots: 24
Highest Vote: 19th Place (Gio Castillo)
Last Year’s Ranking: Not Ranked
TH: Almas disappointed a lot of those who knew him as La Sombra in CMLL, but I thought at least in the ring, he adapted to NXT pretty well. His debut match with Tye Dillinger was as good as a debut for a former lucha star could go, and he grew in the ring from there. While he didn’t really start to turn on the jets until after he turned heel and thus started to play up more of his “ingobernable” tendencies more, but it was a good start.
Joshua Browns: I’d love to have him higher on my ballot, given that I loved what little I saw of his previous work before signing with NXT, but he really struggled both with the WWE style and finding himself a new character. The good news is that the character change they threw his way late in the year seems to suit him much better, and his in-ring work improved along with it. I’ll be surprised if I don’t have him higher next year.
Butch Rosser: It took them too long to realize to let the former La Sombra be more ungovernable, but once he played back into his familiar type -- the entirely too-handsome face you still want to slap that's damn talented and knows it -- his career arc went back on the upswing. He won't be able to take it entirely tranquilo in the coming year, especially since you'd have to figure if they were going to pull the trigger on him hoisting the Big X it'd happen in the next 18 months, but for fans of his they can look to him occupying more of the spotlight and not being "the other guy in Bobby Roode's NXT debut".
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| Photo Credit: Scott Finkelstein |
Points: 860
Number of Ballots: 15
Highest Vote:1st Place (LUTang_Secret)
Last Year’s Ranking: Not Ranked
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| Photo Credit: Scott Finkelstein |
Points: 864
Number of Ballots: 15
Highest Vote:1st Place (De O’Brien)
Last Year’s Ranking: Not Ranked
De O’Brien: Tyler Bate first debuted in 2014 at the ripe old age of 17 (!, I'll let that sink in a second, because at 17 I was still trying to graduate high school and figure out how to do algebra) and in two years he's managed to rack up accomplishments that make one wonder: Where, if anywhere, will this young man stop?
Bate has been part of the Chikara Campeonatos de Parejas with fellow Mustache Mountaineer Trent Seven. He won the inaugural WWE UK Championship Tournament, defeating Pete Dunne and becoming the second-youngest champion in WWE history after Rene Dupree. He debuted on NXT Feb 1st of this year.
My fondest wish for Tyler is that he follows up on last year's successes with something even more outrageous this year (winning every match at WrestleMania sans the women's all by himself, maybe?), but even if he decides to take it easy and maybe show up on NXT once or twice every two months, there won't be any complaints from me. Tyler Bate defines rising and grinding while managing to stay humble and prove through actions, not just meaningless words, that he can do whatever he wants, and that you'll stay entertained the entire time.
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| Photo Credit: WWE.com |
Points: 889
Number of Ballots: 23
Highest Vote: 8th Place (Chris Harrington)
Last Year’s Ranking: 63rd Place
TH: Woods spent the least time of his New Day brethren in the ring, but he made his mark when he got the chance. His work underneath may have been the best of the three, and his unorthodox ring movements always were a great change of pace.
Brock Jahnke: While he spent more of 2016 out of the ring than in it, Woods is the definition of a team player. Whether it was mostly meaningless tag matches with the New Day, four minute singles matches with Bray Wyatt, or great TV matches with guys like AJ Styles and Roman Reigns, Woods excelled at whatever he was told to do and did it with lots of character and heart.
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| Photo Credit: WWE.com |
Points: 891
Number of Ballots: 14
Highest Vote: 6th Place (Frito Bandito)
Last Year’s Ranking: 95th Place
TH: Hatfield spent most of the year as a singles wrestler, which was a departure for him. However, he continued to show that he’s one of Chikara’s best in-ring hands and one of the most overlooked wrestlers on the indies. Few wrestlers of his stature get power wrestling like he does, which is a huge plus on the indie scene.
Joshua Browns: Yeah, I’m here to stan for Dasher Hatfield again. NBA analysts like to refer to certain role players as “glue guys”, and that’s how I see Dasher. Just a solid, old-school dude with the best hot tag work of anybody not named Jason Jordan.
Scott Raychel: The Olde Timey King of Swing continues to be one of the pillars of Chikara Pro. The guy never has a dull match and is just delightful in general. Check him out as the tecnico team leader in the Torneo Cibernetico match at Chikara's season 16 finale as a prime example of his character work and in-ring abilities.
Mat Morgan: The 2016 Cibernetico should, hopefully, be Dasher Hatfield's coming-out party as a singles ace in Chikara. If he's not doing big things and headlining shows this year then I'm gonna shake my head ruefully at Quack in Chicago this year. Ruefully, I say! The best thing about Hatfield is that he gets the little details right; I was by the tecnico corner for the Cibernetico match and when he wasn't wrestling or selling, he was initiating brief conversations with the other members of his team where they were reacting to what was going on in the ring and making brief asides to fans in the front row about the same thing. For a company where fan immersion and suspension of disbelief is as treasured as it is in Chikara, those skills are invaluable and they're lucky to have him.
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| Photo Credit: Scott Finkelstein |
Points: 904
Number of Ballots: 18
Highest Vote: 11th Place (TH)
Last Year’s Ranking: 48th Place
TH:“Trashy Tim” took a thrashing online and at live shows in 2016. Granted, he wasn’t booked in the best manner at all, but any criticisms of his in-ring work were not warranted. In many ways, he may have had his best year in the ring, or at least his most well-rounded one. The #grapplefuck style is hard to swallow for some; personally, I love it, obviously. But Thatcher had some really key performances where he showed some adaptability, something he’s lacked in prior years. Look at the brawl he had with Drew Gulak in EVOLVE in Florida. That street fight could have belonged on an episode of Mid-South in Memphis or at the very least a saucier episode of RAW. In fact, his matches with Gulak, whether in EVOLVE or PWG, should be a clue to how good he is. He’s wrestled Gulak, what, a billion times? How many times have they had the same match? None. Every time out, they find a new way to spin the formula, and that has to speak to how good both guys are. Thatcher is the goods in the ring, and people let Gabe Sapolsky’s incompetence with the book blind them to that fact.
Brock Jahnke: From bad booking to injury to an unwillingness to wrestle full-time that clashes with the modern wrestling fan’s cry of “MORE MORE MORE MORE”, Thatcher had a lot working against him in 2016, but don’t let the internet tell you otherwise; he probably had a better year than your favorite wrestler. When Gabe wasn’t doing his best to ensure otherwise, Thatcher racked up a number of good title defenses, tag matches, and a particularly great match with another technical marvel in Manchester on Valentine’s Day.
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| Photo Credit: WWE.com |
Points: 914
Number of Ballots: 22
Highest Vote: 22nd Place (Frank McCormick)
Last Year’s Ranking: Not Ranked
TH: Slater has really been what everyone, including myself, has said Dolph Ziggler was for most of his WWE career in terms of, for lack of a better term, “defense” or selling/bumping. The big differences are stage, obviously, but also the fit surrounding each wrestler. Slater’s selling almost seemed easy to take for granted, but it was a huge reason why his work inside the ring resonated with his unlikely Dusty Rhodes-for-the-freelancer-era out of it. He wasn’t the best face-in-peril in the company, but he was effective enough to carry Smackdown’s tag division through perhaps the only part of its tenure post-brand split that it was good. That should count for something.
Dirk Kessler: Heath Slater's job in WWE for years has been selling, and in his case, overselling. As a matter of fact, Slater has been the best over-seller in WWE since Shawn Michaels. Twenty-sixteen was a great year for WWE's most passionate jobber, as he finally could capitalize his over-selling capabilities in tag team wrestling by overselling for the hot-tag.
Frank McCormick: While I love, adore, and cherish Heath Slater for his character work, it is a total shame that he will probably never get the credit he deserves for his in-ring work. He makes everyone look good, gets the crowd invested, and does everything with smooth professionalism. He’s the epitome of the “worker.”
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| Photo Credit: Zia Hiltey |
Points: 934
Number of Ballots: 14
Highest Vote: 3rd Place (Frito Bandito)
Last Year’s Ranking: 100th Place
TH: No one flies around a bingo hall quite like Fire Ant, even after all these years. Chikara crowds can take the Hot Property for granted when much of the roster seems in flux, but honestly, few people know which notes to hit for that crowd.
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| Photo Credit: WWE.com |
Points: 935
Number of Ballots: 23
Highest Vote: 13th Place (Brian Brown)
Last Year’s Ranking: 32nd Place
TH: The meme may have died, but Bella still brought all kinds of righteous fire when she was able to be in the ring. Neck surgery threatened her career, but she still was able to do her terrible angles and atrocious acting more justice than either deserved with her preternatural ability to pace matches and the bomb elbows punctuating the high moments.
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| Photo Credit: WWE.com |
Points: 945
Number of Ballots: 18
Highest Vote: 14th Place (Joe Drilling)
Last Year’s Ranking: Not Ranked