This week Pro Wrestling Illustrated released its cover for the 2025 edition alongside the top 10 of the publication’s annual list.
For anyone who might not have seen it, this is the top 10:
- Cody Rhodes
- Jon Moxley
- Gunther
- Hangman Page
- Hirooki Goto
- Jey Uso
- Swerve Strickland
- Seth Rollins
- Mistico
- Will Ospreay
Typically the annual list draws a lot of attention from fans. The PWI 500 also tends to be one of those lightning rods where discussions over who is or isn’t first can get heated, concurrently along with frustrations over why your favourite isn’t higher and why “Wrestler A” is higher than “Wrestler B.” The important thing to remember with these lists from PWI is that they’re more about showcasing wrestlers who have had successful years, less so being based on match quality, skill, etc. It’s a kayfabe list based on what we see as fans, and then that is judged accordingly against other wrestlers’ years.
With that being said, I don’t have a lot objections to the top 10. If you judge the list based on that criteria, it makes sense with the top 8 either holding world titles throughout the judgment period from around the middle of last year to recently, or conversely, they were in prominent feuds the entire year. I think that’s where Hangman Page comes into the discussion as he didn’t hold the AEW title very long — if at all — during that window. He’s there based on his storylines, his character development and the matches he had. I think they were all that impactful to put him ahead of everyone other than the top three.
I think you can rejig some of the list. Perhaps Seth Rollins should be ahead of Jey Uso, but then you have to consider whether Rollins had a moment and build that transcends Uso winning his first world title. From that point I think Mistico being ahead of Will Ospreay makes sense considering he had the more consistent, impactful year. Although Ospreay did hold a championship, he’s there almost strictly on his match quality and content.
As far as the top three are concerned I agree with the ranking and order. I think it makes sense to put the three of them ahead of Page because with them we’re talking about the three flagbearers in terms of world title holders from 2024 into 2025. They are the ones the stories and programs centred around. And I think if you look at the numbers (compiled from Cage Match), you start to see why the rankings fell as they did. We’ll start with Gunther and work up toward Cody Rhodes.
Gunther
This particular period of judgment ran from August 1, 2024 through July 31, 2025. Within that window Gunther won the WWE World Heavyweight Championship twice, notably ruling the men’s division for 258 days between SummerSlam 2024 and WrestleMania 41. In that time he defended his championship 30 times across TV, PLEs and live events. He won his second championship from Jey Uso, who had defeated him at WrestleMania, and then defended his title once against Goldberg. As far as we’re concerned with this list, he never lost the title until Aug. 2, 2025 to CM Punk. That effectively means he held WWE’s world championship for 313 out of 364 days (roughly 86% of the judgment period).
If we look outside that window he wrestled 90 matches across 2024 and 2025, finishing with a record of 68 wins against 21 losses (76% win percentage). Partially during that period he also held the Intercontinental title on the back end of his historic, record-setting 666 day reign.
Although he had lengthy, decorated runs, you can also see avenues as to why he would not even surpass Moxley in the number two spot. Since this is a kayfabe list, that also means his win-loss record offsets his dominant 2024-25 world title runs. Although I think that’s definitely enough to keep him ahead of AEW’s Hangman Page who had a great year but only held the AEW title for a few weeks at the back end of the judgment period, it isn’t enough to crack the top two. Regardless he is one of the great champions and great, dominant heel wrestlers in pro wrestling and will continue to be for some time. However I think part of what holds him back is his character development.
Jon Moxley
Moxley wrestled about 21 matches between Aug. 1 2024 and July 31, 2025. Notably during that period he won the AEW world championship in December 2024 and defended it seven times successfully until he was defeated by Hangman Page at AEW All In in July. During this period he also defended the AEW trios title with the Death Riders as a replacement for PAC. After losing the AEW title he and Page wrestled once more for the championship in a match that saw everyone banned from ringside. In all Moxley held the AEW title for 273 days across a variety of match types.
Most notably Moxley’s reign coincided with his Death Riders collective character arc to push AEW and its roster toward its best collective selves. The impetus for his philosophical shift was founded on the belief AEW wrestlers would not stand on their own, fought for the wrong reasons and as a result would never reach their potential. This version of Jon Moxley, who hid the AEW title in a locked briefcase for his entire reign, was the most driven, evolved version of the Moxley character. He’s at his best when he is motivated by conviction, which combined with his rule atop the AEW men’s division from late 2024 into this summer, that element of his character arc and development puts him ahead of Gunther in my view.
I don’t think it can be argued that in-ring as a pure wrestler Gunther edges him, but if you look at his reign and take it in context of what was accomplished in kayfabe, he had one of the better years. You can argue the run dragged at points, but with hindsight and what it built to, it had value despite missteps. I think we’re also seeing the lasting power of that arc post-reign as he extends Death Riders’ influence in actively recruiting people like Daniel Garcia.
Much like with Gunther, if we look outside the period, across 2024 and 2025 Moxley wrestled 69 matches. He amassed a record of 50 wins against 12 losses for win percentage of 72%. Mox also held the IWGP World Title just outside the judgement period in 2024. He defended that four times before losing it back to Tetsuya Naito at Forbidden Door 2024.
Cody Rhodes
Well, two years in a row now Rhodes has sat atop this list. There’s frankly no arguing against it either. Looking at everything we talked about above, even when roping in Hangman Page’s fantastic character driven narratives, holistically no one touched Rhodes in 2024 and 2025.
We’ll get into the bigger context shortly, but even just isolating his first WWE title reign to the judgment period, Rhodes successfully defended the WWE title 40 times of his total 63 defences during his 378-day reign that ended at WrestleMania. Within that period he wrestled 65 matches and only lost to John Cena.
Prior to that he had only lost twice in 2024 to Drew McIntyre and then to the Rock and Roman Reigns at WrestleMania, both of which were outside the window. That makes him 64-1 between the start of the judgment period for PWI and when he lost at WrestleMania this year. Taking this a step further, during the post-WrestleMania period he won the King of the Ring to secure his rematch against Cena, and went 8-0 from April to the end of July. It would almost be overkill for the window to stretch a few more days to allow his second WWE title win to be counted.
Leaving the window aside, if you look at the totality of his last two years he has wrestled 125 matches with a record of 120 wins against 5 losses for a win percentage of 96%. Those metrics are tough to argue against.
Additionally to the quantitative aspect of this, Rhodes was also part of two of the biggest WWE moments of recent memory. This includes the toppling of the Bloodline and the Roman Empire (including Rock), and the now-infamous John Cena heel turn that led to Rhodes losing his championship. I think when you marry those metrics to the intangible, more story-driven dynamics of WWE TV, there’s no real comparison against him being number one again. He was that present, that effective, that protected and he ruled his division at an almost undefeated clip. There is value in his work with mileage to spare as we head into the back end of 2025. Whether that means he carries the WWE title into WrestleMania again is anyone’s guess.
