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The current WWE Universal Champion and Raw Tag Team Champion Seth Rollins has been awarded the top spot by Pro Wrestling Illustrated in the 29th edition of the PWI Top 500 Wrestlers.
It’s been one momentous year for Rollins as his successful 2019 has included by winning the Royal Rumble, beating Brock Lesnar at WrestleMania 35 to become the Universal Champion and having some great matches with the likes of AJ Styles and Brock Lesnar.
It’s the second time Seth Rollins has been No.1 – the previous year he won was back in 2015. He is only the fifth wrestler to claim the honour twice after Bret Hart, Stone Cold Steve Austin, Triple H and John Cena.
Daniel Bryan, AJ Styles, Kofi Kingston and Kazuchika Okada rounded out the top 5, in which it does have people raising their eyebrows with the likes of Will Ospreay only coming in at Number 10 on the list. Landing as a surprise for many wrestling fans after the amount of highly rated matches in New Japan Pro Wrestling, not seeing to help him find to a higher position on the list.
Kenny Omega was last year’s No.1 and could only make it to No.7 as he has transitioned himself into the newly-created All Elite Wrestling promotion that recently had their first show in May this year. Omega has only wrestled five matches this year but still is regarded as one of the best wrestlers in the world.
The other surprising factor was that WWE, which usually ignores the pro wrestling media as a whole, did notice and congratulated Rollins on taking home the top spot.
WWE were quoted as saying, “WWE.com congratulates Rollins on this incredible accomplishment”, while a gracious Rollins told PWI, “As difficult as it can be, this is all I ever wanted — to be in this position, to be having this conversation with you — talking about being the absolute best wrestler on the entire planet. I don’t think there is a single part of me that would trade any second of it.”
Rollins is now focusing ahead to his two matches at the upcoming Clash of Champions pay-per-view on Sept. 16 (Australian Time). Rollins will team up with Braun Strowman to defend their Raw tag titles against Dolph Ziggler and Robert Roode, while later on that night he’ll set to defend his Universal Championship against his tag team partner Braun Strowman.
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