The 8 Ball: Top 8 Current Champions in Wrestling

Top 8 Current Champions in Pro Wrestling

If you follow soccer (or as non-Americans know it, football), you’re no doubt familiar with the Champions League. All the best teams from every league in Europe get together to decide which one is the best. Other continents have their championships, notably the Copa Libertadores in South America, but the Champions League is the current gold standard. Interestingly enough, they’re down to their final eight (same number that dictates my entire column), which got me thinking — who would be in the Pro Wrestling Champions League? More specifically, if you took all the wrestling champions out there, how would they rank? Who would make the elite eight of that group?

Well, the Magic 8-Ball is here to provide the answer. Rules are simple. You need to be holding the main strap in your company at this time to qualify. That means John Cena and Daniel Bryan don’t make the cut. No room here for secondary titles. Before I get to the main list, some honorable mentions. Drew Galloway recently unified the Evolve and Dragon Gate USA titles, making him the king of Gabe Sapolsky’s WWN. That’s a fairly big deal in the indies. It will be interesting to see how Galloway juggles that with his TNA gig. Hallowicked just won the Chikara Grand Championship, meaning he’s the first guy in that promotion’s history who was won everything on offer: singles, tag team and trios. Roderick Strong holds the PWG World Championship and he’s a consummate pro in the ring. If you want to count NXT as a separate entity from WWE, and I do, Kevin Owens is no slouch.

Yet none of them made list. Now onto the top champions in the business.

8. Jay Briscoe

Promotion: Ring of Honor Briscoe’s ROH to the bone. He’s been with the promotion since its inception, dominating the ROH tag division with his brother Mark. He’s now on his second stint as the top man in the company, with 10 successful defenses since winning the belt last September. Recently he beat Samoa Joe, which is a huge deal in ROH (where Joe is like Bruno Sammartino). On the downside, Briscoe isn’t the greatest ring technician. His best singles matches tend to be hardcore affairs. He and Adam Cole had a glorious and bloody clash at Final Battle 2014, but the majority of Briscoe’s defenses haven’t created a lot of buzz. There’s also the unpleasant business from two years where he tweeted some nasty homophobic remarks. He claimed it was done in character to bolster the Jay Briscoe manic redneck persona and that it doesn’t reflect his real-life views, but the stigma still haunts him, and it’s questionable whether ROH is doing itself any favors with Briscoe as its main attraction. Briscoe seems a bit unlikely to return ROH to the glory days when it was the hottest indie promotion on the planet.

7. Minoru Suzuki

Promotion: Pro Wrestling Noah Technically Suzuki is a New Japan wrestler, but his Suzukigun stable has invaded Noah and last month he took that title off Naomichi Marufuji. Suzuki is no youngster, age 46, but he has hard-man credentials few can match. He spent more than a decade as an MMA fighter, beating a guy named Ken Shamrock for the King of Pancrase title back in 1995. I am not a fan of when pro wrestling operates too much like fake MMA matches, but Suzuki has found a balance between the two, staging some classics in recent years against Hiroshi Tanahashi and AJ Styles. The Man with the Worst Personality in the World clearly still has something left in his tank. Expect a classic later this year when he and Marufuji have a rematch.

6. Kurt Angle

Promotion: TNA You can argue whether TNA benefits from Angle holding its belt for the sixth time. Like Suzuki, he’s 46 years-old. Angle’s also held together with bailing wire these days. Doubt there’s a spot on his body where he hasn’t had surgery. That said, he’s a freakin’ former Olympic gold medalist and he’s one of the greatest ring technicians in the history of pro wrestling. If you could stage an all-time dream card, Angle vs. Lou Thesz in a shoot match might be as good as it gets. To his credit, Angle has put on some high quality matches against Lashley in recent weeks. Their mat-based backgrounds mesh real well together. How long TNA keeps its strap around the waist of the company warhorse is an open question. Hard to believe Angle will hold together for the long haul. So this might be Angle’s last turn with the title. We should probably enjoy it while it lasts.

5. Seth Rollins

Promotion: WWE Welcome to the big time Mr. Rollins. He holds the most prestigious belt in the business and won it in epic fashion at WrestleMania 31. Given that, you might wonder why Rollins only ranks 5th on this list. Simple answer is we don’t know what kind of champ he’s going to be. The WWE has annoying habit of cutting the nuts off its heel champs and forcing them to be all chickenshit all the time. Hopefully Rollins evades that trap. He’s got way too much talent and he really should be one of the defining performers in the Network Era. Somewhere during this title run, we all should become convinced Rollins is the best in the business … at least we should if they’re doing it right. Few wrestlers have climbed to the WWE title with a better pedigree. Rollins has been a belt collector everywhere he’s been. Whenever he steps into a promotion, he becomes THE man. He’s held the ROH title (as Tyler Black), the FIP title, the FCW title and the NXT title. What he needs to do now is make good on all that promise. It’s a big ask. Not everybody is capable of staging consistently awesome matches in the highest profile pro wrestling promotion on the planet. If Rollins can do it, he’ll leap up to #1.

4. Prince Puma

Promotion: Lucha Underground The belt he’s holding is brand new, but Puma is one of the hottest properties in the wrestling business at the moment so he’s adding luster to it quickly. For those who don’t know, Puma usually goes by the name Ricochet and he spent the past year winning piles of stuff: PWG’s Battle of Los Angeles, New Japan’s Best of the Super Juniors Tournament and Dragon Gate’s Open the Dream Gate Championship. In October he won the initial Lucha Underground Championship, beating Johnny Mundo (aka John Morrison) at the end of a 20-man Aztec Warfare (battle royal) match. Since then he’s been engaged with the bruiser known as Cage. Main thing is when Puma hits the ring, you are guaranteed excitement. The Lucha Underground Arena goes nuts for this guy, and with good reason. Few people in the business operate at Puma’s level. He’s always good, often great and sometimes incredible. Classic case of the man making the belt.

3. BxB Hulk

Promotion: Dragon Gate I often wondered why Hulk wasn’t holding the Open the Dream Gate Championship prior to last year. He always struck me as Dragon Gate’s champ-in-waiting until he finally beat Yamato for the title last summer. Since then he’s defended his belt six times, all in quality matches. Hulk tends to polarize fans. Some people really don’t like him. Obviously I’m in the other camp. Miss him running riot as part of Mad Blankey, but he’s a face now, standing up against the diabolical plans of his former stablemates. Kind of miss the more wicked version of his character. On the bright side, Hulk’s title run is surely leading to a collision with Cima, the man who dominated the promotion for its first decade. This could be the year Hulk ensconces himself as the unquestioned “face” of Dragon Gate.

2. Alberto El Patron

Promotion: AAA Proof that life after the WWE can be so much better than life in it. The former Alberto Del Rio had stagnated in the WWE. The World Heavyweight Championship effectively died around his waist, despite his obvious ability. He was directionless. However, slapping the taste out of some bigoted putz’s mouth and getting fired for it seemed to reignite his career. He went to AAA and quickly became AAA Mega Champion, beating El Texano Jr. El Patron, which translates to “The Boss,” has spent the past few months beating Texano at every turn. In the process, AAA finds itself with the most internationally recognized champion in its history. El Patron is white hot at the moment, lending his star power to Lucha Underground as well. Maybe someday we’ll see him square off against Puma. Bigger picture, AAA may be able to stage some mega matches with its new champion. Think El Patron vs. Tanahashi or El Patron vs. Cain Velasquez. That last one could sell out the Azteca.

1. AJ Styles

Promotion: New Japan A year ago he escaped the purgatory that had become TNA and emerged as the new leader of the Bullet Club in New Japan. He beat Kazuchika Okada for the IWGP Heavyweight Championship, lost it to Hiroshi Tanahashi and then won it back again in February. He put on a few classics at last year’s G1 Climax Tournament. Partially because New Japan is operating at close to an all-time high for any wrestling promotion ever and partially because AJ excels at professional wrestling, he’s an easy pick to top this list. If you want to be the champion of champions, you’ve either got to beat AJ or raise your level above where New Japan is operating. So AJ finds himself at the top of the mountain 15 months after he exited Dixieland. That’s about as unlikely a career turn as you’re going to see.

I take requests.. The purpose of this column is to look forward. What could be? What should be? What is and what should never be? What would make more sense? 411 has plenty of columns that count down and rank things that happened in the past. This is not one of those columns. The Magic 8-Ball is here to gaze into the future. If there’s someone or something you think should be given the 8-Ball treatment, mention it in the comments section. I might pick it up for future weeks.