WWE Wrestler Of The Year 2002

[Guest DeputyHawk]

I'm one of those people with way too much time on their hands who makes best-of lists for everything under the sun. With wrestling, my best-of lists are based on receiving points for holding the World title, getting title-shots, headlining PPV's, Raws, Smackdowns and house shows, as well as notching up additional points for simply appearing on TV.

 

It doesn't tell you who had the greatest match quality, which is subjective anyway, but it does provide a fairly accurate historical indicator of who was getting the pushes at the time, who were the big names of the era, etc. Just thought I'd share the way 2002 is shaping up so far.

 

To give an indicator of past accuracy of the points method, here are the top 10's for the last five years:

 

1997: 1--Bret Hart, 2--The Undertaker, 3--Steve Austin, 4--Shawn Michaels, 5--Mankind, 6--Vader, 7--Psycho Sid, 8--Triple-H, 9--Owen Hart & British Bulldog, 10--Ken Shamrock

 

1998: 1--Steve Austin, 2--The Undertaker, 3--Mankind, 4--Kane, 5--The Rock, 6--Shawn Michaels, 7--Triple-H, 8--New Age Outlaws, 9--Ken Shamrock, 10--Owen Hart

 

1999: 1--The Rock, 2--Steve Austin, 3--Triple-H, 4--Mankind, 5--Vince McMahon, 6--The Undertaker, 7--The Big Show, 8--Kane, 9--Chyna, 10--Shane McMahon

 

2000: 1--The Rock, 2--Triple-H, 3--Kurt Angle, 4--The Undertaker, 5--Chris Benoit, 6--Kane, 7--Rikishi, 8--The Big Show, 9--Mick Foley, 10--Chris Jericho

 

2001: 1--Steve Austin, 2--Kurt Angle, 3--The Rock, 4--Triple-H, 5--The Undertaker, 6--Chris Jericho, 7--Kane, 8--Booker T, 9--Rob Van Dam, 10--Chris Benoit

 

So here's the 2002 Top 20 as of the end of August (July's position in parenthesis)

 

1(1)----Triple-H (710)

2(3)----Kurt Angle (441)

3(2)----Chris Jericho (431)

4(4)----The Rock (422)

5(5)----Hulk Hogan (420)

6(6)----Steve Austin (420)

7(7)----The Undertaker (350)

8(9)----Brock Lesnar (230)

9(8)----Rob Van Dam (214)

10(11)-Edge (133)

11(14)-Eddie Guerrero (121)

12(16)-Chris Benoit (120)

13(10)-Ric Flair (50)

14(12)-Booker T (42)

15(13)-The Big Show (32)

16(15)-X-Pac (30)

17(16)-Kevin Nash (30)

18(17)-Scott Hall (30)

19(18)-Kane (22)

20(28)-Goldust (20)

 

Ahhh, to have a life.....

[Guest Kotzenjunge]

He hasn't held any titles except for the Intercontinental and Tag(both were pretty brief), but I'd have figured Edge won the most this year.

 

Fo sheez,

Kotzenjunge

[Guest DeputyHawk]

I don't put much stock in win/loss records so that doesn't go towards the ranking - mainly just position on the card, pushes, etc, their general profile as top players. Edge isn't quite there yet, but I predict he'll remain in the top 10 until the end of the year.

 

I also realise Angle is the only one (apart from Austin) of the top eight not to have won the World title this year, but he has consistently headlined enough Raws, Smackdowns, and house shows to earn his high position. no's 2-7 are all extremely close in the points scoring system, but it looks like Trips is easily running away with the no.1 slot for this year.