The wrestling world has been shaken up with the absence of four top stars all across the board to due to injuries and/or sabaticals. In the past month, we've seen John Cena go on a break, Kota Ibushi & AJ Styles suffer injuries, and now you can add Seth Rollins to that list as the reigning WWE World Heavyweight Champion is no longer. He suffered an injury at a house show last night and is going to be stripped of the championship. This leaves our Wrestler of the Year tracking system at a very interesting point going into the final two months of 2015.
Currently, the Top 6 men on the list are as follows:
1) Roderick Strong - 190 points
2) John Cena - 188 points
3) Seth Rollins - 168 points
4) Kota Ibushi - 156 points
5) Kevin Owens - 153 points
6) AJ Styles - 150 points
Looking at that list today, November 5th, four of the competitors are inactive for various reasons which I detailed above. This REALLY puts the Top 10 and specifically the #1 ranked Wrestler of the Year slot in a huge toss up position. Roddy only has a two point lead over John, but he is out. Third place Rollins is gone, along with fourth place Ibushi. The only man with a chance of catching up at this point is Kevin Owens. It's a near 40 point defecit and with Roddy having a big ROH PPV coming up, potential ROH TV Title defenses, and two big PWG shows on the horizon, all of which are chances to rack up big points, Big Kev is going to have to bust some serious ass to catch up however I wouldn't rule him out. WWE is holding a tournament at Survivor Series to crown a new WWE Champion and I'd say that there's a good chance that Owens could be that person. If so, he could slide right up into a battle with Roddy over the #1 position.
As for the rest of the Top 10, it's going to be a battle. As of right now, the rest of the Top 10 is as follows:
7) Zack Sabre Jr - 135 points
8) Ricochet/Prince Puma - 117 points
9) Kyle O'Reilly - 114 points
10) Hirooki Goto - 111 points
Behind these four men are the aces of NJPW in the form of Okada, Tanahashi, & Nakamura who could all easily jump into contention as I've yet to view the King of Pro Wrestling event from late last month, not to mention there's still several New Japan events on the schedule for the remainder of this year.
As for Sabre, Ricochet, O'Reilly, & Goto, unless Styles & Cena are able to come back and jump right back into the groove they were in during the first 3/4th of the year, they could be looking at a run for a Top 5 ranking.
However, it's all speculation at this point. This is my first year using a points system to form my Elite 80 Wrestlers of the Year list and it's become pretty much a set in stone occurence for future years because it makes for exciting moments like right now as the rankings could shift in a variety of directions. With all this happening in the final two months of the year, who knows how this year's list will shake out. Only time will tell and be sure to stay tuned to the blog and @ThePWTruth on Twitter to keep up with all that goes down. Of course, I won't be giving updates in December to keep the ultimate reveal at the end of the month a surprise, but I'll try my best to be up to date through the month of November with so much taking place.
Much like the rest of this year, it looks like to be a wild final few months and I can't wait! Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoy the new Elite 80 system I've formulated! Feel free to tweet me your thoughts on Twitter!
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