Table of contents for February 2019 in Pro Wrestling Illustrated

WITH 2019 QUICKLY approaching, the reality is starting to sink in that I will soon celebrate my 40th year with Pro Wrestling Illustrated. That was put into vivid perspective just a few hours before I sat down to write this column when I had a conversation with one of our new graphic designers. She asked me how long I’ve been doing this, and it quickly dawned on me that I was hired 15 years before she was even born! That’s a little hard for me to swallow, but that’s not the only thing. If I think of PWI and the sport of wrestling today and compare it to 40 years ago, it’s hard for me to believe that … … there is not one name in the masthead of the…

“At this point, money or any kind of quantifiable statistics, titles or whatever, or any kind of validation from anybody is not really important to me. The most important thing … is just being happy with a piece of work. Like an artist makes a watercolor painting or whatever, and they sit back and go, ‘I’m really happy with that.’” —Dean Ambrose, discussing the current state of his career with Edinburg, Texas, newspaper The Monitor “Somewhere there, they wasted a lot of money. And the guys under contract, the guys that busted their butts had to pay the price … that doesn’t make sense. That’s not fair to them. They’re the ones who put their bodies on the line for TNA and took up for TNA on a regular basis.…

IF HISTORY IS the best predictor of the future, Roman Reigns has a lot to worry about. The WWE Universe has resisted Reigns’ push for over four years, from the moment The Shield disbanded, to his ill-received Royal Rumble victory in 2015, to his three often-delayed, always-brief WWE championship runs. Fans aren’t accepting Reigns as WWE’s top fan favorite. They barely bought into the notion of Reigns as Universal champion, until Seth Rollins and Dean Ambrose rejoined him immediately following SummerSlam. Much of the criticism on social media shares the same theme: All of WWE has been turned topsyturvy just to make Reigns viable as Universal champion. Brock Lesnar was depicted as an absentee titleholder to make Reigns seem valiant in comparison. The careers of Rollins and Ambrose were going…

FOR WELL OVER a decade, Pro Wrestling Guerrilla’s Battle of Los Angeles has been one of the most acclaimed pro wrestling tournaments in the United States, delivering matches packed with athleticism and high drama. This year’s tournament, held September 14, 15, and 16 at the Globe Theatre in Los Angeles, boasted an impressive roster of independent wrestling’s hottest talent, including PCO, Trevor Lee, and Joey Janela. In the end, it was Jeff Cobb who claimed victory, winning a triple-threat contest against Shingo Takagi and Bandido. The win was a moment of redemption for Cobb, who narrowly missed out on a big win last year when Keith Lee eliminated him in the final round. Cobb cited his training and experience as a professional wrestler as a key factor in surviving the…

SEND LETTERS TO: BETWEEN FALLS Box 96 Ft. Washington, PA 19034 Or you can e-mail your comments to prowrestlingillustrated@yahoo.com PRO WRESTLING ILLUSTRATED welcomes readers' comments on any of our stories or columns. PWI 500 We’ve monitored fans’ response to this year’s “PWI 500,” and almost nobody has an objection with our naming Kenny Omega number one. Few have a problem with AJ Styles at number two or last year’s winner, Kazuchika Okada, at number three. Number four? That’s a different story. “How on earth can you have Brock Lesnar in the top 10, let alone number four?” e-mailed Tony Granetto. “Isn’t one of your criteria ‘activity’?” “It’s an insult to every wrestler who works a full-time, year-round schedule to place Lesnar where you did,” wrote Bob Baron. “I’m glad you gave Kazuchika…

In 2007, Tim Hornbaker released National Wrestling Alliance: The Untold Story Of The Monopoly That Strangled Pro Wrestling, an exhaustively researched book that became the gold standard of wrestling histories. He followed that up in 2015 with the impressive Capitol Revolution: The Rise Of The McMahon Wrestling Empire. Given Hornbaker’s track record and attention to detail, Death Of The Territories: Expansion, Betrayal And The War That Changed Pro Wrestling Forever was one of the most highly anticipated wrestling titles in recent memory. Whereas National Wrestling Alliance examined a half-century of wrestling history, Death Of The Territories drills into the 1980s as Vince McMahon Jr. takes the reins of the World Wrestling Federation and looks to expand to a national stage. It’s a fascinating era in wrestling history, and, as the…

RONDA ROUSEY WHEN IT WAS announced that Ronda Rousey had officially signed with WWE in January, it didn’t come as much of a surprise. The former UFC champion and Olympic bronze medalist had appeared in a WWE ring at WrestleMania 31. She had appeared in the audience during the 2017 Mae Young Classic with her “Four Horsewomen” pals Shayna Baszler, Jessamyn Duke, and Marina Shafir. A longtime fan, Rousey made no secret that she hoped to become a professional wrestler once she was finished with MMA. It was almost a given that Rousey—one of the biggest pay-per-view drawing powers of the past decade—would end up in WWE. The surprise is that she turned out to be a pro wrestling prodigy. Rousey wrestled her first match at WrestleMania 34, teaming with…

60-DAY HIGH: 97.69 on September 28 60-DAY LOW: 76.61 on August 13 52-WEEK HIGH: 97.69 on September 28, 2018 52-WEEK LOW: 21.22 on October 25, 2017 Gadzooks! Could we possibly see WWE stock reaching $100 per share? WWE stock has been steadily climbing since Rupert Murdoch offered $1-billion over a five-year period to secure Smackdown for Fox’s 2019 fall season. And with the overall stock market performing well, WWE stock has reached a once-unthinkable zone. WWE stock hovered at about $20 per share in the months after the company went public in October 1999, and even languished around the $8-mark for a while in the early-2000s. About a year ago, it was finally back to $20 per share. Now it’s approaching $100?! A few days after WWE stock reached an…

TOP 10 1 AJ STYLES 218, Gainesville, GA (1) WWE heavyweight champion 2 ROMAN REIGNS 265, Pensacola, FL (5) WWE Universal champion 3 KENNY OMEGA 228, Winnipeg, MB (2) IWGP heavyweight champion 4 BRAUN STROWMAN 385, Sherrills Ford, NC (4) No. 1 contender WWE Universal title 5 CODY RHODES 220, Marietta, GA (–) NWA heavyweight/IWGP U.S. champion 6 JAY LETHAL 225, Elizabeth, NJ (7) ROH heavyweight champion 7 SETH ROLLINS 217, Davenport, IA (–) WWE Intercontinental champion 8 AUSTIN ARIES 202, Milwaukee, WI (8) Impact Wrestling heavyweight champion 9 SHINSUKE NAKAMURA 229, Kyoto, Japan (3) WWE U.S. champion 10 TOMMASO CIAMPA 201, Milwaukee, WI (10) NXT heavyweight champion TAG TEAMS 1 THE NEW DAY Combined weight: 702 pounds (5) Smackdown tag team champions 2 JAY & MARK BRISCOE Combined weight:…

For nearly 17 years, Impact Wrestling has showcased many of the industry’s most celebrated entities. But while hundreds have passed through those locker room doors, only one has been a fixture since the very beginning. On TNA’s June 19, 2002, debut, 20 men vied for a shot at the vacant NWA championship. Most of those faces were familiar, but among them was a particularly notable newcomer: a 6’8”, 350-pound powerhouse called “Justice.” Though Justice (soon rechristened “Abyss”) was unsuccessful that night, he wouldn’t be held back for long. A decade-and-a-half later, Abyss’s resume speaks for itself. He’s a former heavyweight, X division, and three-time tag champion, boasting a string of memorable rivalries with a “who’s who” of Impact alumni. In October 2018, he was bestowed the company’s highest honor, when…

IN THIS ISSUE’S “Hotseat” Ronda Rousey insists that she “doesn’t want to take credit for the women’s evolution” in wrestling. True, she wasn’t there when WWE began changing its presentation of women’s wrestling from Divas to straight-forward athletes, but she has such mainstream recognition that the public sees her as the face of a new era in women’s wrestling. This “evolution” seems to be an outgrowth of the women’s “revolution,” a term Stephanie McMahon introduced in 2015 that quickly became part of the WWE lexicon. But the evolution (including the PPV of the same name) started with the so-called revolution. It’s worth examining where and when that “revolution” actually began. Women have been wrestling professionally since the 19th century. Josie Wahlford was recognized as women’s champion in the 1890s. Cora…

DO YOU ALL remember that dreadful TNA angle in 2010 when Ric Flair tried to remake AJ Styles in his own image, changing his wardrobe and attitude and tagging him the “New Nature Boy”? From a creative standpoint, it just didn’t make it. Two people couldn’t be more opposite in real life, and the resulting vibe was tangible. For better or worse, Flair and Styles did establish a historical tie. They may be about to have another one. Styles is on the verge of doing something no one but the “Old Nature Boy” was able to do: win the Wrestler of the Year Award for three straight years. Flair did it in 1984, 1985, and 1986 when Allen Neal Jones was seven, eight, and nine years old and getting his…