Table of contents for April 2024 in Pro Wrestling Illustrated

AS REGULAR READERS of this column already know, 2023 was not a great year for yours truly. And though there are many things about it that I’d like to forget—most obviously, the struggles my dear wife, Megan, faced in her final months battling cancer—that’s simply not how grief (or reality) works. The human mind, for better or worse, is pretty good at remembering the joys and traumas of the past. If you’ve never seen the 2004 film, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, I highly recommend it. Having fallen wildly in and out of love, Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet’s characters each undergo an experimental procedure to wipe the memories of one another from their respective minds. Even if you’ve never seen the movie, you can probably guess what goes…

ALTHOUGH CONVENTIONAL WISDOM suggests that WWE’s stars of tomorrow can be found on today’s indie shows, that’s only partly true. The fact is that WWE has had plenty of success molding superstars out of people from other walks of life. Case in point: Sol Ruca. 29% While the University of Oregon alum had no previous grappling experience before she stepped through the ropes at NXT in 2022, what she did have was athleticism by the bucketful. Before long, the former acrobat was wowing audiences on NXT 2.0, picking up wins aplenty. With an easy-to-like personality and jaw-dropping ring moves, Ruca resonated with the audience on Tuesday nights in a manner that many wrestlers with years of experience don’t manage to do. In fact, Ruca made such an impression in her…

ON JANUARY 17, 2023, the wrestling world was left reeling with the news that Jay Briscoe had tragically died after an automobile accident. In the aftermath, many shared touching stories of how much Jay meant to them. With all respect to the many who grieved Briscoe, there was one person in the wrestling business whom he meant even more to—his brother, Mark. For Mark Briscoe to lose his longtime partner—a man with whom he shared 13 Ring of Honor World tag team championships—was truly sad, but to lose a real-life brother was worse. From arenas around the country to the family farm in Delaware, for the first time in his life, the younger Briscoe brother would be going it alone. 37% Rather than shrink from that new challenge, Mark rolled…

IT’S A TALE as old as time. Boy meets faction, boy joins faction, boy loses faction. Well, actually, in this case, it could be said that the boy came to his senses and broke away from the faction. Either way, the resulting fallout led our readers to name Sami Zayn vs. The Bloodline as wrestling’s feud of the year. From the moment he joined the Samoan dynasty that is The Bloodline, Zayn seemed a tad out of place. As time wore on, it became clear that he was out of place. After months of humiliation and being used by his so-called friends, the Quebecer finally had enough, standing up to the dictatorial Roman Reigns and his relatives in an epic moment at the Royal Rumble. 31% A story told over the…

IN THE EVER-CHANGING landscape of professional wrestling, it’s increasingly difficult for most performers to remain at the peak of the sport for even a single year. Then again, most wrestlers aren’t FTR. For the second straight year, Cash Wheeler and Dax Harwood walk away with the lion’s share of votes in this category. Although 2022 was likely a better span for the group, at least in terms of in-ring accomplishments, it’s hard to argue another team in 2023 has done what the North Carolinians have. 37% Having entered the calendar year with IWGP and AEW World tag team championship reigns to their name, FTR downed tandems like Aussie Open, The Young Bucks, and Bullet Club Gold, all the while continuing to set the standard for what it means to be “Top…

DESPITE HIM BEING a “Visionary,” it’s hard to imagine that Seth Rollins could have foreseen the twists and turns that have occurred over the last 12 months. After spending the last several years further down the WWE pecking order than he may have liked, the “Revolutionary” Rollins rebounded in 2023, becoming, arguably, the promotion’s premier player. After toppling Logan Paul at WrestleMania, Rollins began a trajectory back toward the top of the WWE ladder, spurred on by the announcement that the company would be introducing a new World heavyweight championship that would be exclusive to the Raw brand. 27% Once again turning Raw into “Monday Night Rollins,” the Iowa native defeated AJ Styles at Night of Champions to become the inaugural holder of the brand’s new belt. And he would go…

MVP OF THE BLOODLINE SAGA: Jey Uso Tony Laplume, Tampa, FL MORE LIKE SQUASH THE STORY: Cody Loses at ’Mania Alex YellowEyes, Mattoon, IL JUST KIDDING: Vince McMahon’s Retirement Lia Fields, Westfield, NJ THE MINISTRY REVISITED: House of Black Ronnie Worley, Mt. Olive, VA FACTION I WISH WOULD REFORM AND FEUD WITH THE JUDGMENT DAY: The Brood C. Laity, Bad Axe, MI THE BEST KNIFE-EDGE CHOPS: Gunter/Dax Harwood Marcus Williams, Baskerville, VA BEST PLE: Survivor Series Jacob Cole Porter, Gordonsville, VA DONDE ESTAS?: Thunder Rosa Victoria Ramirez, St. Paul, MN GIVE HIM THE WESTON AWARD, ALREADY: Eddie Ellner Brent Ruttan, Toronto, ON RULEBENDERS OF THE YEAR: House of Torture Roger Renman, Vantaa, Finland MVP OF THE BLOODLINE IMPLOSION: Sami Zayn Tony Laplume, Tampa, FL GREATEST ENTRANCE: Julia Hart Thomas Filice, Bremerton, WA SECOND WIND…

IWTV (PENNSYLVANIA) Alec Price – Won from Matt Tremont, 08.13.23 PAWDWC (WASHINGTON, D.C.) Suge D – Won from Trish Adora, 10.15.23 365 PRO WRESTLING (ONTARIO) Krofton – Won from Joey Allen, 04.29.23 Rose – Won from Liiza Hall, 04.22.23 666 (TOKYO, JAPAN) Koju Takeda – Won from Konaka, 08.02.23 AAW PRO (BERWYN, IL) Davey Vega – Won from Jake Something, 08.31.23 Sierra – Won from Masha Slamovich, 10.28.23 ABSOLUTE INTENSE WRESTLING (CLEVELAND, OH) Isaiah Broner – Won from Matt Cardona, 07.15.23 ACTION WRESTLING (TYRONE, GA) Alex Kane – Won from Adam Priest, 12.08.23 AFRICA WRESTLING ALLIANCE (CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA) Congo King – Won from Johnny Palazzio, 03.28.19 ALIANZA UNIVERSAL DE LUCHA LIBRE (ESTADO DE MEXICO) Forastero – Won from Pistolero Negro, 02.17.23 Baronessa – Won four-way bout (v), 02.17.23…

HEAVYWEIGHT 1 SETH ROLLINS Davenport, IA (1) WWE World champion 2 HIJO DEL VIKINGO Puebla, Mexico (10) AAA Mega champion 3 BLAKE CHRISTIAN Orlando, FL (-) GCW champion 4 ALEC PRICE Boston, MA (9) IWTV champion 5 ALEX KANE Atlanta, GA (8) MLW champion 6 EDDIE KINGSTON Yonkers, NY (-) ROH champion 7 EC3 Boca Raton, FL (-) NWA champion 8 MJF Long Island, NY (3) AEW champion 9 ALEX SHELLEY Detroit, MI (4) TNA champion 10 SANADA Niigata, Japan (5) IWGP champion WOMEN 1 RHEA RIPLEY Adelaide, Australia (1) WWE Women’s World champion 2 IYO SKY Kanagawa, Japan (5) WWE Women’s champion 3 GIULIA London, U.K. (4) NJPW STRONG Women’s champion 4 ATHENA Garland, TX (6) ROH Women’s champion 5 JULIA HART Bloomington, MN (-) AEW TBS champion 6 MIYU YAMASHITA Fukuoka, Japan (7) TJPW champion 7 TONI STORM Gold Coast, Australia (-) AEW Women’s World…

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THEEL PASO-JUAREZ AREA has long been known to travelers and merchants as a vital passageway through which culture, commerce, and creativity flow with few encumbrances. For Persephone, formerly known as The Black Widow, this region is not only her home, but her proving ground—a launchpad for her professional wrestling aspirations. Now seven years pro, Persephone became hooked on wrestling as a kid, thrilling to the exploits of heavyweights including John Cena and Triple H, as well as hard-hitting women such as Mickie James and AJ Lee. She began training as a teenager and wrestled while attending her college courses. “Some of my early and favorite memories are when I lived in El Paso, and I would walk over the bridge to Juarez to train every day after school,” she recalled.…

MOST WRESTLERS DON’T win this award after 21 years in the business. Then, surely, most wrestlers are not LA Knight. Yeah! While it’s fair to question just how much Knight may have improved in the ring over the past year—after all, he has already been a TNA World champion and worn numerous title belts elsewhere—in terms of overall position, there can be no denying the gains this veteran has made. 31% Casting off the shackles of his Max Dupri gimmick and the notion that he was little more than a manager, Knight became one of the hottest superstars in WWE, skyrocketing up the rungs of the promotion in an organic manner not seen in years. With crowd support behind him, Knight reached main-event level and superstar status; and never…

TO UNDERSTAND WHY certain people are so popular, sometimes all you have to do is watch how they interact with other people. When Cody Rhodes walks to the ring, his eyes aren’t just on the ring or his opponent; rather, they scan the crowd looking for those in attendance wearing his merchandise, holding signs with his logo on them, or calling his name. When he spots those people, Rhodes makes a connection. Whether it’s with the shake of a hand, an encouraging word, or the handing over of a signature weight belt, he leaves his fans with a memory. And that’s all before we even talk about his matches. 27% Dusty Rhodes’ connection with the people made him one of the most popular wrestlers of all-time and a triple winner…

WHILE THE INDEPENDENT wrestling scene is full of talented performers making names for themselves, it’s fitting that the one who calls himself “The Indy God” takes this award for a second year in a row. Like the out-of-control boulder in Raiders of the Lost Ark, Cardona ran away with the votes. And it’s easy to see why. As of the time of this writing, he’d held 13 different championships during the calendar year, wrestled on four different continents, and appeared on dozens of cards throughout the United States. Indeed, it could be argued that no former WWE star has embraced the life of an independent wrestler so much as the former Zack Ryder has—and to such great, varied success. 50% Despite an often abrasive and demeaning persona, Cardona has done…

A QUICK LOOK around the wrestling landscape suggests that we may currently be enjoying a new golden age for factions. Indeed, there are groups in just about every promotion that are racing to the top. Yet, when it comes to our readers’ votes, it’s The Judgment Day who have galloped out in front. If a successful faction is measured by its weight in gold, then the purple and-black posse set the standard in WWE this year, holding the Women’s World, NXT North American, and Undisputed tag team titles for significant periods of time. Add in a Men’s Money in the Bank briefcase and you begin to see just how dominant The Judgment Day came to be. 48% Not content to remain a quartet, Rhea Ripley, Damian Priest, Finn Balor, and…

IN AN INDUSTRY where all-time greats are just as likely to burn up—either unable to compete or dragged, kicking and screaming, into retirement—Sting is choosing to go out on his terms. “We used to wonder … what makes these guys wanna come back, year after year, decade after decade? What more do they have to prove? And, I gotta tell ya, here I am all these years later,” said Sting on the October 18, 2023, edition of AEW Dynamite. “And I understand why they hung on! It’s the smell of the arenas. It’s the camaraderie on the road with the guys, traveling all over the globe. It is the roar of you, the fans.” With both longevity and grace, Sting, age 64, had not only hung on … but hung…

JASON SILVER OSAMU KIDO PEGGY LEE LEATHER JEFF GAYLORD TORO BILL SR. BRAY WYATT KILLER KHAN JOYCE GRABLE EMILE DUPREE BLACK WARRIORBRIAN DIXON MIKE PHILLIPS DON LUCE ADRIAN STREET ABSOLUTE ANDY DAN EXCELLENT KRISTEN “MIAMI” MITCHELL BUSHWHACKER BUTCH KENNY JAY CHARLIE NORRIS DARREN DROZDOV BEVERLY SHADE SPO (SEAN PATRICK O’BRIEN) KURTIS CHAPMAN (MAD KURT) DON WEST ADNAN AL-KAISSY ED GAREA RUSS FRANCIS BILLY TWO RIVERS…

STAFF MEMORIES THE LAST TWELVE months have been a wild ride for professional wrestling, necessitating the biggest “Year In Review” section we’ve put together in ages. In the spirit of shaking things up, we thought we’d kick this one off with our writers’ most lasting impressions of 2023. Enjoy! The crazy thing is this: Two years ago, I wrote in this very space that my favorite moment of the year was the return of CM Punk. Now, here we are, and it’s happening again, only in a different company—the company no one expected him to be in ever again. Punk parted ways with WWE a decade ago, and, in the ultimate “hell freezes over” moment, there he was at the end of Survivor Series, soaking in the adulation of the Chicago…

IN ONE OF the most closely contested awards in years, it’s the former Naomi who walks away with the winner’s plaque for Comeback of the Year. And what a “glow”-rious comeback it was! When Trinity Fatu sided with her real-life friend, Sasha Banks, and walked out of WWE due to the pair’s dissatisfaction with creative, it would have been easy to scoff. The cries of “She’ll come crawling back” and “She won't achieve anything anywhere else” could be heard loudly on social media. How foolish those commenters must feel now. 20% While it’s true that Naomi was a product of WWE and had no experience in wrestling before that, Trinity was keen to prove that was not all she could be. After a year away from the ring to contemplate…

MOVE OVER MJF … there’s a new most hated man in wrestling. After two years as the top vote-getter, the normally detestable MJF turned over a new leaf in 2023 and at least acted like a somewhat decent human being. While that might be good for humankind in general, it was a bitter disappointment for those who lament that there are no “true” heels in wrestling anymore. Thank goodness, then, for the rise of Dominik Mysterio. As a card-carrying member of The Judgment Day—a group who are no strangers to drawing the ire of people—“Dirty Dom” stands apart as the one fans have deemed as truly hateable. What’s more, the entitled second-generation star seems to relish in the deafening boos he receives wherever he goes. 52% Not content to follow…

AFTER WINNING THE Women’s Royal Rumble match, Rhea Ripley set her sights on challenging then-Smackdown Women’s champion Charlotte Flair at WrestleMania. The backstory between the two was that Ripley had continually been unable to defeat Flair in their previous encounters—including at WrestleMania 36, in another excellent match that, sadly, had to take place in an empty Performance Center. Ripley would not allow history to repeat itself. The hard-fought, back-and-forth tussle played out in dramatic fashion, this time in front of an engrossed audience in Los Angeles. The contest could have gone to either woman. But, in the end, it was Ripley who was able to put her foe away, using an avalanche Riptide to secure the three-count. 13% In his Wrestling Observer review of the match, Dave Meltzer awarded it…

WHETHER IT WAS in the Women’s division, her own faction, or WWE as a whole, Rhea Ripley asserted her dominance throughout 2023 in a manner that made her the runaway winner in reader votes for this category. In a year that saw her take the #1 spot in our expanded “Women’s 250” ranking, “The Nightmare” haunted the dreams of opponents and firmly established herself as one of the biggest stars in the business, regardless of gender. 50% At the Royal Rumble, the Australian powerhouse outlasted 29 other women on her way to winning the Women’s Rumble match and secured a title at WrestleMania, where “The Eradicator” put an end to the championship reign of Charlotte Flair (a bout that was voted 2023 Match of the Year by PWI readers). The victory…

"SHE PERSONIFIED THE ideal of what a woman could accomplish by simply tapping into the strength each of us carries within.” Thus says Sandra Toffoloni, the sister of Nancy Toffoloni—a magnetic and talented woman known to many as Nancy Benoit. First emerging 40 years ago as the “Fallen Angel” in Florida Championship Wrestling, Nancy graced television screens for the years that followed as one of the most capable and charismatic managers around. “She endeared herself to the fans by making it seem like everything she did was deliberate and genuine, all while still maintaining a deceiving mystifying aura to her persona,” adds Toffoloni, who, while a decade younger than Nancy, was able to witness many of her sister’s shining moments first-hand. “She entranced people in the sense that they had…

HELL HAS THAWED and frozen over many times in the career of CM Punk. He spent the first half of 2023 making headlines by doing absolutely nothing. Would Punk return to AEW after his bitter media scrum appearance and the resulting backstage brawl with The Elite? Or would AEW President Tony Khan buy out his multimillion-dollar contract? AEW booked London’s Wembley Stadium for its All In pay-per-view in August, prompting rumors of Punk’s return. Plenty of star-power would be needed to fill 80,000-plus seats. Would he perhaps face Jon Moxley, who had become World champion after Punk’s forced departure? And how could Punk co-exist with The Young Bucks and Kenny Omega? Khan devised an extraordinary solution to appease Punk. His new Saturday-night TNT program, Collision, would be built around the…

WITH REPORTS OF six-figure paydays and buzz of potential dream matches aplenty, the former Sasha Banks got 2023 off to a hot start by signing with New Japan—even if it ended up being something of a false start. Eight months after walking out of WWE, Mercedes Mone shocked fans inside the Tokyo Dome when she appeared at Wrestle Kingdom 17 to announce she had joined NJPW. Mone would work on a perdate deal with New Japan and its sister promotion, Stardom, in what was rumored to be one of the most lucrative contracts ever offered by Bushiroad. In front of a record streaming audience on NJPW World, Mone physically overtook IWGP Women’s champion KAIRI (Sane)—setting up a title match for Mone’s official NJPW debut at Battle in the Valley in…