Take out a piece of paper. I have a challenge for you.
I want you to rank the top 50 actors in
the world over the past 12 months.
Go.
Okay
… Matthew McConaughey won the Best Actor Emmy and he is amazing in True Detective, so maybe he gets the top spot.
Brian Cranston earned another Emmy for his magnificent work as Walter White in Breaking Bad, so maybe he earns the number-two
spot.
Now what? For the purpose of this
exercise, we’re omitting women (they’ll get their turn next issue), so who’s
number three? Is it the star of the biggest summer blockbuster (Chris Pratt
from Guardians
Of The Galaxy?) Is it a
proven commodity, like Leonardo DiCaprio or Kevin Spacey? Is it a feature film
star, a television star, or someone from Broadway (or off-Broadway, for that
matter)?
Don’t
forget—we’re looking at the world here. Anyone stand out in Bollywood this
year? Who has been doing The Bard the most justice in Merry Olde England?
Go
ahead … try to make your list of 50, being sure to consider standouts in
regional/community theater, supporting characters in sitcoms, and Hollywood
megastars. Now go ahead and expand
your list to the top 500.
This
is, essentially, what we do each year with the “PWI 500.”
It’s
not an easy task; after all, we’re comparing many different kinds of
wrestlers—good guys and bad guys, big guys and little guys, MMA-styled
submission machines and Mr. Juicy. But we believe the “PWI 500” is a valuable exercise. Sure,
it’s great to finish in the top 10, but there are also hundreds of guys
competing throughout the independent circuit hoping to get recognition and a
60-word blurb as a reward all of the sacrifices they have made—weekends
traveling long distances for little pay, time away from their families, and
aches and pains that sometimes keep them awake at night, wondering why they’re
doing it.
We
endeavor to make the “500” as objective as possible by adhering as closely as
possible to our criteria. We consider accomplishments during the designated evaluation
period, title success, activity, and quality of opposition. Like the exercise with actors, we
evaluate wrestlers from different countries, different styles (or genres), and
different roles within their own company.
One
of my biggest pet peeves is when the “500” list is invariably posted online,
and message boards light up with comments like … Why was Wrestler X so low, how
can Wrestler Y be above Wrestler Z, etc. Generally speaking, if you pay
attention to the criteria as outlined in the introduction to the section, and
read the biographies, you’ll be able to see why we made the decisions we did.
We do wish people would at least understand our criteria and the time frame
we’re evaluating before passing judgment. People may disagree; we expect them to
disagree. If you could have sat in on our editorial team ranking meetings, you
would have heard plenty of disagreements amongst ourselves. It’s a good thing
we conducted our meeting via GoToMeeting. I might have taken a swing at Mike
Bessler at one point if he were in front of me.
I’m
not trying to make the “PWI 500” out to be a Herculean task.
It’s a lot of hard work, but it’s something we love to do, and something our
readers love to read, discuss, and debate. I just want to make sure
everyone—from our readers, to the wrestlers (those ranked and unranked), and
the anonymous Internet message board commentators—to know that we take this
project seriously.
The
actors exercise may give some general insight into the difficulties inherent in
what we do, but when all is said and done, we think our ranking accurately
reflects the top 500 wrestlers in the world over the past year.
Dan Murphy
PWI Senior Writer
