It’s the end of the year and it’s time to salute the many people that made wrestling in 2023 so great. Wrestlers, bookers, and various others helped make this one of the best for wrestling in a long time. There’s several people on here that I’ve criticized heavily (CM Punk and Tony Khan being the big ones) but they also did so much for wrestling this year that it felt like malfeasance to leave them off. In alphabetical order:
- Josh Alexander
- Darby Allin
- Sara Amato
- Andrade El Idolo
- Yuma Aoyagi
- Asuka
- Athena
- Axiom
- Speedball Mike Bailey
- Finn Balor
- Bayley
- Bianca Belair
- Anthony Bowens
- Bron Breakker
- Mark Briscoe
- Christian Cage
- Claudio Castignoli
- CM Punk
- Adam Cole
- Adam Copeland/Edge
- Scott D’Amore
- Bryan Danielson
- Ilja Dragunov
- Santos Esobar
- Rey Fenix
- Charlotte Flair
- Chad Gable
- Gedo
- Giulia
- Gunther
- Julia Hart
- Dax Harwood
- Utami Hayashishita
- Carmelo Hayes
- Paul Heyman
- El Hijo del Vikingo
- Samantha Irvin
- Tomohiro Ishii
- Tony Khan
- Eddie Kingston
- L.A. Knight
- Dragon Lee
- Wes Lee
- Brock Lesnar
- Paul Levesque
- Becky Lynch
- Drew McIntyre
- Shawn Michaels
- Kento Miyahara
- The Miz
- MJF
- Mercedes Mone
- Jon Moxley
- Tetsuya Naito
- Dominik Mysterio
- Rey Mysterio
- Shinsuke Nakamura
- Tam Nakano
- Willow Nightingale
- Rossy Ogawa
- Kazuchika Okada
- Kenny Omega
- Orange Cassidy
- Will Ospreay
- Kevin Owens
- Hangman Adam Page
- Logan Paul (hate having him on here as much as you do)
- PCO
- Penta El Zero Miedo
- Roxanne Perez
- Damian Priest
- Roman Reigns
- Cody Rhodes
- Rhea Ripley
- Seth Rollins
- Rocky Romero
- Rush
- Zack Sabre Jr.
- Samoa Joe
- Sheamus
- Hikaru Shida
- IYO SKY
- Masha Slamovich
- Zoey Stark
- Ricky Starks
- Kris Statlander
- Sting
- Timeless Toni Storm
- Tiffany Stratton
- Trish Stratus
- Swerve Strickland
- Syuri
- Konosuke Takeshita
- Shota Umino
- Jey Uso
- Lyra Valkyria
- Cash Wheeler
- Jay White
- Trick Williams
- Sami Zayn
Next week: the least influential people involved with wrestling.