Top 20 Wrestlers of 2021 (Part 3)
Description: 2021 was one of the strangest years in recent memory as far as Pro Wrestling is concerned. The pandemic era in general has seen a lot of changes and to a certain degree the business and the products produced in it have not completely gotten back to normal. If you had told me in 2019 we would have Bryan Danielson & CM Punk at the same company and a heel Roman Reigns would be one of the most over guys in the WWE, I would've argued it down, I wouldn't have been able to fathom it but here we are.
14. Sammy Guevara-In 2021, Sammy became the 2nd of the 4 pillars to win a championship. The same TNT Championship that Darby Allin (another of the 4 pillars) won from Cody Rhodes. That also made him the only member of the Inner Circle to win a championship beside Jericho himself. He's had some amazing bouts with the likes of Bobby Fish & Jay Lethal but ultimately his reign was cut short by Cody Rhodes at the close of the year. Sammy is one of the best high flyers in the company. For people who like that style of wrestling but don't like "spots for the sake of spots" or the lack of ring psychology that some times comes with it, Sammy is one of those that can be acrobatic but not waste any movement. Everything he does in the context of the match is for a reason. He's been putting on great matches since AEW started and it’s fitting that he would clash with Cody again because they had the first match in Dynamite history but with TNT kind of being a "Television Title", I think he's perfect to carry it because he's a "must-see" performer. As we speak he won his title back from Cody and later dropped it to Scorpio Sky, but I think the moment he beat Miro for it initially put him right where he needed to be. The young boy from The Inner Circle was spreading his wings.
13. Darby Allin-With Each passing year, Darby Allin continues to get more and more over as a babyface. His size and his disregard for his own well-being in the context of the match makes him a natural underdog. He may not be in the same class physically as many of his opponents but he's willing to go places his opponents aren't willing to, to win the match. I think that's what endears him to the AEW audience. He has always seemed to be the exact anti-thesis to MJF who is more of a "only fight if I have to; i'm the most important thing here" type of character. CM Punk saw that in Darby when he arrived in AEW and so did Sting, who would become his manager.
Darby had a busy 2021 as it started with him as TNT Champion which carried over from 2020. He scored some notable defeats over the likes of Brian Cage, Scorpio Sky, John Silver, Preston Vance & Jungle Boy but his reign would be cut off by Miro in the Spring at Double or Nothing.
CM Punk came back to Pro Wrestling on Rampage in August and picked Darby as his opponent for All Out. Punk seems to have taken interest in him because of their similarities and allied with him after their match. Out of the 4 pillars, he and MJF seem to have grown the most over a short period of time and had the most success, and I imagine 2022 is going to be a bigger year.
12. Jonathan Gresham-"The Octopus", since making Ring of Honor his home in 2017, has become part of the "Best in the World" conversation. He's not at the very head of it but he's definitely on the radar. He was kind of the face of the "ROH Pure Tournament" in 2020 so nobody was surprised when he won it. He was already a holding the tag team titles with Jay Lethal so winning the Pure title made him a double champion. Gresham, along with Rhett Titus, Tracy Williams, and of course, Jay Lethal formed a faction called "The Foundation", but as Ring of Honor got ready to close it's doors, he would find himself across from Lethal challenging for the Ring of Honor World Championship.
Gresham is the current ROH World Champion and he continues to defend that title in promotions like Impact & GCW. He also has his own promotion called Terminus where alot of his co-workers from ROH perform while the company is on hiatus. Ring of Honor has a lot of work to do when they return but I think they are safe with him taking over for Lethal as the face of the company. Jay Lethal moved on and signed with AEW.
11. WALTER/Gunther-WALTER should actually be higher on this list but he's built most of his career at WWE on a brand that pretty much nobody watches. Even WWE's diehard fans, for the most part completely ignore it unless it's for their bigger matches and their rare Takeover events. WALTER was one of only four NXT UK Champions. He held the title for a whopping 870 days, which is unheard of for a reign in this era of Pro Wrestling and especially at WWE. He had incredible matches with the likes of Ilja Dragonov, A-Kid, Tommaso Ciampa, and Rampage Brown but he just hasn't been able to garner the attention that other dominant champions receive.
He was moved to NXT 2.0 and had his name changed after almost his entire Imperium stable was released from the company and he would later turn up on Smackdown in 2022. For now what they can't take away from him was his historic reign as NXT UK Champion and throwing that brand on his back. While he may not have been mentioned in the same circles as some of the bigger stars in the company, he is one of the few things that people who didn't watch NXT UK would tune in from time to time for.