Ranking the WWE Men's Roster Ahead of The Royal Rumble

The Royal Rumble, one of the most exciting events of the year in professional wrestling is set to take place, as I am writing this article, tomorrow night, January 28th, 2023. With that in mind, I wanted to do a thought experiment. Using a set of criteria of my own design, I am going to rank the current WWE Men's roster. Their are currently 75 men who I consider to be available for this list, men who have wrestled on WWE's main roster over the last year. Several of them are injured and will not be part of the Royal Rumble such as Big E, A.J Styles and Randy Orton. They are still listed here because they plan to be back and will be part of the future of the WWE. And, why not let this list be a little timeless, an archive of exactly where I think the WWE Men's roster stands just before Wrestlemania in April, 2023.

A year from now you can look back at this list and see how much the WWE has changed in one year. That's if you agree with my ranking, of course.

So, what are my criteria for this list? It's going to be highly subjective, it's my perception of these wrestler via how I feel WWE has portrayed them on television. That said, I have some particular criteria that I am working with. I will be using a ranking engine for this effort, a link to which you can find here. This ranking engine will pit one wrestler against another and I will decide which wrestler I think the WWE values more. That choice is based on wins and losses on television, importance in storylines, character development, and a general take on their talent as performers. It should be easy to determine who number 1 is as Roman Reigns is unquestionably the most important WWE performer on the roster. He's number but what the rest of the list will look like, you will soon see. (A brief note, I accidentally ran Ridge and Butch together in this list so, I only ranked 74 instead of 75. So, Ridge and Butch wouldn't be far apart in importance anyway, I kept them in as a tie.

The WWE has a tier system for their wrestlers, whether they would admit it or not. In terms of the terminology for that tier system, it works something like this. Keep in mind, they would never admit that this how they view their wrestlers, these are terms that date back to the 1940s and old school promoters who used terms related to how they would set up their card, or schedule for the night. Guys are defined by their star power as much as their actual talent.

Thus you have:

Main Event Stars which would be the top 20 or so names on this list who might headline an event.

Upper-Mid Card

This is where you have stars who might become Main Event stars or aging stars who've moved away from the main event, former champions of various.

Lower -Mid-Card

Guys who get TV time, split their wins and losses, occasionally get storylines but also often used to advance the stories of bigger stars.

Finally you have

Enhancement Talents or 'Jobbers'

These are guys whose job is to lose and make other wrestlers look good. They can be comedy wrestlers or just guys who have a knack for making other guys look good in the ring. They rarely win and can be left off of television for months at a time before being used again.

Rank Name

1 Roman Reigns

2 Cody Rhodes

3 Bray Wyatt

4 Brock Lesnar

5 Sami Zayn

6 Kevin Owens

7 Seth 'Freakin' Rollins

8 Gunther

9 Logan Paul

10 Solo Sikoa

11 Jimmy Uso

12 Jey Uso

13 Bobby Lashley

14 Sheamus

15 John Cena

16 Drew McIntyre

17 Finn Balor

18 Rey Mysterio

19 L.A Knight

20 Karrion Kross

21 A.J Styles

22 Randy Orton

23 Edge

24 Austin Theory

25 Big E

Upper Midcard

26 Dominik Mysterio

27 Pat McAfee

28 Damian Priest

29 Braun Strowman

30 Omos

31 Baron Corbin

32 Richochet

33 Ludwig Kaiser

34 Kofi Kingston

35 Montez Ford

36 Giovanni Vinci

37 The Miz

38 Angelo Dawkins

39 Matt Riddle

40 Xavier Woods

41 Otis

42 Johnny Gargano

43 Elias

44 Shinsuke Nakamura

Lower Midcard

45 Ivar (Viking Raiders)

46 Cruz Del Toro

47 Chad Gable

48 Top Dolla

49 Bronson Reed

50 Mustafa Ali

51 Joaquin Wilde

52 Ridge Holland/Butch

53 Santos Escobar

54 Erik (Viking Raiders)

55 Ashante The Adonis

56 Karl Anderson

57 Tommaso Ciampa

58 Luke Gallows

Enhancement Talent

59 Humberto Carillo

60 Mace

61 Madcap Moss

62 Dexter Lumis

63 Mansoor

64 Angel Garza

65 Dolph Ziggler

66 Akira Tozawa

67 Robert Roode

68 R-Truth

69 Shelton Benjamin

70 Cedric Alexander

71 Rick Boogs (Inactive)

72 Titus O'Neil (Inactive)

73 Shanky (Inactive)

74 Commander Azeez (Inac

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