Everybody who comes to Cageside Seats has an opinion about what's going on in pro wrestling - The Wrestler Rankings are where YOU let us know YOURS.
What are the Wrestler Rankings? Well, for years, they were called the Smark’s Shoot Standings (S3). Last year, we changed the name. Either way, it’s a way for fans to vote on which wrestlers entertained them the most every week. Whether you’ve been casting ballots every year since 2012 or if this is your first time on the site, the rest of the post will tell you everything you need to know. And if you have any questions beyond that, ask in the comments! Either I or one of our regular voters will help you out.
The Rankings come out every Sunday. The post consists of a poll listing people involved in prominent angles on nationally televised shows that happened the week before, but if you don’t see your pick - don’t worry. That’s not the only - or most impactful - way to vote. More on that in a minute.
We’ll also normally have the outcome of the previous Sunday’s voting. That creates a weekly Top Ten Ranking. Placing in the weekly Top Ten earns wrestlers points in our annual competition for the Cageside Cup, given to whoever has the most points at the end of the year. Our “year” starts with the Raw after WrestleMania and ends with the following WrestleMania. Read about last year’s winner, and see how all 170 performers who received votes in 2021-2022 did, here.
And congrats, Punk!
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Okay, so how does this all work?
Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About The Cageside Community Wrestler Rankings & The Cageside Cup:
Performers who play a significant role on a nationally televised wrestling show available in at least 50 million United States homes, or on a major PPV/streaming event, will get entries in our click-vote poll.
If you want to vote for someone who doesn’t appear in the poll, and/or if would like to either recognize more performers or have a greater impact on the Standings, you should cast a comment vote.
Voting both via the poll and a comment is not only allowed, but encouraged. If you want to really influence the Rankings, and have a lot more flexibility with your ballot, you’ve really got to comment.
On a comment “ballot”, you have four slots. If you place one performer in each, first place is assigned 4 points for the week, second 3, third 2 and fourth 1.
You can list more than one wrestler per slot, either as a tag team or a tie between unrelated performers. If you have people tied in any one slot, those performers will split the points assigned to that slot. For instance:
1. Britt Baker
2. The Usos
3. Josh Alexander
4. Carmelo Hayes
Gives Dr. Baker 4 points toward the weekly Rankings. Jimmy & Jey get 1.5 each (splitting the 3 points assigned to a second place vote), while the Impact star gets 2 points for third, and NXT’s A champ receives 1 for fourth.
On the other hand, you can assign more points for a tie by having the tie replace one of your other slots, like so:
1. Britt Baker
2. The Usos
4. Josh Alexander
In this instance, The Bloodline duo each receive 2.5 points for the week, as they will split the 3 points for second and the 2 points for third. Alexander then gets 1 for fourth.
You can not put the same wrestler in multiple slots. If your ballot looks like this:
1 - 4 Britt Baker
D.M.D. still only receive the four points for first place. The remaining points for that ballot will not be awarded to anyone.
The poll is counted separately. The performer who receives the most votes gets 10 points, second receives 9 points, and so on down to the person who receives the tenth highest vote count earning 1 point for the week. Doesn’t matter if the winner gets 6,000 votes in the poll, he or she only gets 10 points from it. This is because the poll is prone to trolling and not that hard to game... but mostly because we want you to join the conversation in the comments!
The annual list is calculated in a similar fashion. Finishing first in the weekly Rankings is worth 10 points in the Cageside Cup Standings... down through tenth being worth 1 point. Ties split the points assigned to the rankings between the number of people tied. So if one week, Liv Morgan, Jeff Cobb, and Lee Moriarty tie for seventh, they each get 3 points - the 4 for seventh, 3 for eighth and 2 for ninth split three ways.
Clear as mud? Remember, feel free to ask questions below.
In addition to revealing the final 2021-2022 Rankings, our last post asked how we should handle WrestleMania in an age where WWE isn’t the only big stage in the business.
Feedback was pretty evenly split. Retaining the status quo (two votes in the final week of the year, one for shows that happen the Sunday before ‘Mania until the Friday before ‘Mania, and one for shows that happen on WrestleMania Saturday & WrestleMania Sunday) has a slight edge over extending the final week to Sunday to include everything and “Other”.
The “Other” suggestion that seems to have the most support is to have one WWE vote for ‘Mania week and one for all non-WWE shows.
I’m going to leave that poll open for another week, and see if any additional consensus forms in the comments. Then we can possibly have one more vote next week that includes the newly suggested option. Whatever we decide there won’t be a factor until next April, so for now...
Let’s do this thing!
Remember, the Rankings are for the previous week’s nationally televised and internet streaming pro wrestling shows - the April 4 episodes of Raw & Dark: Elevation, Tuesday’s NXT & Dark, Weds., April 6’s Dynamite, Thursday’s Impact, the April 8 SmackDown, this week’s NJPW Strong & New Japan Hyper Battle, MLW Fusion, NWA Powerrr, and anything else I’m forgetting that became newly available on our screens from April 4 - April 9, 2022.
We'll see you next week with the first results, and for another vote!
Poll
Which performer had the best week, April 4-9?
This poll is closed
-
11%
Cody Rhodes
(220 votes) -
0%
Seth Rollins
(8 votes) -
0%
Sasha Banks
(10 votes) -
0%
Naomi
(3 votes) -
0%
Kevin Owens
(16 votes) -
0%
Ezekial
(7 votes) -
0%
The Miz
(0 votes) -
0%
Veer Mahaan
(14 votes) -
0%
Bianca Belair
(15 votes) -
0%
Dolph Ziggler
(0 votes) -
1%
Bron Breakker
(29 votes) -
0%
MVP
(0 votes) -
0%
Bobby Lashley
(2 votes) -
0%
Omos
(2 votes) -
0%
Queen Zelina
(0 votes) -
0%
Austin Theory
(1 vote) -
0%
Jimmy Uso
(0 votes) -
0%
Jey Uso
(0 votes) -
0%
Edge
(1 vote) -
0%
Damian Priest
(1 vote) -
0%
Angelo Dawkins
(0 votes) -
0%
Montez Ford
(0 votes) -
2%
Roman Reigns
(55 votes) -
0%
Brutus Creed
(0 votes) -
0%
Julius Creed
(0 votes) -
0%
Elton Prince
(0 votes) -
0%
Kit Wilson
(0 votes) -
0%
Gigi Dolin
(1 vote) -
0%
Jacy Jayne
(2 votes) -
0%
Nikkita Lyons
(0 votes) -
0%
Joe Gacy
(0 votes) -
0%
Adam Cole
(2 votes) -
4%
Hangman Page
(81 votes) -
3%
Samoa Joe
(72 votes) -
3%
Wardlow
(65 votes) -
3%
Capt. Shawn Dean
(62 votes) -
3%
Santana
(67 votes) -
4%
Ortiz
(86 votes) -
6%
Eddie Kingston
(128 votes) -
0%
Jade Cargill
(5 votes) -
0%
Matt Hardy
(0 votes) -
0%
Jeff Hardy
(0 votes) -
5%
Hikaru Shida
(117 votes) -
0%
Matt Jackson
(0 votes) -
0%
Nick Jackson
(1 vote) -
3%
Cash Wheeler
(74 votes) -
4%
Dax Harwood
(92 votes) -
0%
Ronda Rousey
(1 vote) -
0%
Charlotte Flair
(1 vote) -
0%
Xavier Woods
(0 votes) -
0%
Sami Zayn
(2 votes) -
0%
Ludwig Kaiser
(2 votes) -
0%
Gunther
(6 votes) -
0%
Raquel Rodriguez
(2 votes) -
0%
Happy Corbin
(1 vote) -
0%
Madcap Moss
(7 votes) -
0%
Drew McIntyre
(1 vote) -
0%
Lacey Evans
(2 votes) -
3%
Liv Morgan
(77 votes) -
3%
Bryan Danielson
(63 votes) -
3%
Swerve Strickland
(63 votes) -
0%
Red Velvet
(0 votes) -
18%
Wheeler Yuta
(362 votes) -
3%
Jon Moxley
(75 votes) -
3%
William Regal
(61 votes)
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