10 Biggest Game-Changers In Wrestling Right Now

Changing the world, one great match or bold business decision at a time.

Triple H Kenny Omega
WWE/NJPW

Professional wrestling's evolution can be hard to keep track of.

While it often feels as though WWE's mainline product is stuck in the same place, the McMahons' company, too, is an ever-changing entity. One need only look at today's roster composition to see how their approach is shifting, with their increasingly aggressive talent acquisition strategy yielding a vast pool of performers across multiple brands, with shows like 205 Live and NXT catering for workrate minded fans while Raw and SmackDown shoot for the mainstream.

Yet WWE's efforts aren't the last word in pro-wrestling innovation. Far from it, in fact, as their seemingly insurmountable market dominance breeds creative complacency, and they're regularly lagging behind the competition when it comes to driving the sport forward. Evolution is an important pay-per-view, but can be really hold it up as progressive when shows like Dream Slam 1 were happening 25 years ago?

The industry's biggest promotion still house some of the sport's foremost forward-thinkers and self-starters, though a number of their stakeholders, rivals, and even potential signings are working just as hard (or in some cases, harder) to change the game, inside the ring and out, no matter how big their spotlight...

10. AJ Styles

Triple H Kenny Omega
WWE.com

Like any other main roster wrestler, AJ Styles operates within a framework that actively undermines creativity, freedom, and risk, defined by a list of restrictions and guidelines that reads like an airport novella. He doesn't produce transcendent in-ring epics with the regularity of a Kazuchika Okada not because he's incapable of doing so, but because it isn't in his job description anymore. This is Sports Entertainment, pal. We make movies.

Yet 'The Phenomenal One' is consistently the best wrestler in his company, and aside from early-year Seth Rollins, nobody has done more to push WWE's main roster in-ring standards forward in 2018.

The WWE Champion is the antithesis of his Universal counterpart. While Reigns is a solid, well-rounded performer miscast in a role he isn't suited to playing, Styles is in the perfect spot. He is a hard-working, crowd-pleasing figurehead whose near year-long reign feels like fan service in an era where fan service often seems extinct, and when he's done, this late-career run will be the cherry on top of his G.O.A.T. argument (a conversation Styles absolutely belongs in).

His importance as a figurehead in SmackDown's rebirth as WWE's most enjoyable main roster show can't be denied either, and few performers are as capable at overcoming inconsistent writing.

Channel Manager
Channel Manager

Andy has been with WhatCulture for six years and is currently WhatCulture's Senior Wrestling Reporter. A writer, presenter, and editor with 10+ years of experience in online media, he has been a sponge for all wrestling knowledge since playing an old Royal Rumble 1992 VHS to ruin in his childhood. Having previously worked for Bleacher Report, Andy specialises in short and long-form writing, video presenting, voiceover acting, and editing, all characterised by expert wrestling knowledge and commentary. Andy is as much a fan of 1985 Jim Crockett Promotions as he is present-day AEW and WWE - just don't make him choose between the two.