10 Best Wrestlers Of 2022

5. CM Punk

Its acrimonious end doesn’t change that for the majority of 2022, CM Punk’s AEW run was amongst the most compelling things in global wrestling.

The year’s first half brought the second and third acts in the 44-year-old’s growth from rusty, grey-bearded burnout whose character’s internal battle was as compelling as the wars waged in the ring, to ‘The Best In The World’ once more. In MJF, Punk was gifted a perfect opponent, and one of the few modern wrestlers capable of spitting and scrapping with similar levels of realism and authenticity, resulting in a modern classic feud. That rivalry was the making of Punk onscreen. Ugly, bloody, and hateful, their Dog Collar match will top many a Match of the Year list, though the week-to-week was no less compelling than the rivalry’s sport-leading week-to-week.

2022 brought Punk loosening-up to work FTR as both a partner and rival, re-establishing himself as the best talker in wrestling, scaling the mountain to become a justifiable two-time World Champion where months ago he may have considered himself out of the game forever, and more. At All Out, he toppled Jon Moxley in a classically-styled World Title fight par excellence, the quality of which shouldn’t be obscured by what happened afterwards. And the ‘Hangman’ Adam Page rivalry, though tainted by a botched Buckshot Lariat and what came of Page’s “worker’s rights” promo, was as searing and brilliant as its combustible protagonist.

CM Punk’s standing here is hurt by his mid-year injury and post-All Out blow-up, which sidelined the Chicagoan and prevented him from building a grander body of work. Nonetheless, the work we did get was sublime. From beginning to end, Punk’s year in AEW was a microcosm of the man himself: gritty, complex, authentic, and volcanic.