10 Best Wrestlers Of 2023
8. CM Punk
CM Punk's return to AEW was a good time rather than a long one, and the ever-divisive former World Champion wouldn't have had so many people fighting his corner if he wasn't so exceptional at fighting his own.
Wrestling's become more about quality than quantity in the content super-service era, and literally all of Punk's 10 matches between June and August 2023 were completely captivating. He rebuilt Ricky Starks' crumbling career brick-by-brick as Collision burst into life in his image, entered into gripping tag, trio and multi-man bouts alongside the likes of FTR, Darby Allin and Sting, against Bullet Club Gold, House Of Black and Mogul Embassy, and was in peerless and irrepressible form against Satoshi Kojima and Samoa Joe.
The former was a Forbidden Door undercard bout with zero stakes, but emerged from its meme-adjacent origins to very nearly steal one of the most critically acclaimed pay-per-views of the year. And speaking of which; the All In opener against the 'Samoan Submission Machine' was maybe the most universally beloved Wrestling Observer-rated 3.5* match in history. Wembley came unglued playing along with the boo/yays before being sucked into a luxurious and almost arrogantly brilliant contest that paid loving tribute to their legendary series and advertised how the magic behind all of this remains as much in the mind as the body.
Injury-free and ostensibly with the clearest head yet following his release just days removed, his WWE return at the Survivor Series was a remarkable turn of events, but not that unexpected when viewing his career as a whole. For better and worse, Punk is always the story.